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There are periods in the history in which relatively equal processes happen in different cultures. Thus philosophy originated relatively in the same
time as well in Greece (Thales) as in India (Uddalakka), it is philosophy created by historically definite person. We find a similar situation in the 13th (Christian) century. Doctrines originate independent of each
other which have identities in contents. As well in the West of christian culture as in the East of Islamic culture too religious shocks happen, and we find again the question on the man and his fate in the world. A
revival of mystics is the result of these mental problems. Mystics aspire after spiritualization in the man opposite the crisis in the outer world. It wants to draw the total world - God included - into the man. We
have a century in which the mystics create a lot of worthy representants. In the beginning of 13th century Franciscus of Assisi dies who preached evangelic poverty and by this became a real (revolutionary) danger to
the (political) power of institutional (romanic) church. In this tradition also we find Bonaventura who was one of the first significant philosophers of the franciscanian movement. This also is the intention of the
movement of Waldensers which almost breaks the romanic church as 'practical mystics', or 'mystical practice'. We find mystical movements also in a far distance of these European phenomena, for example in Tibet where
in the end of 12th century the guru Gampopa died, the founder of the school of Kargyypta of buddhistic mystics. He had similarities in his doctrines with the mystics of Meister Eckhart. A contemporary of Meister
Eckhart has been Alighiero Dante, the (poetical) perfectionist of ecclestical world view of european Middle Ages. In the time of birth of Jnaneshwara the founder of the mystical order of Mewlewi, Jelal ud - din ar
Rûmi, died in Persia, and the mystical poet Hafis is born in Shiras. Rûmi, Hafis and Meister Eckhart have been the occupation as professors of theology. The real danger to the orthodoxy in different religions didn't
come from the witty critics of academic provenance but from the effects, doctrines and the sermons of mysticians. In the battles of the church against Luther we can read 200 years later that the inquisitor more
dread "the heat in the eyes of a German monk as the impudences of free-thinkers". Such the mystics is a movement what reached impor-tance in much people because it didn't speak in an academically foreign
language but it spoke the language of plain people.
Meister Eckhart was born about 1260 p.C., made an academical career, and the posts of his order (ordo praedicatorum (O.P.), Dominicanians). He was a
good clergyman and preacher. As preacher he reached many peoples by his opinion of an immediate experience of God. The rumour he would be a heretic by this soon was born. And his adversaries promoted this rumour. He
wrote a vindication what was rejected by the (franciscanian) inquisitors. Eck-hart defended himself and appealed to his immediate responsibility to the pope. In 1329 the bull with his damnation arrives from Avignon
and the pope John the 22nd. But Eckhart didn't live yet. In 1327 he died. The consequences of the bull affected his papers, and his followers in Germany, and the movement of Waldensers. They will destroyed
physically. The damna-tion attacks sentences what will overcome the newplatonian dualism of Christianity what makes a contrariness between God and world, God and Man, Light/Goodness and dark-ness/badness. He
stressed the oneness of God, man and world. Man is divine, he can take God totally into himself, and by this he becomes exalted as a divine man. Man stands on the same level as God: "If I'd be who get from God,
I'd stand underneath God as servant or slave; God himself would be a Lord by his gifts. And so it must not be in eternal life." God finishes his Goddess if he would be without man. God needs the man such as the
man needs God. The dualism of holiness and profaneness is solved in unity: without man God is not God. The as-sumption is that God is not only a thought [a thing of thinking], but a really living God. "All what
is in divine nature also is in the righteous as divine man. Therefore such a man effects all that what God effects: he created together with God heaven and earth, he is creator of eternal world, and God could do
nothing without such a man." God is the oneness, who always is as totality in his creation, and the creation is by this way creation that God effects undevidedly in it. "No difference is in God ... his
nature is one, and each person in God is one, and so it is this oneself what is the nature." Such sentences can provoke the reproach of pantheism, because historical roots lead to Dionysius (Pseudo-)Areopagita
and the translator of him, John the Scotsman from Ireland. To this John Scotus Eriugena was made the reproach of pantheism, and his main book 'de divisione naturae' was the number one on the index librorum
prohibi-torum. The holistic view always was a heresy to the orthodoxy, because in this way will at-tacked an idea of God of the tradition in which God stands outside the world in transcendence. Meister Eckhart did
not contest God's transcendence but he will take the transcendence into ourselves as a "transcendence in immanence". He lives the religion, he does not believe it only, he lives it as Jesus Christ lived
the religion of inner God. Consistently he lives the pov-erty, above all the poverty in mind we also know in the franciscanian movement (Bonaventura: itineratio mentis in deum). The problem is not material poverty
but in the suc-cession [imitation] of image of Jesus Christ of the evangelium of John the succession will spent piously. The relationship father - son between God and the soul of man will stressed. By this we know
the identity in character of God-dess an mankind. Therefore Eckhart will break the creature-ness of man (this is the death). All that had to be broken what stands between the living God and the soul. Here the
mystical practice begins what takes place in four degrees: 1. Retirement [solitude]; 2. Birth of God in the ground of soul (abditum animae); 3. Experience of Godworthyness [God-dignity-ness] of worthy man (homo
nobilis); 4. Contemplation in God's clearness.
The sermons and tractates of Meister Eckhart are instructions for this way to reach the wanted unio mystica: God and man are a perfect unity. Therefore
he attacks the only thought God who is outside of ourselves and only make muddy the experience of the religion. The practice of pious life in Eckhart always a creating pray. Man can find nothing if he is not at God
and God is outside the world. If God is outside the world it would be an alienation of God, and therefore a God's foreign rule on the man. God alone we can seek as the first being of the father. In this way we are
God's children; and man comes back into God if God is coming into man. Therefore the miracle of trinity is a inner event, is a mystery of the soul what is near at God because God is in it. God-father is a living
reason of all outcoming out this reason: he makes the birth of logos (by the mind of wisdom in Mary as the eternal soul). And the logos is God-son as God-man (two natures in one person). God and man, both, know one
another as unity in Holy Spirit.
