The Eye with Which I See God is the Same Eye with Which God Sees Me: Meister Eckhart on Divine Awareness

ABSTRACT

This essay seeks to elicit the complexity, profundity, and subtlety at work in the title, so as to gain a more genuine understanding of what constitutes mystical knowledge and divine awareness for Eckhart. In part one I explore what Eckhart means by this line, and in the process disclose what he does not mean. In part two I explore the mystical implications of the line’s meaning. Throughout I draw from Eckhart’s own sermons and treatises, as well as scripture and works that have influenced his thinking. I also incorporate examples from other mystical traditions as analogies that help us to grasp what Eckhart is saying. My aim is to show the varying ways in which the mystical can be understood in Eckhart, and the extent to which these ways are significant to him. To conclude, I elucidate what Eckhart’s famous line in essence says and what it achieves.

KEYWORDS:

• Eckhart
• oneness
• soul
• mirror
• image
• seeing

I

‘The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me’, is arguably the most quoted and thus best-known line of Meister Eckhart’s work.¹ This is perhaps because it has a universal sense that encapsulates the essence of the mystical. Hence, we can discern similar sayings from other mystical traditions. For example, in one of his poems, the thirteenth-century Sufi, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rumi says: ‘ … when you look for God, God is in the look of your eyes.’² A further example, again from the thirteenth-century, comes from the Zen Buddhist master, Wu-men Hui-k’ai, who says that if you break through the barrier that is the famous Mu kōan, then: ‘You will walk hand in hand with all the Ancestral Teachers … the hair of your eyebrows entangled with theirs, seeing with the same eyes.’³

While the currency of Eckhart’s line can on the one hand be celebrated, it might be a cause for concern on the other. For owing to its universality, there is the conceivable danger that its meaning is taken out of context and thus misinterpreted. It then takes on a life of its own and is appropriated accordingly. This is because we can be lulled into thinking that on the surface it is in fact self-explanatory what the line means, and therefore no further analysis or elucidation is necessary. And in the realm of mysticism there tends to be suspicion when it comes to explication, for this invariably leads to supposition, speculation, and conceptualization, which is contrary to mystical knowledge. However, I would argue that without analysis and elucidation pertaining to context, there is a real risk of missing the actual complexity, profundity, and subtlety at work in the meaning. And knowing this can in turn play its part in granting a more genuine mystical knowledge. Thus, the complexity, profundity, and subtlety of the line is what I seek to elicit here. So, what does Eckhart mean when he says: ‘The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me’?

First off, it must be stressed that Eckhart is only referring to the physical eye in an analogous sense. In truth, the meaning of Eckhart’s line very deliberately points beyond the eye as we ordinarily understand it. Accordingly, Eckhart makes it extremely clear throughout his works that, as much as you might want to, you cannot see God in this way. And, as we will come to learn, this is essentially what the line is telling us. The reason you cannot see God with your eyes is that you cannot see what is one.⁴ Thus Eckhart says: ‘Some simple folk imagine they will see God as if He were standing there and they here. That is not so. God and I are one.’⁵ Eckhart’s point is that it is not possible to see God as One from any dualistic perspective, because this obviously contradicts the oneness. And Eckhart frequently admonishes those who think they can. For example, in another sermon, he tells us:

If I were to see God with my eyes, with the eyes with which I see colour, that would be all wrong, being temporal: for whatever is temporal is far from God and foreign to Him. When we take time, even if we take the least moment, that is time and stands in itself. As long as a man has time and place, number and quantity and agglomeration, he is in the wrong way and God is remote and strange to him.⁶

Thus, immediately before the line we are discussing in this essay, Eckhart states that: ‘ … if my eye is to perceive colour, it must be free of all colour.’⁷ This is to say that your eye should not be seeing the colour, because again that implies dualism. Rather, your eye and the colour should be one. Hence Eckhart continues by saying: ‘If I see a blue or white colour, the sight of my eye which sees the colour, the very thing that sees, is the same as that which is seen by the eye.’⁸ In another sermon, Eckhart explains in more detail what he means by this. Here he refers to an analogy concerning his eye and a piece of wood. His eye, he says, whether open or shut remains an eye. Likewise, the wood is still the same regardless of whether he looks at it or not. However, he says that if his eye looks at the wood with vision, then while both the eye and the wood each remain as they are: ‘ … yet in the very act of seeing they are so much at one that we can really say ‘eye-wood’, and the wood is my eye.’⁹ Now because this is an analogy, a distinction can of course be made between the eye and the wood. Nevertheless, Eckhart adds, if the wood were immaterial as his eyesight is: ‘ … then we could truly say that in the act of seeing the wood and my eye were of one essence.’¹⁰ Similarly, in his Commentary on John, Eckhart says:

For even though the sense object does not give existence to the eye insofar as it is an eye or a being, and the eye does not give existence to the sense object insofar as it is a being (for in this respect the sense faculty and sense object are two), nevertheless, insofar as they are in act as the eye seeing and the object being seen, they are still one. In one and the same act they are the eye seeing and the object seen. … Take seeing away from the eye, and you take away being seen from the object. On the other hand, take away being seen from the object, and you take away seeing from the eye. To see and to be seen are one and the same thing, that is, they begin at the same time, and continue, cease and revive – originate and die – all at the same time.¹¹

Thus, drawing on Aristotle, for Eckhart the object and the faculty of sight are one in act.¹² The purpose of this analogy, then, is to question dualism, arguing that you cannot see God like you believe you see a piece of wood, because even when you see a piece of wood, there is not really a distinction between the eye and the wood owing to a unity of action in the vision. In truth there is eye-wood.¹³ Eckhart is therefore suggesting that if this is the case with material things, then it is even more so with spiritual matters. Ultimately, Eckhart wishes to demonstrate that in order to see what is one, all distinction or otherness must go so that you become the One that does the seeing. For this to happen, Eckhart constantly tells us that the soul must abandon corporeality, multiplicity, and temporality.¹⁴ There is no truth, says Eckhart, in created things.¹⁵ Thus, for example, he says:

