An Esoteric Commentary on Meister Eckhart's Sermon 3: part 8

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An Esoteric Commentary on Meister Eckhart's Sermon 3: part 8

Meister Eckhart ends his sermon with a very nearly radical proposition, seemingly antithetical to the church and its practice:

And so I say the same here: Whatever a man's vows to manifold things, by entering into true inwardness he is released from them. 

While this sounds revolutionary, it is inevitable. Man’s vows to manifold things — all of the actions we undertake from our associative and conceptual thinking — have to be completely abandoned in order to enter true inwardness. This is the inwardness of complete submission. And he uses a peculiar analogy to bring it home to us:

As long as this inwardness lasts, be it a week, a month, or a year, none of this time is lost by the monk or nun, for God, who has captured and imprisoned them, must answer for it. 

The idea of God imprisoning those who come to him contradicts our conception of God as loving and merciful; and it furthermore seems to roundly contradict the idea of free will. 

Yet the biblical conception of man as a servant and a sinner squares rather neatly, in the end, with the idea of bondage and imprisonment. Those who know of this particular cell report that there is no sweeter imprisonment than the love of God, and no better place to be; this is the one cell within life and within the soul that we come to wish to dwell in willingly. It’s never a place we’re forced into against our will. Indeed, this is the very prison that we wish to enter within the kingdom of Heaven: we strive towards imprisonment in Purgatory, seeing it not as a punishment, but an opportunity for the soul.

On returning to himself, a man should perform his vows for the time present; but as for what you may think you have neglected in the preceding time, you need not bother to make it up, for God Himself will make it up for the period during which He caused you to be idle. You should not wish to make it up by any act of creatures, for the least act of God outweighs all the works of creatures. 

This act of devotion is an atonement that frees a man from outward obligations, because God now assumes responsibility. The goodness to which a man is thus avowed is already that of God; and hence all his actions become, at their root, not his own but those actions of the goodness of God Himself. Here lies freedom; freedom not in and for ourselves, but freedom in and for God alone. Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God immediately comes to mind, although the text is from a later period in the history of Chjristian esoteric thought.

This is a theme that repeats itself in many ways throughout the body of Meister Eckhart’s sermons.

Yet the idea, he understands, is a very high idea:

This is said to learned and illumined people, who have been taught and illumined by God and scripture. 

But how is it with a simple layman who knows and understands nothing but corporal discipline, and who has taken on some vow, whether of prayer or the like ? 

And so he brings us again to the question of how to understand it from the perspective of the ordinary, that is, a simple lay man. We can liken this particular passage to the whole discipline of spiritual exercises in general: these are exactly what Meister Eckhart means by corporeal disciplines and vows of prayer. By asking this question, he calls the whole body of this approach into question: and his suggestion in that regard is once again radical.

To him I say this: If he finds it hampering and that he draws nearer to God without it, let him boldly give it up. 

One must, in other words, use one’s growing power of discernment and spiritual intelligence, the spiritual instinct itself, to overcome attachment to everything, even exercise itself, in the confidence, conviction, and courage of that inner truth which gains strength through Being. On this note, see Gurdjieff’s Wartime Meetings of 1943, meeting seven, in which he says to a questioner:

”This proves that you do not know what you are looking for. You interest yourself in these questions without partaking of your instinct… Something in you remains apart, it looks. Another part in you does something else—you work without instinct. Everything works—head, feeling, except that which must. It has never done anything to change.”

It is not what we are told, but what we discover for ourselves, that matters; and we cannot understand that in any way other than what brings us closer to God from within. Again from Wartime Meetings (meeting 6), “Exterior things do not change interior things.”

Meister Eckhart continues,

For any work that brings you nearer to God and God's embrace is the best. That is what Paul meant when he said, "When wholeness comes, the partial vanishes" ( 1 Cor. 13:10 ) . There is a big difference between a vow taken before a priest and vows taken in simplicity to God Himself. If a man vows anything to God it is with the laudable intention of binding himself thus to God, which at the time a man thinks to be for the best. But if he learns of a better way, then, knowing by experience that it is better, let him be quite free of the first, and content. 

Once again, it sounds like heresy here: the vows taken before priests are the bread-and-butter of the Catholic church. One can well imagine why Meister Eckhart may have run afoul of the authorities at the Vatican over comments like this. Yet he successfully defended himself against inquisition and extreme censure; although the church said some of his remarks were not doctrinal, he was never excommunicated. This because it is impossible to deny that “vows taken in simplicity to God Himself” are the real thing. 

In the above passage, we encounter once again the idea of imprisonment, bondage, and servitude. To bind oneself to God is a laudable intention; we can understand it as equivalent to the act of Ulysses being bound to the mast of his ship (the vertical alignment of one’s inner life around the center of gravity where the force of impetus is received) in order to resist the temptations of the Sirens, the allure of the outer. 

Yet that action may not always be necessary; bondage and imprisonment are not the only way to remain close to God. This may be generally true when we conceive of these things from an outer perspective. Yet Meister Eckhart, in commenting on the possibility of learning of a “better way,” indicates that if we know this inwardly, we are thereby released from prior vows and bonds. And he follows with a comment that echoes Gurdjieff’s comments that a person must work with their instinct:

This is easy to prove, for one should consider the fruits and the inward truth rather than the outward act. As Paul says, "The letter [that is, all outward practices] kills, but the spirit gives life " (2 Cor. 3:6), that is, an inward realization of truth. 

This passage is a reiteration of Gurdjieff’s long-time insistence that our practice must become very deeply inner. 

You should take good note of this and follow above all whatever befits you best for this. Your spirit should be elevated, not downcast, but rather ardent, and yet in a detached, quiet stillness. No need to tell God what you need or desire: He already knows. Christ said to his disciples, "When you pray, do not use many words in your prayers like the Pharisees, for they think to be heard with much speaking" (Matt. 6:7). 

In this final paragraph before his closing blessing, Meister Eckhart calls on his fellow monks to assume their own responsibility for their work. This responsibility is not a burden, but a blessing (your spirit should be elevated) and not weighted down by an ersatz solemnity. 

Meister Eckhart calls for us to be ardent, and yet in a detached, quiet stillness. Here we are invested in the goodness of Being, and not in the downcast bewailing of our own sin and insufficiency.  It is in the stillness and goodness of God’s mercy that we present ourselves, not in the agitation and evil of our own light.

That we may here so seek this peace and inward silence, that the eternal Word may be spoken within us and understood, and that we may become one therewith, may the Father help us, and that Word, and the Spirit of both. 

Amen. 

The quotations from Meister Eckhart's Sermons 3 are reprinted with the kind permission of The Sangha Trust, and are taken from The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart.

 May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.