PART 1 OF 2
Chapter III. Mysticism and Action
The concept of honour, with its diverse ties in the earth, can be found embodied in the lives of the Nordic Viking, the Teutonic knight,the Prussian officer, the Baltic Hansa, the German soldier, and the German peasant. Together with inner freedom it is the most important life shaping law. This motif of honour appears as the spiritual base in poetic art, from the ancient epics onward, from Walther von der Vogelweide and the knight’s songs to Kleist and Goethe. But there is still another fine branch on which we can follow the working of Nordic honour, and that is in the German mystic.
The mystic releases himself more and more from the entanglements of the material world. He recognises that the impulsive aspects of our existence, such as pleasure and power, or even so called good works, are not essential for the welfare of the soul. The more he overcomes earthly bonds, all the greater, richer and more godlike does he feel himself inwardly become. He discovers a purely spiritual power and feels that his soul represents a centre of strength to which nothing can be compared. Such freedom and serenity of soul toward everything, even in the face of god, reveals the profoundest depths into which we can follow the Nordic concepts of honour and freedom. It is that mighty fortress of the soul, that spark of which Meister Eckehart speaks again and again with awed admiration; it represents the most inward, the most sensitive and yet the strongest essence of our race and culture. Eckehart does not give this innermost essence a name, since the pure subject of perceiving and willing must be nameless, without essence, and separated from all forms of time and space. However, today we may venture to describe this spark as representing the metaphysical allegory of the ideas of honour and freedom. In the last analysis, honour and freedom are not external qualities but spiritual essences independent of time and space forming the fortress from which the real will and reason undertake their sorties into the world.
Before it could fully blossom, the joyous message of German mysticism was strangled by the anti European church with all the means in its power. Nevertheless, the message has never died. The great sin of protestantism has been that instead of listening to the former, it made the so called old testament into a folkish book, and interpreted the Jewish texts literally. The present period of renewed spiritual readiness will either listen to the message of German mysticism, or end up under the feet of the old forces before it has had time to unfold, like many past attempts at a transformation from Roman Jewish poisoning. A will, as hard as steel, must today be joined to that illuminated mind and elevated spirit which Meister Eckehart demanded of his followers, and which is courageous enough to draw all proper conclusions from its avowal: If you wish to have the kernel, then you must break the shell.
It has been six hundred years since the greatest apostle of the Nordic west gave us our religion, devoting a full life to ridding our being and becoming of poison: to overcoming the Syrian dogma that enslaves body and soul, and which awakens the god within our own bosom; the kingdom of heaven within us.
In the search for a new spiritual link with the past, there are those among the present day movement for renewal in Germany who wish to go back to the Edda and the cycle of Germanic ideas related to it. It is thanks to them that, alongside that which is purely fabulous, the inner richness of our sagas and folkish tales has again become visible from under the rubble and ashes left by the fires of the stake. But, in pursuing this longing to find inner substance with past generations and their religious allegories, the German faith overlooks that Wotan (Wodan, Odin) is dead as a religious form. He did not die at the hands of Bonifacius, but of himself. He completed the decline of the gods during a mythological epoch, a time of serene nature. His fall was already foreseen in the Nordic poems, although hopes were expressed for the coming of the strong one from above, in presentment of the unavoidable twilight of the gods. In place of this, however, to the misfortune of Europe, the Syrian Jehovah appeared in the shape of his representative: the Etruscan Roman The Myth of the 20th Century 51
pope. Odin was and is dead; but the German mystic discovered the strong one from above in his own soul. The Valhalla of the gods descended from misty infinity into the breasts of men. The discovery and preaching of the indestructible freedom of soul was an act of salvation which has protected us up to the present against all attempts at strangulation. The religious history of the west is therefore almost exclusively the history of interdenominational upheavals. True religion within the church only existed insofar as the Nordic soul could not be hindered from unfolding (as for instance with saint Francis and brother Angelico) when its echo in western man was too powerful.
The reborn German man appeared on the scene for the first time consciously in the German mystic, even if in the garb of his day. The spiritual birth of our culture was not perfected at the time of the so called Renaissance or during the reformation—the latter period was more one of outward collapse and desperate struggles—but in the 13th and 14th centuries, when the idea of the spiritual personality became for the first time the supporting idea of our history, religion and philosophy of life. In this period the essence of our later critical philosophy was also consciously anticipated. In addition, the eternal, metaphysical creed of the Nordic west proclaimed that which had effect on the souls of many ensuing generations but could not generally manifest itself until the time was ripe.