Where creature stops, God begins to be. Now all God wants of you is for you to go out of yourself in the way of creatureliness and let God be within you. The least creaturely image that takes shape in you is as big as God. How is that? It deprives you of the whole of God. As soon as this image comes in, God has to leave with all of His Godhead. But when the image goes out, God comes in.¹⁶

It is for this reason that Eckhart asserts that we must be rid of the nothing that creatureliness amounts to, because only God is truly something. In an analogy that on the surface seems bizarre and dangerous, Eckhart explains the significance of creaturely nothingness. However, despite the hyperbole, under the surface he is actually making the same point about the eye needing to be free of colour and being the same as the piece of wood:

Take a burning coal and put it on my hand. If I said the coal burnt my hand, I would do it an injustice. Were I to say truly what burns me, it is negation, for the coal contains something that my hand has not. It is this not that burns me. But if my hand contained all that the coal has or can effect, it would be all of the nature of fire. Then, if anyone were to take all the fire that ever burnt, and poured it out on to my hand, that could not hurt me. … I say truly, in so far as not adheres to you, to that extent you are imperfect. Therefore, if you want to be perfect, you must be rid of not.¹⁷

If the hand were not different from the coal, but the same, then it would not burn. So, it is the negation of not being one with the coal that burns because it is not the same nature as the fire. To be of the same nature as the fire it has to rid itself of that which makes it not the same. In short, it has to be rid of the not. Then it will be one with the coal. Again, we must keep in mind that this is an analogy. The point here is that as creature we are the other, like the hand that burns because it is separate from the coal, whereas God is akin to the coal that we are to become one with. In another sermon, Eckhart states:

… you must get rid of not, for not makes for division. How so? Observe! If you are not that man, the not makes a distinction between you and that man. And so, to be free of distinction, you must abandon not.¹⁸

The aim here is to bring division to an end so as to effect unity. By going out of yourself as creature through ‘self-abnegation’, you rid yourself of all distinction and therefore unite with what is truly One and uniform, namely God. It is by virtue of His oneness, that God’s indistinct distinction negates all negations or nots. Hence Eckhart says:

One is a negation of the negation. All creatures have a negation in themselves: one negates by not being the other. An angel negates by not being another. But God negates the negation: He is one and negates all else, for outside of God nothing is.¹⁹

In his Commentary on John, Eckhart explains the same thing in a different way, saying:

… indistinct existence is proper to God and he is distinguished by his indistinction alone, while distinct existence is proper to a creature. It does not belong to what is distinct to receive what is indistinct.²⁰

To see God, then, means that your eye and God’s eye must be the same eye, and for this to occur requires absolute renunciation of self. You as you cannot see God. This is effectively what is meant by Jesus, when he says: ‘If any man come to me, and hates not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.’²¹ Eckhart says:

How should a man be who is to see God? He must be dead. Our Lord says: ‘No man can see me and live’ (Ex. 33: 20). Now St Gregory says he is dead who is dead to the world. Now judge for yourselves what a dead man is like and how little he is touched by anything in the world. If we die to the world we do not die to God. … one must be dead if one would see God.²²

So, if Eckhart is not referring to the corporeal eye that sees God, what eye is he referring to? Drawing from St. Augustine, Eckhart tells us that the soul has two eyes – one that turns outward and the other inward. The outer eye is turned through mediation to all things creaturely. For example, as one of the senses, the physical eye is a means by which to see what Eckhart calls images through an external act. All the powers of the soul can be turned to external things through such sensual and mediated means. And by turning outwards the powers are constantly moved (hence the word, ‘emotion’) and so find no rest. If we are to be united with God, this outer creaturely eye needs to be closed. Rumi comes to mind once more, when in another poem he says:

Close both eyes

To see with the other eye.²³

I am also reminded of the 8th century Indian philosopher, Shankara, who in his work, The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, asks rhetorically: ‘How can the physical eyes see anything but physical objects?’²⁴ Similarly, then, with a sense of incredulity Eckhart says: ‘ … some people want to see God with their own eyes as they see a cow.’²⁵ So when Eckhart tells us, ‘The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me’, he is referring to the inner eye of the soul. Turning inwards, all the powers of the soul, says Eckhart, must serve God’s ends, not your own.²⁶ Hence the extreme views found in the gospels of Matthew and Mark that have Jesus hyperbolically say we should pluck an eye out.²⁷ The eye, turned inward, does not look out to created things. Thus, Eckhart says:

People often say to me ‘Pray for me.’ And I think, ‘Why do you go out? Why do you not stay within yourself and draw on your own treasure? For you have the whole truth in its essence within you.²⁸

There is again a universal meaning to this analogy. For example, in an extract from Rumi quoted earlier, he more fully says:

Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God,

God is in the look of your eyes,

in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self,

or things that have happened to you.

There’s no need to go outside.²⁹

And again, we can quote Zen master, Wu-men Hui-k’ai, who in the preface to his collection of kōans, titled, The Gateless Gate, says: ‘The treasures of the house do not come in by the front gate.’³⁰ The truth, then, is within.

By not turning outward through the lower powers of the soul, namely, anger, desire, the discursive intellect, and the five senses, the inner eye of the soul remains noble and pure. Or put another way, it is what Eckhart calls ‘virginal’ in the sense that it is free of all alien (that is, creaturely) images, and therefore it is as empty and bare as it was before it existed. That is to say, it is just as it was when it was not.³¹ However, Eckhart tells us that the soul must not remain virginal, because by doing so she will not bear fruit. She therefore needs to become a wife. Being a wife, he says, is even more noble than being a virgin. This is because the virginal soul simply receives God into her by not turning outward to the sensual things of the world, whereas, the fecund wife is fruitful in terms of bearing the birth of the Son or Word of God.³² Eckhart, with an explicit sense of eroticism and paraphrasing the Psalms, writes:

For this reason he went forth and came leaping like a young stag, and suffered the pangs of love: and he did not come out except with the wish to return to the chamber with his bride. This chamber is the silent darkness of the mysterious Fatherhood. When he went forth from the Most high, he wanted to show her the hidden mystery of his secret Godhead, where he is at rest with himself and all creatures.³³

Being a virginal wife, the soul strips herself bare of all external means and images. Whereas, ordinarily, the soul turns outward and unites with external things, be that, says Eckhart: ‘ … a stone, a horse, a man or anything else that she wants to know, she gets out the image of it that she has already taken in, and is thus enabled to unite herself with it.’³⁴ However, on account of knowing other things through the senses, there is, says Eckhart: ‘ … nothing so unknown to the soul as herself.’³⁵ This is because the soul cannot create or obtain an image of herself through the senses. Thus, she knows all things except herself because with herself there is no mediation.³⁶ Hence, in his Commentary on John, Eckhart drawing on Aristotle says:

If the sense of sight is informed by any act whatsoever, even its own act, it is not as such capable of receiving what is visible insofar as it is visible. What is active as such cannot be passive, and inversely what is passive as such can in no way be active. Therefore, the intellect has no actual existence of its own so that it can understand all things. It understands itself the way it understands other things. Therefore it has nothing of itself, nothing of its own, before it understands. Understanding is a reception. The formal property of what receives something is to be naked. This is all clear from the third book of On the Soul and is the way it is with matter and substantial form in nature.³⁷

Typically, then, the soul is naked and unchaste before external means and images. But when free of these, the soul is more purely and nobly naked as a virgin before God. If the soul turned inward is stripped and divested of all external means and images, then again because there is no mediation, God likewise appears stripped and naked before her. Importantly, it is only in this inward sense that the soul can see God. If there is the slightest addition or intervention between the soul and God, then she cannot see Him. This, then, is in part what Eckhart means when he says: ‘The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.’

It is only by being free of external means and images that God and the soul can unite.³⁸ So, provided we reveal ourselves to God in our naked essence, says Eckhart, He will conceal absolutely nothing of His secret Godhead from us. The revealing, Eckhart tells us, must be on equal terms or it will not happen at all.³⁹ This is how, and only how, God operates in the soul. It is important to stress, then, that no creature can do this. For this reason, Eckhart says: ‘The soul’s inner eye is that which sees into being, and derives its being without any mediation from God.’⁴⁰

This brings us to the territory that Eckhart variously calls: ‘the spark of the soul’, ‘the castle of the soul’, ‘the ground of the soul’, and so forth. No creature, only God, can enter here. The reason that there is no intervention or mediation is because as Eckhart consistently asserts, this part of the soul is the same as God. This is why when it is revealed, God too is revealed. It is also why Eckhart continually quotes from St. Augustine when saying that God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves, which was also stated by Rumi earlier.⁴¹ In one sermon, Eckhart adds that our being depends on God being near and present to us. The same he says is the case with a stone or a log, only they do not know it. We, however, are aware of God. The more we know it the more we are blessed.⁴² Eckhart begins another sermon by saying:

You must know that this is in reality one and the same thing – to know God and to be known by God, to see God and to be seen by God. In knowing and seeing God we know and see that He makes us know and see.⁴³

The last line here that says: ‘In knowing and seeing God we know and see that He makes us know and see’ is rather slippery. With the ‘we’ and ‘He’ there still seems to be an element of dualism, but I would argue that this is only so to speak. It also seems to suggest that in mystical union we are somehow ambiguously aware that the awareness is not our awareness. If this is so, it would appear to be for only an instant. For Eckhart tells us elsewhere that at the moment of the birth of the Son in the soul, we have a blissful vision of God. But once born we no longer see or pay any heed to God as an object of contemplation. The reason being that we live as the Father lives and assume His simple naked essence.⁴⁴ This is to say that we unite with the One. All dualism therefore ends. And at this stage, on account of being one with the naked essence of God, all attempts at speculative conceptualizing have to end because there is no longer any object that the eye is seeing, no longer any ‘we’ and ‘He.’ For to draw from our earlier discussion, the ‘we’ and ‘He’ become one act in the form of God’s own vision. Thus in his Commentary on John, Eckhart says that they are mistaken: ‘ … who say that beatitude consists in a reflective act of the intellect by which man actually knows that he knows God.’⁴⁵ I think a translated line from the Kena Upanishad in the Hindu tradition is helpful in expressing what is at work here, when it says: ‘It is conceived of by him by whom It is not conceived of.’⁴⁶ Based on such an expression, we are now in a better position to investigate and ponder further just what Eckhart means when he says our eye and God’s eye are the same.

II

If we recall, Eckhart tells us that to see God we have to die to ourselves and the world. Accordingly, Eckhart was fond of the following line from Exodus: ‘And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall be no man see me, and live.’⁴⁷ Following this, God tells Moses that he can stand in the cleft of a rock and see his back parts, but not his face. By asking to see God’s face, Moses is wishing to see God’s full glory. Seeing only his back parts appears to refer to the after effects of the glory of His presence, which is often interpreted to mean the totality of the material world.⁴⁸ But, mystically speaking, Eckhart is wanting us to go further than what was granted by grace to Moses. He wants us to see God’s face or full glory, but knows that to do so we must figuratively die to ourselves.

The line from Exodus that says we cannot see God’s face and live, resonates with John who says: ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.’⁴⁹ In other words, only the Son of God as God in the heart of God has made him known. And as Eckhart continually says, by ridding ourselves of ourselves through self-abnegation, the Son of God can be born in the ground of the soul so that by the same token we are born in God. Hence a favourite assertion of Eckhart’s is to point out that as God became man so man became God.

