Select Works, Section 711

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

The passage defines God's nature by negating the ability to produce evil or depart from unity.

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.

The command to 'put all else aside' and ensure one's theory does not lessen God reflects a radical letting-go of concepts.

The supreme God's radical concealment beyond ordinary knowledge or perception; the Hidden Father.

The Supreme is described as lying 'away above all' and being veritably free from law, indicating radical concealment.

A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.

It mentions that all things ensued upon the divine willing and were engendered from the first without being new.

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.

The passage states God cannot produce evil and defines power by the inability to produce the inapt, framing evil as a lack of unity.

Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.

It describes the ability to 'take contact with Something... to affirm and know' directly without mediation.

The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.

The divine will is presented as the ordering principle through which all existence was engendered.

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

The instruction to 'keep solely to Him' and 'take contact' implies a merging or direct encounter with the divine.

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

The statement that 'all traces back to the Supreme' implies a metaphysical return or orientation toward the origin.

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

The directive to 'abstracting all' and seek the Supreme above all else outlines a contemplative ascent of the mind.

The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.

[auto] The passage centrally argues that God's will and essence are identical with no unwilled parts or composite attributes.

The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.

[auto] It describes the supreme source as an undivided first principle where all attributes are primally identical.

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

[auto] The passage defines divine power paradoxically as a steadfast constant achieved through the inability to produce the inapt.

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

[auto] The text emphasizes the divine inability to depart from unity as a defining characteristic of its power and nature.