More than three hundred years had to pass until the name of Christ signified anything for the peoples of the Mediterranean; about a thousand had to pass until the entire west was permeated by it. Confucius died, mourned only by a few; his worship began three hundred years after his death. Five hundred years passed before the first temple was built to him. Today, prayers are uttered to Confucius as the perfected holy one. Six hundred years also had to pass over the grave of Meister Eckehart before the German soul could understand him. But, today, a revelation seems to spread through the people like the light of dawn, as if the time had come for the apostle of the German, the holy and blessed master.
Every creature pursues its life with an aim even if it be unknown to it. The human soul also has a destiny, that is, to arrive at a pure knowledge of itself and a consciousness of god. But this soul is scattered and spread out in the world of the senses, of space and time. The senses are active in it and weaken—at first—the power of spiritual concentration. The precondition of inner workings is, therefore, the withdrawal of all exterior powers, the extinguishing of all images and allegories. These inner workings are meant to draw heaven to oneself, as Jesus is said to have testified and demanded of the powerful of soul. This attempt by the mystic thus demands the exclusion of the world as idea, in order to become, where possible, conscious, as pure subject, of the metaphysical essence which lives within us. Since this is not completely possible, the idea of god is created as a new object of this soul in order ultimately to announce the identical value of soul and god.
However, this act is only possible under the prerequisite of spiritual freedom from all dogmas, churches and popes. Meister Eckehart, the Dominican priest, does not shy away from joyfully and openly proclaiming this fundamental creed of every truly Aryan nature. During the course of a long life, he speaks about the light of the soul as being without origin and uncreated, and preaches that god has placed the soul in free self determination, so that he wishes nothing of it beyond its free will nor expects of it what it does not wish. He goes on to oppose the dogma of conformist faith by declaring that there are three things which prove the nobility of the soul. The first relates to the glory of the creature (of heaven); the second, mighty strength; and third, the fruitfulness of its works. Before each going forth into the world, the soul must have been conscious of its own beauty. The inward work of gaining the kingdom of heaven, however, can only be perfected through freedom.
Your soul will bear no fruit until you have accomplished your task, and neither god nor yourself will abandon these if you have brought yours into the world. Otherwise, you will have no peace, and you will bear no fruit. And even then, it is still disquieting enough because it is born of a soul which is bound to the outside world, and whose tasks are controlled, not from a soul born in freedom.
If the question arises why god became man at all, then the heretical Eckehart does not answer: In order that we wretched sinners can record a superfluity of good works. But he says:
I answer that it is for the reason that god might be born in the soul ..... upon which a joyous credo follows: The soul in which god is to be born, must have forsaken time and time have forsaken it, must fly upward and stand completely strong in the kingdom of god; that is width and breadth, yet which is neither wide nor broad. There the soul recognises all things and recognises them in their completeness. Whatever the masters write about how wide heaven is, I say on the contrary that the smallest power which there is in my soul, is wider than all the expense of heaven!
The current exposition of mysticism repeatedly emphasises only the giving up of self, the throwing away of oneself to god, and sees in this abandonment of the essence of mystical experience. This viewpoint is understandable when one knows it arises from the late mysticism falsified by Rome and that it originates from the seemingly ineradicable assumption that self and god are different in essence. But whoever has understood Eckehart will have no difficulty in establishing that his abandonment is in reality the highest self consciousness which cannot, however, be recognised in this world other than through an antithesis in time and space. The doctrine of freedom of the soul is one of freedom from god. The doctrine of detachment signifies the utter rejection of the old testament and its ideas, along with the sickly sweet pseudomysticism of later times.
These words about the capacity of the soul for unlimited expansion are true mystical experience. Simultaneously, they signify the philosophical recognition of the ideality of space, time and causality which Eckehart also asserts in other passages, proving and teaching in even more beautiful language than Kant (who was heavily burdened with natural science and philosophical scholasticism) was able to do four hundred years later.