For Eckhart, then, the incarnation refers chiefly to the eternal birth of the Son in the ground of the soul. Thus, when God sent His only-begotten Son into the world, it does not primarily mean the external world but the inner virtual world.⁵⁰ Accordingly, Eckhart makes it clear that the eternal Word did not foremost become a man, but as man took on indivisible and imageless human nature, so that in turn human nature can become the divine image of the Father.⁵¹ Thus the ground of the soul is made in the image of God. It is this imageless image of God that we must return to by discarding the accidental distinctiveness of what is creaturely. By solely turning inward to our human nature that is made in the image of God, we thereby become by adoption the same Son of the eternal Father.⁵² Thus Eckhart can say:

Just as the Son is one with the Father in essence and nature, so too you are one with Him in essence and nature, and you have it all in you as the Father has it in Himself. You have not got it on loan from God, for God is your own.⁵³

Note here how Eckhart says that: ‘God is your own.’ This is an example of why he is often difficult to interpret. He does not mean that, ‘God is your own’, in terms of something you possess, as this of course goes against all he argues. Indeed, as we have been discussing, Eckhart encourages us to give up everything that is our own, even our own self (and at a later stage even God), for this is the only way that we can know or see God. Thus, Eckhart says: ‘You should be His and for Him, you should not be your own or for yourself, or belong to anyone.’⁵⁴ In another sermon, he says:

Put off all that is your own, and make yourself over to God. Then God will be your own, just as He is His own, and He will be God to you just as He is God to Himself, no less. What is mine I have from nobody, but if I have from another, it is not mine but belongs to Him from whom I got it.⁵⁵

Here, then, we can discern that when Eckhart says that, ‘God is your own’, it is meant in the sense that you are not ultimately your own because God is your own. This tells us, and I will say more about this below, that we endure in God’s own image and not our own, because God has brought us out of our own into His own so that only what is His is ours. This, says Eckhart, means that His is hers and hers is His.⁵⁶ Hence, in his Commentary on John, Eckhart discussing the line, ‘He came to his own, and his own received him not,’ says:

… God comes to the minds of men who dedicate themselves totally to him and who make themselves so much his that they no longer live for themselves, but for him. This is what is meant by ‘His own received him not,’ where ‘his own’ are those who live for themselves, seeking what is theirs and not what is God’s.⁵⁷

And in the same work, referring to man, Eckhart says: ‘Existence for him is not ‘existence-for-himself’ but ‘existence-for-God.’ It is existence-for-God, I say, insofar as God is the principle that gives existence, and insofar as he is the end for which man exists and lives.’⁵⁸ Furthermore, Eckhart often says that just as you cannot do without God, so God cannot do without you. This would almost appear to make us equal with God, but as the following quotation hints (and as we will explore in more detail as we proceed) this is not the case. Eckhart says:

… our Lord is your God: He is as truly and powerfully yours as He is His own – think how you like, He is yours! How, then, does He become yours? By your becoming His. If God is to be as much mine as His own, I must be as much His as my own.⁵⁹

Now all we have said here about the word ‘own’ also applies in Eckhart’s work to the word, ‘mine.’ Hence, then, why He is the Lord thy God.⁶⁰ Elsewhere, Eckhart says: ‘Lord, I am thine and thou art mine.’⁶¹ This means that just as God is your own because you are His own, God is only mine because I am His. Thus, Eckhart says:

If I am to know God without ‘means’ and without image or likeness, then God must become practically ‘I’, and I practically God, so wholly one that when I work with Him it is not that I work and he incites me, but that I work wholly with what is mine.⁶²

It is utterly crucial here that what are referred to above as my ‘own’ or as ‘mine’ are not appropriated by us, for this is the true meaning of ‘arrogance.’ What has been discussed above is only ours because we are God’s. Thus, because of the way it is formulated, the sense of belonging in the words ‘own’ and ‘mine’ is always directed at God. This is perhaps captured when Eckhart says:

You should wholly sink away from your youness and dissolve into His Hisness, and your ‘yours’ and His ‘His’ should become so completely one ‘Mine’ that with Him you understand His unbecome Isness and His nameless Nothingness.⁶³

However, where the line we are examining says: ‘The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me’, it might appear that the word ‘same’ cancels out any weight to one side or the other and makes them equal. There seems to be no wrangling over what belongs to who. My eye and God’s eye are simply the same. But as we will see in the rest of this essay, there are different ways that this can be approached and understood.

The line in question is not an arbitrary expression from Eckhart, for he knows exactly what he is doing. Note therefore that he deliberately does not say: ‘The eye with which God sees me is the same eye with which I see God.’ Said this way, we might be tempted to think that the meaning is identical, but simply stated back to front. However, this is not so. In the original version, based on the order of clauses in the syntax, the emphasis is on God in that the eye seeing God is the same as God’s eye that sees. There is a subtle (and thus easily missed) hierarchy here in that our eye is God’s eye. Had Eckhart said it the other way round, the emphasis would be on the human eye, in that God’s eye that sees is the same as the eye seeing God. So here God’s eye would be our eye. If it was ordered this way, then God would have to rid Himself of Himself to become us, which we might argue has in fact become the modern secular way. And this is why Friedrich Nietzsche was able to say, ‘God is dead.’⁶⁴ So when Eckhart says: ‘The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me’, he simply means that ultimately our eye is God’s eye. Hence, in another sermon, Eckhart says: ‘If God is to be seen, it must be in the light that is God Himself.’⁶⁵

Thus, when Eckhart asserts, ‘The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me,’ the meaning of the word ‘same’ is connected to the area we have already touched upon, where God says to Moses: ‘Thou canst not see my face: for there shall be no man see me, and live.’ As discussed, Eckhart urges us to die to ourselves through self-abnegation so that God’s face alone is doing the seeing, for in this regard there is no longer any individual there to see God’s face. It is curious therefore that prior to this it says: ‘And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.’⁶⁶ This appears to be a contradiction, but it is not. This is traditionally said to mean that Moses had become familiar with God and was speaking to him plainly or directly, rather than darkly through angels, dreams, or visions. In this respect, ‘face to face’ is a figurative expression, just as you and I can see ‘eye to eye’ without looking at each other, or work together ‘side by side’ without being near one another. Interestingly, Eckhart denies the more literal meaning of the verse when he asserts: ‘Scripture says: ‘Moses saw God face to face’ … The masters deny this, for God is one and not two: for whoever sees God sees nothing but one.’⁶⁷ However, in his The Book of the Parables of Genesis, Eckhart says that the term ‘face to face’ refers to the inferior reason and the superior reason gazing at one another, so that the inferior reason is not turning to and relying upon the phantasms of the sensitive faculty.⁶⁸ A few lines later, the context changes because Moses wishes to see God’s glory or fullness (symbolizing His face), and in this respect he is told that he cannot see God’s face and live. In short, this means that you can only see God fully by becoming one with God’s seeing.