The mystician of Luther's time, Angelus Silesius, gives a poetical image of this problem in his "Cherubinian Wanderer":
"I have to be Mary , and to bear God out of myself,
if he will give me happiness [bliss]."
["Ich muß Maria sein und Gott aus mir gebären,
Soll er mich ewiglich der Seligkeit gewähren."]
Eckhart inquires the soul in which we can know a bit of divine mystery: as in theatre the curtain is opening, and we can see what was obscure.
Eckhart's doctrines are doctrines of the soul, and the mysteries of soul above all. A collection of German sermons has the title para-disus anim(a)e intelligentis (in German: booklet is a paradise of reasonable
soul).
In this point a short annotation: The scholastic philosophy of Middle Ages takes the way from belief (fides) over the knowledge of belief (intellectus
fidei, intellectus quaerens fides) to immediate contemplation (contemplatio). We find this idea at the intellectual scholastics (for example Anselm of Canterbury, de fide trinitatis et incarnationis verbi). The last
step, con-templation, is the most important for Meister Eckhart. We have to let all out of ourselves what we know by the intellectus fidei. So he will have 'poverty in mind': we separate all assump-tions we have,
and will be free for the immediate adventure of coming God in contemplation in ourselves. Better spoken: actively we take God into ourselves. We make again the oneness of God and man in mind what was original in
principle. If man makes actively the oneness he becomes spirit (and therefore immortal), as he was born out of the spirit and so was godlike. Now I know God, and I am in the same level as God. Also this Angelus
Silesius says poetically:
I am also God's son. I sit at his hand.
His own spirit, his meat, his blooth he alone knows by me.
["Ich auch bin Gottes Sohn. Ich sitz an seiner Hand.
Sein Geist, sein Fleisch und Blut ist ihm an mir bekannt."]
I am as great as God, he is as small as me.
He can not be over me, I can not be underneath him.
[Ich bin so groß wie Gott, er ist als ich so klein.
Er kann nicht über mir, ich unter ihm nicht sein."]
The language of German sermons is relatively difficult, and complicated to translate. The normal language is the language of intellectual thinking. It
can not be used in the experience of contemplation. It is necessary to find a new language, new conceptions. Eckhart does so. Equal words are not in a language outside the mystics, and also each translation is not
easy. [This problem we also find at Heidegger.] A lot we can not express because the contemplation is without images in the soul. By this the soul is pure spirit. So the silence [Schweigen] is best
understanding. Who reaches the last step of mystic sinking immediately knows the same because God and individual men are an oneness: there one spirit effects. "This going one in one in the Goddess is a speech
without word and sound."
The soul as an uniform soul has three abilities as also the one nature of God appears in three persons: memory, reason, will. From the reason the
belief comes, and effects in the will. The will appears in the belief. The three abilities are mediated not separated. "By the grace of highest good the abilities will forced in the unity of one nature, and so
a light will burn in the force of Holy Spirit. And from this light all things of soul will effect." Also we find the one-ness of God, man, and world: "If God will be (beared) borne into the soul, a source
of divine love rises what bears the soul back into God. So man will effect nothing but spiritual things." The completeness of Eckhart's thinking we find in that he let be God totally in all places at the same
time. A separation of God is impossible. Therefore he is almighty and eternal be-cause no parts are in him. The completeness [totality] is the eternality. "God is in all places, and in each place God is
complete. It means all places are one place in God. The more inferior appears in the higher things, and so it comes back to the principle. In this place where the highest forces, and the nature have the same
character one force goes into the other, and reve-lates without word and sound." If by God a world is created God remains God by his nature, and in the nature; although he spoke the eternal word by the person
of son. Limitations man knows and names, and which the things separate, are in finiteness what is a going into the time. In this way God and nature, God-father, God-son, God and man can appear separately. "But
in eternity they are without limitations. There they are God in God." We have a circle: the word effects the things in the time but their ideas remain in God's mind. Man named the things, and so they come again
on the level of mind. Each thing changes in the human nature, and so it will elevated. The creature goes "... in human nature out of its own nature, and comes back to the origin." This we have in mental
and material things: as food material things be-comes a part of human body, and so they take part in resurrection. The nature get eternity in man. The cosmos comes back to the origin by the soul of man, and into the
oneness and com-pleteness. There are three ways of soul back to God [1. Seeking God in creation (vestigium dei) ; 2. Standing over the things by knowledges (opera dei); 3. Immediate contemplation of God] but only
one is a way home: the contemplation because we see God in his selfness, or as Jesus Christ in the Holy Scriptures speaks: "I am the way, the truth, and the life." And also said Eckhart: "In my eternal birth all things are born, and I was the principle of myself and of all things. But had I wished thus so I was not and not any thing. Would I not be also God would not be." This thought also Angelus Silesius expressed poetically:
I know that without me God can not live a moment,
do I die also God has to die.
["Ich weiß, daß ohne mich Gott nicht ein Nu kann leben,
Werd ich zunicht, er muß von Not den Geist aufgeben."]
Paper spoken in World Philosophers Meet 700th anniversary of Sanjeevan Samadhi of Jnaneshwara in Pune, India. All quotations are translated by the
author. The quotations of Meister Eckhart are taken from his "German sermons".
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