Heaven is pure and of untroubled clarity; it is touched neither by time nor space. Nothing corporeal has its place therein, and it is also not included in time; its transmutation occurs with incredible quickness. Its course is itself timeless, but from its course comes time. Nothing hinders the soul so much in knowing god, as time and space. Thus, if the soul is to perceive god at all, then it perceives him beyond and above space ..... If the eye is to observe colour, then it must first be divested of all colours. If the soul is to see god, then it must have nothing in common with nothingness. God, as the positive expression of religious man, is in the philosophical term the thing in itself.
It is grasped with the deepest reflection, not only as distinct from impulse and image (as a result of which all nature symbolism is The Myth of the 20th Century 52
destroyed). In another passage Eckehart says:
Everything which has existence in time and space does not belong to god ..... the soul is complete and indivisible simultaneously in foot and in eye and in every limb ..... The ever present now in which god has made the world, the now in which I speak at this moment, is exactly as close as yesterday. And even the day of judgement is exactly as close to him in eternity as yesterday.
A free spirit like Eckehart must necessarily draw the conclusion—hostile to the church teaching—that death is not the wages of sin, as theologians who aim to put us in fear assert, but a natural and fundamentally unimportant event by which our eternal being—which was before and will be afterwards—is in no way touched. With a splendid gesture Eckehart calls to the world:
I am my own self’s cause, according to my eternal and temporal nature. Only on this account am I born. According to my eternal manner of birth I have been here from eternity and am and will remain eternally. Only what I am as a temporal creature will die and become nothing for it belongs to the day, therefore it must, like time, vanish. In my birth all things were also born, I was simultaneously my own and all things’ cause. And if I wished neither I nor anything else would be. And if I were not, neither would god be.
And boldly he adds:
That one understand this, is not demanded.
Never before, not even in India, has there been such a consciously aristocratic spiritual creed that can be compared to that which Eckehart laid down. Yet he was fully aware that he would not be understood by the age in which he lived. Each of his words was an affront to the Roman church. His words were perceived as such. As the most celebrated preacher in Germany, he was dragged before the inquisition. The church, fearing his followers, could not do away with him as it did with other, lesser heretics. But when Eckehart was dead, the church was again able to preach its infallible anathema over even the profoundest German soul. But his teachings have lasted and have exercised a profound influence over the German soul and in German history.
From the unerring consciousness of the freedom of a noble man and of a noble soul, there results a condemnation of so called good works. These are no magical expedients such as Rome teaches, no credit which is booked with Jehovah, but merely a means of binding the impulsive world of the senses. A rein, so Eckehart teaches, must be laid upon the outer man to prevent him running away from himself. A man should perform devout exercises, not merely to do something good for himself but because he honours truth. If a man finds himself given up to true inwardness, preaches the German apostle, then he boldly lets all outwardness fall, even if it be exercises to which he might have bound himself by oath, from which neither pope nor bishop could grant release! For no one can take from him an oath which has been made to god. To my knowledge this is the only passage in which Eckehart openly speaks aggressively of the pope. But it shows his complete and self reliant rejection of the fundamental laws of the Roman church.
This human greatness, uplifting all things, finds its hostile counterpart in priestly arrogance. One of the greatest orators of the 13th century, the lay brother Berthold von Regensburg, in other respects an interesting man, taught that if he saw the virgin Mary alongside the heavenly hosts and a priest also present, then he would fall down before the latter rather than the former. If a priest came to where my dear lady holy Mary and all the heavenly host sat, they would all stand up before the priest ..... Further: Whoever truly receives dedication as a priest, has a power reaching so far and wide that emperor and king never possessed such great power ..... Whoever makes himself subject to the power of the priest—even if he has committed a great sin—then the priest has the power to at once close hell to him and to open up heaven .....
What is this but the most utter Syrian sorcery in which we have been enveloped?