However, there is, I would argue, a way that God can be seen face to face, which in fact has the same meaning as seeing God’s face. That is, if God is doing the looking and sees His own image as if in a mirror. I would argue that Eckhart is implying this when he says of the term ‘face to face,’ that the face of the superior beholds and examines the inferior’s face as it gazes back.⁶⁹ We have already said that God cannot be seen as if He were standing there and you here, so you cannot see God face to face in this manner. We have also said that Eckhart wants to go beyond this and simply become God’s seeing face through self-abnegation. But then there is no longer any individual creature to do the looking. So, the only way this can happen is if God is doing the looking and the face He sees is our face, which is in truth His own face because we are made in His image. When this happens, the face seen is in one sense the same as the face seeing, while in another sense it is only like it.

This notion in fact accords with one of Eckhart’s favourite analogies, where he refers to the significance of an image in a mirror. He tells us that every image has two properties: ‘One is that it takes its being im-mediately from that of which it is the image, involuntarily, for it is a natural product, thrusting forth from nature like the branch of a tree.’⁷⁰ If you stand before a mirror, your image is there regardless. But, crucially, the nature of the image does not come from the image even though everything it is like appears in the mirror, but rather from that which it is the image. Eckhart says: ‘The second property of the image is to be observed in the image’s likeness. And here especially note two things; an image is, firstly, not of itself, and (secondly), not for itself.’⁷¹ Thus the image of you reflected in a mirror is neither from your image nor does it gain its being from it. Again, it is utterly dependent on and belongs to that of which it is the image, namely, you. Eckhart also discusses the analogy of the mirror image in his Commentary on John. Here he says:

An image insofar as it is an image receives nothing of its own from the subject in which it exists, but receives its whole existence from the object it images. Second, it receives its existence only from the object, and third, it receives the whole existence of the object according to everything by which it is an exemplar. For if the image were to receive anything from another source or did not receive something that was in its exemplar, it would not be an image of that thing but of something else. From which the fourth point follows – that the image of anything is one in itself and is the image of one thing alone. Therefore in the Godhead the Son is one and is of one alone, namely, the Father. From what has been said it is clear in the fifth place that the image is in its exemplar, for there it receives its whole existence. On the other hand, the exemplar insofar as it is an exemplar is in its image because the image has the whole existence of the exemplar in itself.⁷²

Hence, Eckhart quotes John 14:11: ‘I am in the Father, and the Father is in me’, and John 10:30: ‘The Father and I are one’, before adding: ‘ … the whole existence of the one is in the other and there is nothing alien to it there.’⁷³ In this way, for Eckhart, the image and the exemplar are coeval, and as a pure emanation from God, the mirror is without blemish.⁷⁴

It is in accordance with the analogy of the mirror image and its two properties, that Eckhart understands the ground of the soul (or the eye in our discussion) to be only ‘like’ God in one sense (as an image), and yet entirely the ‘same’ as God in another (in that an image is not of or for itself). For the ground of the soul is made in the image of God, and the image is only what it is on account of that of which it is the image. In a beautiful and skilful way, that I think both captures the dialectical action of a mirror image, and the double-birth of God in the soul and the soul in God, Eckhart says:

The soul brings forth in herself God out of God into God: she bears Him truly outside of herself: she does this by bearing God there, where she is Godlike: there she is an image of God. I have said before that an image, as image, can never be separated from that which it images.⁷⁵

Importantly, as touched upon hitherto, Eckhart asserts that the divine image in the soul, on account of being an image, has no existence of its own. The reason being that it is really God and not itself. Eckhart is aware that if he says too much about the image as an image, then it would make it God, but it is not God for only God is God.⁷⁶ A significant question arises from this: Do we remain as the image that is therefore ‘like’ God, or does the soul as the image go, so that only God remains? As we will see, depending on the scale of our seeing and knowing, answers from Eckhart allow for both. However, at the very peak of his mysticism, not only does the soul as image go, but God as exemplar goes too.

A relevant place to begin the answer is by looking at St. Paul’s verse, also referring to a mirror, that famously says: ‘For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.’⁷⁷ Eckhart was fond of this verse, and it might be the key that unlocks what he wishes to convey in the line we are discussing. Typically, Paul’s line is understood to represent two levels of seeing and knowing. The first is represented by lines one and three, and the second by lines two and four. So, seeing through a glass darkly and knowing in part are seen to be one level, while seeing face to face and knowing even as I am known is the next. If we take the first line that says, ‘For now we see through a glass darkly’, it is helpful to also hear a transliteration of the original Greek, that says, ‘For we still see through a mirror indistinctly.’⁷⁸ This suggests that we are only seeing the mirror image, which drawing on a Greek idiom means we are seeing in a riddle and thus not clearly. We referred to this above as seeing through dreams, visions, and angels. It also appears to mean that we are seeing with the external eye. Consequently, the third line akin to this that says, ‘now I know in part’, seems to suggest that we are only seeing attributes of God in the world, such as His wisdom, goodness, and justice.

