VIIc

Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.

God is described via negation: 'In God is neither sorrow, nor grief, nor trouble.'

The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return.

Natural love is described as 'cramped finite and defective' compared to the grace-lifted state.

The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.

The structure of creation reflects the likeness of man/God, implying a reflection between levels.

Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.

Temporal life is described as a 'negation of real being' and natural love as 'defective,' aligning with evil as a lack of good.

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 'quitting of oneself' and passage from 'nothingness to real being' mirrors the concept of self-effacement.

The claim that the divine realm is present inside the individual, accessible without external mediation.

The 'divine birth is completed on the side of man' and one must 'abide and walk in God,' locating the divine within.

Diotima's staged ascent from love of beautiful bodies → beautiful souls → beautiful pursuits → beautiful knowledge → Beauty itself; the canonical scala amoris that grounds Plotinus's On the Beautiful and Bruno's Eroici Furori — distinct from generic spiritual_ascent in that eros is the specific motive force.

Love must be 'lifted to the highest sphere' through a process of elevation.

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.

Man is described as the 'image of God after the likeness of which the world is created.'

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

The goal is 'unity' where manifoldness is lifted.

Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.

The text asserts that 'sorrow is the root of all virtue' and suffering for God is not grievous.

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).

Being 'free of it' and the 'quitting of oneself' reflects the radical emptiness required for divine reception.

The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology.

The process involves 'quitting of oneself' to find the divine foundation.

The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.

Temporal life is characterized as depending on itself 'not on the deepest foundation of life,' indicating a state of exile.

A staged journey of the soul upward through heavenly realms or levels of being toward the divine source.

The text describes being 'lifted to the highest sphere of existence' and growing nearer to God.

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

The 'lifting of manifoldness to unity' is stated as the supreme aim of ethics.

Eckhart's signature doctrine that the Father eternally begets the Son in the ground of the soul; the human interior as the actual site of the divine generative act, distinct from inner_light's static indwelling.

[auto] The text centers on the 'New Birth of man' and states that 'the divine birth is completed on the side of man,' reflecting Eckhart's signature doctrine.

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 'quitting of oneself' and being 'free of it' as the path to God, aligning perfectly with Eckhart's doctrine of radical letting-go.

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

[auto] The passage repeatedly emphasizes becoming 'one with God' and abiding in the 'deepest foundation of life.'

The soul's journey back to its divine origin, reversing the fall into matter through stages of purification or illumination.

[auto] The moral task is defined as a process to 'grow liker and nearer to God' and return from the temporal to the eternal.

The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.

[auto] The aim is described as becoming 'liker and nearer to his Original' and attaining unity with God through grace, which defines deification.