According to Eckehart the noble soul of a man turned toward the eternal is the representative of god upon earth, not the church, bishop or pope. No one here on earth possesses the right to bind or release me—even less the right to do this as god’s representative. These words which every devout man of the Aryan family of peoples could proclaim as his own creed are naturally born of a completely different substance than the medicine man philosophy which Rome has fabricated for its own use, and whose dogmas all follow only the one aim of making mankind dependent on the Roman priest caste and to root out any nobility of soul. In his sermon on the first epistle of John IV, 9, Eckehart says:
I assert decisively that as long as you do your works for the sake of heaven, of god or for your own blessedness, thus outwardly, then you are not really on the right path ..... Whoever imagines that by contemplation, devotion, ecstatic feelings and gross flattery he has more of god than at the fireside or in the cow stall, does the same thing as one who takes god and wraps a cloak around his head and pushes him under a bench. If one asked an honest man who works on a firm foundation: Why are you performing your works? Then he would merely say, if he spoke properly: I perform them to have effect!
The teaching of the righteousness of works is regarded by Eckehart as a veritable whispering in the ear by the devil and, as far as prayer is concerned, he makes a popular appeal:
The people often say to me: Pray to god for us! Whereupon I think to myself: Why do you even go out? Why do you not remain with yourself and reach down into your own treasure? In fact you carry all reality within you according to your nature. So that we must thus remain in ourselves—as the creatures we are—and possess all reality of our own, without mediation and diversity in real blessedness, and may god help us to do this.
Eckehart is thus a priest who would like to see the priesthood abolished; who would like to adjust his entire activity solely towards liberating the way for the man who seeks; who is regarded by him as essentially an equal and of equal birth; who will not enslave the soul by persuading it to eternal dependency upon pope and church, but who wishes to bring its slumbering beauty, its nobility and its freedom into consciousness, that is, wishes to awaken its awareness of honour. For, in the last analysis, honour is nothing other than the free, beautiful and noble soul.
This same striving to elevate man is perceptible when Eckehart rejects the doctrine of human weakness:
Therefore man can certainly imitate our lord, according to the measure of his weakness and needs, and indeed, may not believe he cannot attain this.
Once more, man is elevated, not denigrated, while Eckehart mockingly rejects those who claim to be justified by works:
And, especially, avoid all peculiarity, whether it be in the clothing, in food, speech, use of impressive words or extravagant gestures, The Myth of the 20th Century 53
with which indeed nothing creative is achieved.
There then follows the clearest assertion of the right of the true personality:
However, you must know that in no way is everything special forbidden to you. There is much that is strange which one must often retain and among many peoples. For whoever is a special man, must also do something special, at many times in diverse manner.
In which respect, no exception is made for authority and priesthood (which is allegedly untouchable even if the holder of the rank is a criminal). Each is to be measured solely by the greatness of his individual soul. Once again we experience the consciously anti Roman, consciously Germanic withdrawal inward. Jesus once caused a sick man to arise on the sabbath and take up his bed, whereupon the pious of the land raised a great outcry. But Jesus answered with superior contempt that the sabbath was there for the sake of man, not man for the sake of the sabbath; consequently, man was also master over the sabbath. The imitators of the Jerusalem Pharisees have also kept to the strict observance of all devout practices, ignoring the fact that the essence of man was a determining factor. Eckehart says to them:
Believe me: it is also a part of perfection that a man exalts himself in his works, so that all his works form one whole. This must happen in the kingdom of god where man is god. There all things will respond to him in a godly manner, there, also, a man is master of all his works.
This relationship to outward action is more than unequivocal. But, equally clear, is Eckehart’s rejection of all those virtues which are held to have a basis in mysticism. Nothing is more characteristic of Eckehart’s outlook than the interpretation which he gives to Christ’s words about Martha and Mary:
Everything finite is only a means. The unavoidable means, without which I cannot reach to god, is my work and my creativity in the here and now. Such things do not influence us at all to be concerned for our eternal salvation.
Here is a characteristic withdrawal by German man from the Indian creed of the Ãtman Brahman doctrine; deeds are unimportant although they are not to be disposed as such. Mary sitting at Jesus’s feet appears to Eckehart as the pupil. Martha, on the other hand, is the superior:
Martha feared that her sister would remain rooted in ecstasy and beautiful feelings, and wished that she might become like herself.
Then Christ answered as follows:
Be content, Martha! She has also chosen the best part which may never be taken from her! This extravagance will soon quiet down.
As one sees, Eckehart’s disinclination toward everything sweet and fluid even goes so far as to give an opposite meaning to the clear sense of Jesus’s words.