We then move to the next level that begins with the line, ‘but then face to face.’ Here we begin to see more clearly, and if we recall from Moses seeing God face to face, it means more plainly and directly. It is, we said, a figurative expression, meaning that God is not seen through angels, dreams, and visions, that is, a dim mirror or puzzling riddle that we have to interpret. It means we start to see God with the inner eye of the soul. This, I would argue, is implied by the Hebrew word for ‘face’, which means the part that turns. By turning, Moses now faces God. The implication is that God appears on account of Moses’ looking.⁷⁹ And crucially, in this respect, God is now in the sight of Moses because Moses is in the sight of God.⁸⁰ To illustrate this, take for example the following line from Augustine in book two of the Confessions when, referring to his mother and borrowing from Jeremiah 2:27, he says: ‘ … she was afraid that I had already strayed into the tortuous paths walked by those who turn their back towards you and not their face.’⁸¹ While in book four, Augustine also writes: ‘For I had turned my back on the light, and my face to the things that it enlightened, and hence my face, as I beheld the things that were enlightened, was not enlightened.’⁸² To see God face to face, means that God is seeing you as the image of His own face. And the only way you are seeing God face to face, is akin to the way that your own mirror image looks back at you. It is only looking at you because you are looking at it.

Thus, the final line of Paul says, ‘but then shall I know even as also I am known.’ The point being that God is doing the looking and the face He sees is our face, which is in truth His own face because we are made in His image. And to repeat, when this happens, the face seen is in one sense the same as the face seeing, while in another sense it is only like it. The Greek transliteration indicates how this is different from knowing partly, and says, ‘but then I will fully know even as I was fully known.’⁸³ If we recall, to see God fully as opposed to partly is to see His face.⁸⁴ But in truth, you (as a separate creature) are not seeing His face. For the implication here is that you only fully know in the sense that God is doing the knowing. You as you cannot do this and live. We have to die to ourselves in order to see God’s face. And we only see God’s face in the sense that our own face is truly an image of God’s face looking back at itself. So, it is only as a conceit that we see God’s face. Thus, in chapter 3 of II Corinthians, it says that when one turns to the Lord the veil over the mind is removed. And Eckhart quotes chapter 3, verse 18, saying: ‘with faces unveiled reflecting as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed in the same image from glory to glory.’⁸⁵

When this happens, we come to where the very essence of an image is found, namely, the source it proceeds from.⁸⁶ It becomes apparent that linked to the line of Paul that says: ‘ … but then shall I know even as also I am known’, is another line quoted by Eckhart that comes from 1 John, saying: ‘For we shall see him as he is.’⁸⁷ Eckhart translates this as: ‘We shall know God as God knows Himself.’⁸⁸ One way God knows Himself is through the reflection that is the divine image of the soul. Hence God is seeing the mirror image of Himself. But he only does so as the Father, for more truly He is seeing the image of the soul that is the same as the Only-Begotten Son.⁸⁹ Where God sees and knows Himself, we as the image (by necessity) see and know Him, because the image is the same as that which it images. Elsewhere, he also says: ‘What does God love? God loves nothing but Himself and what is like Himself, in so far as He finds it in me and me in Him.’⁹⁰ Significantly, on this reading, two things are happening at once on the higher level indicated by Paul. In one respect, God and the soul are seeing one another face to face in that God is seeing His own image, while at the same time, we are only seeing to the extent that God is seeing Himself.

Based on the above discussion concerning the mirror, we are now (I hope) in a better position to ascertain what is conveyed by Eckhart when he says: ‘The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.’ In one respect, our eye is the same as God’s eye because we are only seeing Him to the extent that He is seeing us, and by seeing us He is seeing Himself. In truth, then, the line is solely about God and not us, because in our innermost ground we are the same as God. It also gives us an indication of why Eckhart uses different words at different times to explain our relation to God. For example, there are times when Eckhart says that we are merely ‘like’ God, in the sense that the soul is the image of God. Other times he says we are ‘united’ with God because the image gets its being from that which it images. Then again, for this reason he says we are the ‘same’ as God, or one with Him.

The image as image is distinct from God, but it is a perfect likeness because it is not its own. Thus, the soul (because it is an image) is even more like God than two things that are seemingly identical are like each other. Hence Eckhart says: ‘There can be no image without likeness, but there can be likeness without images. Two eggs are equally white, but one is not the image of the other, for that which is the image of another must have come from its nature and be born of it and be like it.’⁹¹ Maurice O’Connell Walshe explains: ‘If B is derived from A, it is the image of A. But if C is also derived from A, it may resemble B, but is the image of A, not B.’⁹² Eckhart says that nothing is more akin or like God than the soul.⁹³ The soul, he says elsewhere, as an image is thus Godlike.⁹⁴

Now it is because of their likeness, says Eckhart, that the soul and God are united, just as the image and the source of the image are obviously united. There can be no union without likeness. Union occurs because they are not merely like one another, but the soul (akin to the Son) is the likeness of the Father.⁹⁵ We see here that ‘likeness’, for Eckhart, is even better than being ‘like’, but he also argues that unity is better than likeness because likeness implies difference.⁹⁶ Ultimately, Eckhart says that being ‘like’ is bad and deceitful, and that God dislikes likeness. There is no likeness in God because God is one. Thus, he says: ‘If I were one, I should not be like. In unity there is nothing alien: it gives me oneness in eternity, not likeness.’⁹⁷ Here then, Eckhart is no longer referring to the soul as an image being like God, but is describing the soul in terms of that which it images. This is because he wants to go beyond the likeness of the image and get to God as God is Himself, namely, the exemplar, which is of course what the image truly is.

