Meister Eckhart's Sermons (Field translation) · 12 of 23 · tr. Claud Field

IVb

No, they are certainly not; for the work of the angels is the will of God, and the will of God is the work of the angels; their service to us does not hinder their joy nor their working.

If God told an angel to go to a tree and pluck caterpillars off it, the angel would be quite ready to do so, and it would be his happiness, if it were the will of God.

The man who abides in the will of God wills nothing else than what God is, and what He wills.

If he were ill he would not wish to be well.

If he really abides in God’s will, all pain is to him a joy, all complication, simple: yea, even the pains of hell would be a joy to him.

He is free and gone out from himself, and from all that he receives, he must be free.

If my eye is to discern colour, it must itself be free from all colour.

The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me.

My eye and God’s eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.

The man who abides in God’s love must be dead to himself and all created things, and regard himself as a mere unit among a thousand million.

Such a man must renounce himself and all the world.

Supposing a man possessed all the world, and gave it back to God intact just as he received it, God would give him back, all the world and everlasting life to boot.

And supposing there were another man who had nothing but a good will, and he thought in his heart, “Lord, were all this world mine, and two worlds more beside it, I would give them and myself also back to Thee as I received them from thee”; to that man God would give back as much as he had given away.

And supposing a man had renounced himself for twenty years, if he took himself back for a moment, that man’s renunciation would be as nothing.

The man who has truly renounced himself and does not once cast a glance on what he has renounced, and thus remains immovable and unalterable, that man alone has really renounced self.

May God and the Eternal Wisdom grant us to remain equally immovable and unalterable with Himself.

Amen.

Themes

◆Fana Annihilationsoteriology

Sufi self-effacement in God — the via by which the lover is unmade as a separate ego and recovered as God's act; specifies the practice/event rather than mystical_union's resulting state.

The requirement to be 'dead to himself' and renounce self mirrors the concept of self-effacement in God.

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◆Microcosm Macrocosmcosmology

The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.

The identity of the human eye and God's eye suggests the human being reflects the divine structure.

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◇Detachment Gelassenheitpraxis

Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.

[auto] The passage explicitly describes renouncing self and all created things to remain immovable in God's will, which is the core definition of Eckhart's Gelassenheit.

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◇Mystical Unionsoteriology

The merging of the individual soul or self with the divine, transcending personal identity.

[auto] The passage describes the merging of human and divine perception ('one eye, one sight') and abiding in God's love.

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◇Opposites Transcendedanthropology

The dissolution of binary oppositions (male/female, inner/outer, above/below) as a mark of spiritual completion.

[auto] The text states that for one abiding in God's will, all pain is joy and complication is simple, transcending binary oppositions.

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◇Poverty Of Spiritanthropology

Eckhart's radical reading of Matthew 5:3 — the saint as one who wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing, having emptied even the will and the self with which to receive God; distinct from renunciation_of_wealth (material poverty).

[auto] The text emphasizes having nothing but a good will and giving back the world as received, aligning with Eckhart's radical poverty of spirit.

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◇Unity Of Beingtheology

The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.

[auto] The assertion that the eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me implies a fundamental non-dual unity.

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