With unmistakable irony, Eckehart speaks to the female heretics surrounding him—the Beguines (as the apostates were then called):
But now our good people desire to be perfect in such degree that no kind of love can move us any longer, and we are left untouched by love as by sorrow. They do themselves injustice! I assert that the saint is still to be born who cannot be moved ..... even Christ did not achieve this, as is proved by his words: My soul is sad unto death. Such words caused Christ woe ..... and that was because of his inborn nobility and the holy union of divine and human nature.
He adds:
Now certain people even wish to bring matters to such a pass, that they may be rid of works. I say that this is not important! This we also find evidenced in Christ, from the first moment onward, when god became man and man god, then he also began to work for our blessedness ..... there was no part of his body which was without its special share in this.
What was the reason that Eckehart preached this antichurch doctrine? It was to allow spiritual freedom to prevail. That is, the highest good which Eckehart, and with him Nordic western man, recognises. He expresses this in the following manner:
God is not a destroyer of any kind of works, but a perfecter. God is not a destroyer of nature but its perfecter. If god had destroyed nature even before the beginning, then violence and injustice would have been done to it. He did no such thing! Man has a free will with which he can choose good and evil. God places the choice before him: of evildoing which brings death, of right doing which brings life. Man must be free and a master of all his works, undestroyed and unconstrained.
In these words the eternal, mutually fruitful polarity of nature and freedom have been recognised and expressed in a splendid way. Swept aside with the hand of a religious and philosophic genius, conscious of our intrinsic racial structure, is the barren Phariseeism, the torturing oriental priestly justification by works. The sacred union of god and nature is the primal ground of our being, represented in freedom of the soul, crowned by the fruitfulness of its works. And the driving power behind all is—the will.
According to the new testament, the angel Gabriel came to Mary. But Eckehart smilingly says:
Actually, he was no more called Gabriel than he was a messenger, for Gabriel means power. God was active in this birth and is still active as power.
With this the dynamic of Eckehart’s soul is also revealed in the clearest light.
The freedom of Eckehart’s soul necessarily prompts another evolution, not only of life and of works, but also of the highest ideals of the Roman church, of traditional Christianity in general, and thus of the entire revealed world, then and now.
If one recognises the noble soul as the highest value, as the axis upon which everything is suspended, then the ideas of love, humility, mercy, pity, and so on, form a second and third stage. Here also Eckehart does not shy away from hearing the voice of the little spark, from speaking freely what his soul says to him. Naturally, it does not need to be particularly emphasised that he does not disparage love, humility or mercy. On the contrary, we find in his sermons the most beautiful words about these ideas, though he detests the sweet ecstasy of undisciplined lovely feelings; in short, the lack of spiritual control. His doctrine of love is the representation of love as the power which knows itself to be identical with that divine power for whose victory it fights. Love must break through things, for only a spirit which has become free, compels god to itself. One must consider what it meant for a Dominican, prior to the beginning of the 14th century, to undertake in the face of an intolerant world ruling church, a transvaluation of the values heretofore held to be the highest. Indeed, it was risky to even attempt to communicate a new supreme, positive value to the simple believer. He dared not attack Rome openly; rather, he had to speak in terms of a positive, metaphorical representation of spiritual experience. Bearing this in mind, The Myth of the 20th Century 54
one should read Eckehart’s sermon on the loneliness of the soul, which is perhaps the most beautiful statement ever made of the awareness of the Germanic essence.
In this, Eckehart deals with the highest values of the Christian church—love, humility and mercy—finds that, in loftiness, depth and greatness, they must give way to a soul which is completely detached. He rejects Paul’s glorification of love in particular, for the best thing about love is its impulsion to love god. But it is far more important that we impel god to us, rather than impelling ourselves toward god. Only in this way can our soul become one with god. Therefore, god cannot avoid giving himself to a lonely heart. Furthermore, the sorrows of this world in pursuing possessive love still relate to the creature which is not the case with mystical detachment. This lessens the compulsion of the world and brings us nearer to god. Eckehart is concerned that the virtue of humility might cause a lowering of man’s self esteem. Such a posture of humility might cause man to lower his self respect. Man’s possession of a sense of inner worth is most important. Man must become detached from material concerns.
Perfect detachment knows no looking down to the creature, no bending of self, and no elevation of self. It will be neither under nor over. It strives neither for equality nor for inequality with any other kind of creature; it does not wish this or that; it wishes only to be one with itself.