Oneness, for Eckhart, goes even further than mystical union, and is often called by him pure union or true union. Oneness, he says, is the source of unity: ‘ … where the very term ‘united’ disappears.’⁹⁸ Here, some of Eckhart’s favourite analogies come to the fore. For example, he often says that when water or wine is in a barrel the barrel surrounds the liquid, but the liquid is not in the barrel for the two while united retain their distinction. So, where there is wood there is no liquid, and where liquid, no wood. It would be similar, says Eckhart, if you threw the barrel onto water. But this is not the case with what Eckhart calls spiritual vessels, for what is received in that is the very same as the vessel, which is to say that the soul is the same as God, they are one and not united.⁹⁹

Another frequently used analogy describes how fire itself is so pure that it does not ignite, but rather ignites the wood that it then turns into its own nature. In contrast, it is not the case that the wood turns the fire into its nature. Accordingly, our materiality in the form of unlikeness is cast out and becomes one with God’s spirituality so that we know Him as He knows Himself.¹⁰⁰ Similarly, but more universally, Eckhart speaks of how the soul loses itself in God just like a drop of water falling into a butt of wine loses itself in the wine, or how a drop falling into the ocean becomes the ocean.¹⁰¹ For this reason, then, Eckhart says:

Where two are to become one, one of them must lose its being. So it is: and if God and your soul are to become one, your soul must lose her being and her life. As far as anything remained, they would indeed be united, but for them to become one, the one must lose its identity and the other must keep its identity: then they are one.¹⁰²

Here the soul is not like, is not the likeness, and is not united with God, but is the same as God, that is, identical, and so it follows that the eye with which I see God is purely and simply God’s eye. The soul, one with God, becomes in the German Gotvar, which Walshe translates as ‘God-conformed.’¹⁰³ He adds that it literally means, ‘God-coloured.’ That form of the word no longer exists, and is now Gottbar, which we might translate as, ‘God-able.’ This we can say is akin to Gotlich or Godly, and Gottig or Divine. Thus, in another sermon, Eckharts describes such a person as God and man, and therefore ‘man-divine’, which because spiritual is an even closer identity than what was referred to earlier as ‘eye-wood’ or ‘hand-coal.’¹⁰⁴ Curiously, Eckhart says that such people are to be pitied because they are strangers unknown to anyone, and only the same kind can recognise them.¹⁰⁵

Conclusion

Expressing this pure identity, then, the full quotation of the line we have been seeking to elucidate says: ‘The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, and one love.’¹⁰⁶ A similar conclusion is reached by the 9th century, Chinese Zen Buddhist, Huang Po, in his, Ch’uan Hsin Fa Yao, which is often translated as, On the Transmission of Mind. And a reference to it will, I think, help us to further grasp what Eckhart also means. Huang Po says: ‘You cannot place a head upon your head, or lips upon your lips; rather, you should just refrain from every kind of dualistic distinction.’¹⁰⁷ The point here, notes the translator, John Blofeld, is that: ‘Since we are the Buddha, to seek him elsewhere is to place a head upon our head.’¹⁰⁸ Likewise, the point for Eckhart is that to seek God elsewhere is to place an eye upon our eye. Huang Po adds:

The green hills which everywhere meet your gaze and that void sky that you see glistening above the earth – not a hairsbreadth of any of them exists outside the concepts you have formed for yourself! So it is that every single sight and sound is but the Buddha’s Eye of Wisdom.¹⁰⁹

Blofeld again adds: ‘The Buddha’s Eye of Wisdom commonly means the eye with which he perceives the true unity of all things. Huang Po, however, does not say ‘perceived BY the Eye’, but uses the phrase ‘IS the Eye’, thereby identifying see-er and seen.’¹¹⁰ Correspondingly, the one eye, for Eckhart, is God’s eye. God alone sees. But what does He see? Welling up in the principle of Himself through the inner boiling of bullitio, He sees the same as Himself in the form of the Holy Trinity. For there is no difference here, owing to the One’s negation of negation and indistinct distinction. In short, there is no other, only one without a second. Similarly, when looking at the soul, as though before a mirror in His robing-room, I have argued that God sees the naked image of Himself looking back at Him. Here, then, the eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me, in respect of it being God’s eye seeing God’s eye seeing God’s eye. Thus, the seer, the seeing, and the seen are the same.

However, at its very extreme, where sameness is the pure identity of oneness, the mirror and the image vanish. Here, God is simply He who is as the I am – the transcendental and undifferentiated esse simpliciter.¹¹¹ Then, without any admixture, only the naked essence, unbecome isness, nameless nothing, modeless mode, indistinct distinction, and hidden darkness of the eternal Godhead remains within Itself as plenitude. ‘God’, says Eckhart, ‘is free of all things, and so He is all things.’¹¹² This means free of God too. The naked Godhead simply sees as limpid witness. This is what in the Indian tradition would be called, pure consciousness. Eckhart was fond of quoting the following line in John’s gospel: ‘And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.’¹¹³ This tells us that while the Godhead sees, there is no other to see that seeing. Now all that sees is the one all-seeing eye of the Godhead. Let us close with a passage from the Hindu, Brihadāranyaka Upanishad, which, I would argue, captures something of Eckhart’s own view:

You cannot see the seer of seeing; you cannot hear the hearer of hearing; you cannot think of the thinker of thinking; you cannot know the knower of knowing. This is your self that is within everything. What is other than this is suffering.¹¹⁴

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Notes on contributors

Duane Williams

Duane Williams is an associate professor in the theology, philosophy, and religious studies department at Liverpool Hope University. His teaching and research interests include: mystical theology, religious philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics, aesthetics, poetics and philosophy of language. He is a trustee of The Eckhart Society and editor of the society’s journal, Medieval Mystical Theology. He is also a co-facilitator of the Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion.

Notes

1 Eckhart, Sermon 57, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 87.

2 Rumi, ‘Who Says Words With My Mouth’, Rumi: The Essential Rumi, 13.

3 The Book of Mu: Essential Writings on Zen’s Most Important Koan, 19.

4 See, for example, Eckhart, Sermon 19, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 157.

5 Eckhart, Sermon 65, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 136.

6 Eckhart, Sermon 66, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 143–4.

7 Eckhart, Sermon 57, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 87.

8 Ibid.

9 Eckhart, Sermon 60, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 104.

10 Ibid.

11 Meister Eckhart, ‘Commentary on John’, 163.

12 Also see Ibid., 169.

13 I would argue that mystics from different traditions and periods grasp this very point in various ways.

14 See, for example, Eckhart, Sermon 57, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 83.

15 See, for example, Eckhart, Sermon 17, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 144.

16 Eckhart, Sermon 13(b), in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 118.

17 Ibid., 116–7.

18 Eckhart, Sermon 47, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 28.

19 Eckhart, Sermon 97, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 339.

20 Eckhart, ‘Commentary on John’, 160.

21 Lk. 14: 26 (KJV).

22 Eckhart, Sermon 30, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 224.

23 Rumi, ‘A Community of the Spirit’, 3.

24 Sankara, Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, 119.

25 Eckhart, Sermon 14(b), in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 127.

26 See Eckhart, Sermon 4, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 40.

27 See, Mt. 5: 29, and 18: 9. See also Mk. 9: 47.

28 Eckhart, Sermon 13(b), in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 119.

29 Rumi, ‘Be Melting Snow’, 13.

30 Quoted from, Myokyo-Ni, Gentling the Bull: The Ten Bull Pictures. A Spiritual Journey, 30.

31 See, Eckhart, Sermon 8, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 71.

32 See Ibid., 72.

33 Eckhart, Sermon 53, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 66.

34 See Eckhart, Sermon 1, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 4.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid.