The autocratic soul has nowhere expressed itself so sharply and clearly as here. It is the necessary rhythmic countermovement after the recognition of the fruitful work, that which Goethe later praised as the highest of all gospels: Regard for oneself.
Compassion, according to Eckehart, is nothing other than a giving of oneself. It is, for the same reason, not to be valued as highly as detachment. And because god’s essence is also detached from all names, it follows that nothing of lower order can approach him. Here, Eckehart sets a limit to the importance of prayer invested with so much magic.
I maintain that prayers and good works are of little value to man, so great is god’s detachment from man. Therefore, god is no more inclined toward man, than if the prayer or good work had never been performed.
This is more than clear. He completely rejects any intercession based on or approximating magic. He rejects the idea of the church which alone can bring bliss. And then in conclusion there follows a popular creed:
Keep yourself apart from all men, remain untroubled by all outward impressions, make yourself free of all which could give to your essence an alien addition ..... and direct your mind at all times to holy contemplation; with which you bear god in your heart, as the object, from which your eyes never waiver.
This calm, detached greatness of soul, then, expresses itself in the criticism of the Roman and later, protestant, doctrine.
In this world of appearances, a spiritual strengthening as a result of inward concentration cannot be imagined by us otherwise than as a gift of the eternal essence of god. Against this background, Paulinism—and with it all Christian churches—has built up the doctrine of grace as highest mystery of Christianity. The Jewish representation of the slave of god, one who receives mercy from an arbitrary, absolutist god, has thus passed over to Rome and Wittenberg, and can be attributed to Paul. He is the actual creator of this doctrine. It can truly be said that our churches are not Christian but Pauline. Jesus unquestionably praised one being with god. This was his redemption, his goal. He did not preach a condescending granting of mercy from an almighty being in the face of which even the greatest human soul represented a pure nothingness. This doctrine of mercy is naturally very welcome to every church. With such misinterpretation the church and its leaders appear as the representatives of god. Consequently, they could acquire power by granting mercy through their magic hands. A genius like Eckehart had to adopt a position completely different from the concept of compassion. He also finds beautiful words about love and mercy of god: Where compassion is in a soul, then this soul is pure and godlike and god related. Eckehart’s man achieves the fullness of the soul rather than submitting to the depths of subjugation. Man seeks to move inward and to adhere to, and be one with god. That is true mercy, compassion. This compassion is probably not possible through philosophies that teach only god’s universal power and our nothingness. Such is the case with our churches. The truth, on the contrary, is that man’s soul is like unto the spirit of god. Eckehart here refers to Augustinus’s Confessions—works well known to Eckehart—whose teachings about the soul nevertheless led to a complete spiritual breakdown. Augustinus demands the death penalty for heretics. Augustinus’s City of god was written to produce a spiritual slavery in man. But Eckehart assumes a different state of man’s soul: If it did not possess this greatness, then it could not become god even through grace. Here, again, we find the characteristic position of the superior Nordic man in developing his thoughts on the basis of clear, spiritual instinct (Eckehart of Hocheim was of Thuringian nobility) in the face of the assertions of the dissolute, slavish, bastardised Augustinus. By partaking in the lasting vitality of god the soul is elevated to ever higher light:
Then every power of soul becomes the copy of one of the divine persons; the will is the copy of the holy spirit, the perceptive power that of the son, the memory that of the father. Its nature becomes the likeness of nature. And yet the soul remains indivisibly one. That is the ultimate knowledge in this matter of which my self recognition renders me capable.
The supreme avowal then follows:
Now hear, as to how far the soul becomes god, even above grace and mercy! What god had in fact provided you shall not change again, for it has attained a higher position where it no longer has need of grace.
One should compare this splendid aristocratic creed with the touchingly struggling, yet half African, Augustinus, in his assertions about the morality of man and his perpetual sinfulness.
Thoughts are openly expressed here by Eckehart which even Luther—whose ideas were still inhibited by his education under the representative of Christ—still did not dare to think. From this attitude to the idea of grace, there also results with Eckehart a totally different estimation of sin and repentance.