37 Eckhart, ‘Commentary on John’, 160.

38 See Eckhart, Sermon 42, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 294–5.

39 See Eckhart, Sermon 68, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 160–1.

40 Eckhart, Sermon 66, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 141.

41 See Augustine, The Confessions, 3. 6. 11.

42 See Eckhart, Sermon 69, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 165.

43 Eckhart, Sermon 7, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 63.

44 See Eckhart, Sermon 59, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 100. Also see Walshe’s note 13 on p. 101.

45 Eckhart, ‘Commentary on John’, 163.

46 ‘Kena Upanishad’, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads: Translated from the Sanskrit, 337. There are many more modern translations of this text and this particular line, but for me, other translations of this line do not quite capture the same meaning.

47 Ex. 33: 20 (KJV).

48 See, Kaiser Jr., Davids, Bruce, and Brauch, Hard Sayings of the Bible, 154–6. Note that on p. 153 of this book, it also argues that, allegorically, to see God’s back suggests God’s disapproval, whereas to see his face suggests his blessing and approval. There is also a striking similarity here to Arjuna asking Krishna in chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gita if he can have a cosmic vision of Krishna’s divine form and eternal Self. Arjuna cannot see this with mortal eyes and so is temporarily given divine sight with which he sees everything in the universe there is to see including the past and the future.

49 Jn. 1: 18 (KJV).

50 See Eckhart, Sermon 13(b), in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 117–8.

51 See, for example, Eckhart, ‘Commentary on John’, 161.

52 See Eckhart, Sermon 47, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 27–8.

53 Ibid., 29.

54 Eckhart, Sermon 14(b), in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 126.

55 Eckhart, Sermon 18, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 151.

56 See Eckhart, Sermon 23, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 184.

57 Eckhart, ‘Commentary on John’, 162.

58 Ibid., 163.

59 Eckhart, Sermon 74, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 203.

60 See Ex. 20: 2.

61 Eckhart, Sermon 9, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 87.

62 Eckhart, Sermon 41, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 289.

63 Eckhart, Sermon 96, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 333.

64 See, for example, section 125 of The Gay Science, and section 2 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

65 Eckhart, Sermon 19, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 154.

66 Ex. 33: 11 (KJV). See also, Deut. 34: 10.

67 Eckhart, Sermon 78, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 225.

68 Eckhart, ‘The Book of the Parables of Genesis’, 113.

69 Ibid.

70 Eckhart, Sermon 14(b) in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 124.

71 Ibid., 125.

72 Eckhart, ‘Commentary on John’, 129.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid., 130.

75 Eckhart, Sermon 79, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 233.

76 See Eckhart, Sermon 14(b) in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 125.

77 1 Cor. 13: 12 (KJV).

78 The New Greek-English Interlinear New Testament, 610.

79 See Strong, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, 1559.

80 See Cruden, Cruden’s Complete Concordance to the Old and New Testaments, 197.

81 Augustine, The Confessions, 2.3.6, 34.

82 Ibid., 4.16.30, 83.

83 The New Greek-English Interlinear New Testament, 610.

84 Furthermore, where to ‘know in part’ suggests we know attributes of God in the world, such as, justice, Eckhart frequently argues throughout his works that the just man is only just and therefore justified through justice itself, and in this respect, we might say that he knows justice fully.

85 Eckhart, ‘Commentary on John’, 162.

86 See Eckhart, Sermon 67, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 154.

87 1 Jn. 3: 2 (KJV).

88 Eckhart, Sermon 41, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 290.

89 See Ibid.

90 Eckhart, Sermon 43, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 1.

91 Eckhart, Sermon 14(b), in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 124.

92 Walshe, Ibid., note 3, 128.

93 See Eckhart, Sermon 29 in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 219.

94 See Eckhart, Sermon 63, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 119, and Sermon 65, 134.

95 See Eckhart, Sermon 20 in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 164.

96 See Eckhart, Sermon 7 in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 65.

97 Eckhart, Sermon 24(a) in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 189.

98 Eckhart, Sermon 78, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 225.

99 See Eckhart, Sermon 14(b) in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 123, Sermon 71, vol. II, 182–3, and Sermon 78, vol. II, 225.

100 See Eckhart, Sermon 53 in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 62–3, Sermon 65, vol. II, 137, and Sermon 68, vol. II, 159.

101 See Eckhart, Sermon 62 in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 114–5, and Sermon 94, vol. II, 323.

102 Eckhart, Sermon 5, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 52.

103 See Eckhart, Sermon 62 in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 114.

104 See Eckhart, Sermon 37, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. I, 269–70.

105 Ibid.

106 Eckhart, Sermon 57, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 87.

107 Huang Po, On the Transmission of Mind, 81.

108 Ibid., note 1.

109 Ibid., 82.

110 Ibid., note 1.

111 A reference to, Exodus, 3: 14.

112 Eckhart, Sermon 87, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 273.

113 Jn. 1: 5 (KJV). See, for example, Eckhart, Sermon 51, in Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. II, 53, and Sermon 53, Ibid., 67.

114 The Upaniṣads, trans. and ed., Valerie J. Roebuck (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 46.