Sin is no longer a sin once we repent, are the words with which Meister Eckehart begins his sermon On the blessings of sin. These are words which lead him miles away from the contrition usually demanded. Naturally, we ought not to sin, but even if the individual action has been directed against god, then the great and splendid god nevertheless knows how the best is to be gained from such an action. Thus god does not add up the past in an accounts books, for god is a god of the present. Eckehart takes another step away from the historical materialism of our churches. Only later did Paul de Lagarde dare to speak so openly as once did this Dominican prior from The Myth of the 20th Century 55
the 14th century. For this reason Lagarde was condemned by the protestant priests as Eckehart once was by the Roman.
Eckehart distinguishes two types of repentance: That which is of the senses, and that which is godly. The first—which the church clearly understood—remains rooted in misery and does not move from the spot. It thus signifies only unfruitful lamentation; nothing comes of it. Things are otherwise with divine repentance: As soon as inner disapproval arises in a man, he at once elevates himself to god and sets himself with unshakeable will armed securely against every sin. Thus, here, the direction upward is stressed anew and everything evaluated only according to whether it made the soul creative; elevated or not: But whoever may really have come into the will of god, will not wish that the sin into which he had fallen might not have existed. This is the same as Goethe asserted when he declared that a human teacher would also appreciate error: What is fruitful, alone is true.
Seen from Meister Eckehart’s standpoint, that is, from the perspective of one who is detached, godlike, free, beautiful, and has a noble soul, all the traditional highest church values appear to be of a second and third rank. Love, humility, compassion, prayer, good works, mercy, repentance—all these are good and useful but only under the one condition that they strengthen the power of the soul, elevate it, make it become more like god. If they do not, then all these virtues become useless, even harmful.
The freedom of soul is a value in itself. Church values merely signify something in relation to a moment outside them, be it god, soul, or the creature. The nobility of the self reliant soul is the highest of all values. Man must serve the cause of the noble soul alone. We of the present day call it the deepest metaphysical root—this idea of honour—which is likewise an idea in itself, without any relationship to any other value. The idea of freedom is inconceivable without honour just as honour is without freedom. The soul is capable of good in and of itself, even without any relationship to god. Eckehart teaches that the soul is released from all else insofar as this release can be expressed in words at all. As a result, Meister Eckehart shows himself, not as an ecstatic enthusiast, but as the creator of a new religion—our religion—released from that injected alien spirit of Syria, Egypt and Rome.
Eckehart not only provided us with the highest religious and moral value, but as already alluded to, he anticipated from a critical philosophical perspective all the important discoveries made by Kant’s Critique of pure reason, even if he did not become enmeshed in hair splitting arguments. Eckehart discovers three powers by which the soul reaches into the world:
the will which turns towards the object;
reason, which perceives and then orders what is grasped; and
memory, which preserves what is experienced and witnessed.
These three powers are, so to speak, the counterpart of the holy trinity. A whole series of the profoundest discussions are devoted to the theme of reason and will. Both are spiritually free and always dependent upon the mood and occasion during his sermons over many decades.
Reason perceives all things, but it is the will, Eckehart comments, which can do all things.
Thus where reason can go no further, the superior will flies upward into the light and into the power of faith. Then the will wishes to be above all perception. That is its highest achievement. On the other hand, reason, which separates, orders and places, then so perceives that it nevertheless gives the will its first real upward flight. In this respect, reason stands above the will. The will is free: god does not force the will, he sets it free; so that it wishes nothing other than what is god and freedom itself! Then the spirit can wish nothing other than what god wishes. This is not bondage, but rather a peculiar kind of freedom.
Eckehart then quotes Christ’s words:
He has not wished to make us into servants, but to call us friends. For a servant knows not what his master wishes.
This new and constantly repeated emphasis on the idea of freedom is not, however, always matched by experience. Eckehart says:
This is my complaint: This experience is something so profound but also so common, that you may not buy it for a penny or a half penny. Solely, you must have a proper mode of seeking and a free will, then it will immediately become yours.
This is identical to Kant’s teaching concerning the conflict between idea and experience in both the theoretical and practical aspects. At the same time, Eckehart mocks many priests who are highly praised yet wish to be great priests. Kant spoke likewise about the schoolmasters, those philosophers who only repeat thousand year old gossip.
Briefly put, everything that this soul may somehow bring forth must be summarised in the simple unity of the will. The will must be impelled toward the highest good, and then adhere to it unmoved. Properly regarded, the idea of love has a place in Eckehart’s spiritual perceptively critical work. It does not serve the ecstatic power of the imagination, nor does it bring sweet feelings or sexual psychic ecstasy. These perceptions are lies which the church has spread by its cunning use of hypnosis. They impede the progress of the freely creative will which ought to be dominant in the finest sense. Whoever has more will, has also real love, states Eckehart. This represents the opposite of the teachings of the Roman clergy and of the present day, increasingly rigid, protestant churches which would like to exterminate the personal will in order to then place love above will.
Eckehart was conscious of his unique position. Witness his words:
In the best sense, love falls completely and totally into the will ..... But there is a second ..... effect of love, which is perceived by an inner eye as jubilant devotion. But ..... that is in no way the best ..... for it does not originate out of love of god, but from mere naturalness.
From a love subordinate to the free will there awakens the true concept of loyalty. It brings, perhaps, no longer the feelings and experiences and rapture as the faithfulness of the servant, but it is only true when it is paired with a strong will.
We must elevate ourselves with the winged pair of reason and will:
Thus one never comes to folly, but advances without interruption into the might,
not through an uncertain flightiness, but through an awakened consciousness. As Eckehart says,
With each work one must consciously make use of his reason ..... and grasp god in the highest possible sense.
The mastery of the will, of reason, of the memory, relates to the senses mediating the ego and nature. These again are directed to the external world in which man is to be understood as person. This whole multiplicity of manifestations is conditioned by space and time, which—as mentioned—Eckehart likewise linked with this world. Moreover, his entire religious doctrine is without causality because of The Myth of the 20th Century 56
the comprehension of god as the god of the present. A genetic historically causal process does not interest him at all. This belongs to the external world, not to knowledge of the soul and of god. With this, Eckehart rejects the oriental mixture of freedom and nature and all those fables and miracles without which the churches of the generation of adulterers (as Jesus called them) could not manage today. Whether the earth is a disc or a ball floating in the ether has no bearing on true religion nor on Eckehart’s teaching. But this discovery by Copernicus has significantly affected our two Christian churches because they have deceived themselves as well as the world by their shameful lies on the subject.
Particularly in his teaching on the will wherein Eckehart anticipated and surpassed Schopenhauer, Eckehart reveals himself as a western dynamic philosopher recognising the eternal polarity of existence. The essence of the achievements of reason is a moving up of external things in order to imprint this knowledge on the soul. This same motion is set forth, in the will, which, as a result, likewise never attains rest. Thus, even the incomparable mystic who would separate from everything in order to abide in pure contemplation of god, strives for endless calm in god. He knows that this calm can only last moments, and that this goal can only be reached through the constantly renewed activity of the soul and its powers. Here Meister Eckehart shows himself to be superior to Indian wisdom, and recognises eternal rhythm as the precondition of all fruitfulness. From this theoretical insight he then draws practical conclusions for life. If the heart and the will seek what is eternal:
This man seeks not repose; for no unrest disturbs him. This man stands well recorded with god because he accepts all things as divine, that is, better than they are in themselves! To this belongs diligence and a wakeful, truly effective awareness upon which the mind has to be based despite all things and people. Man cannot learn this by fleeing from the world.
Eckehart believed he discovered a duality in Jesus as a fundamental law of his being:
With Jesus, there is a distinction between man’s higher and his lower powers. There are corresponding levels of deeds. Man’s higher powers are suited to the possessing and enjoying of eternal bliss. Simultaneously the lower powers were confronted by utterly wretched sorrow and respite on earth. One of the powers stood in direct conflict with the other. The longer and stronger the dispute between higher and lower powers, the greater and more praiseworthy the victory and the greater the honour of the victory.
In contrast to the personality of Eckehart, the magical religious system of Rome stands out even more clearly before us. This is the African Syrian chaos of peoples, the religion of possession which, by spreading from the eastern Mediterranean through the aid of magical cults and the Jewish bible, and by misuse of the phenomenon of Jesus, created its western centre. With the progressive awakening of the west, and, after the strangling of mysticism, this midpoint has made every effort to detract from the anti Roman view of the world, to represent the VNA CATHOLICA as satisfying all, even modern, demands. This is the way one goes to work today.