jIvanmukTa

[DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA]

Random House Dictionary gives this information about Meister Eckhart.
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Johannes Eckhart("Meister Eckhart"), c1260-1327?, Dominican Theologian and
Preacher, Founder of German Mysticism.
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The following quotations are taken from "Perennial Philosophy" by
Aldous Huxley. He has taken them from WORKS OF MEISTER ECKHART,
translated by Evans.

"The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should
see God, as if He stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we
are one in knowledge.

"There is a spirit in the soul, untouched by time and flesh, flowing from
the spirit, remaining in the spirit, itself wholly spiritual. In this
principle is God, ever verdent, ever flowering in all the joy and glory
of His actual Self. Sometimes I have called this principle the Tabernacle
of the soul, some times a spiritual Light, anon I say it is a spark.
But now I say that it is more exalted over this and that than the heavens
are exalted over the earth. So now I name it in a nobler fashion....It is
free of all names and void of all forms. It is one and simple, as God is
one and simple, and no man in any wise behold it.

"When I came out of the Godhead into multiplicity, then all things pro-
claimed, `There is God'(the personal Creator). Now this cannot make me
blessed, for hereby I realize myself as creature. But in the breaking
through I am more than all creatures; I am neither God nor creature;
I am that which I was and shall remain, now and forever more. There I
receive a thrust which carries me above all angels. By this thrust I
became so rich that God is not sufficient for me, in so far as He is
only God in his divine works. For thus in breaking through, I perceive
what God and I are in common. There I am what I was. There I neither
increase or decrease. For there I am the immovable which moves all
things. Here man has won again what he is eternally and ever shall be.
Here God is received into the soul.

"Thou must love God as not-God, not-spirit, not-person, not-image, but
as he is, a sheer, pure absolute One, sundered from all two-ness, and
in whom we must eternally sink from nothingness to nothingness.

"When is a man in mere understanding? I answer `When a man sees one
thing seperated from another.' And when is a man above mere
understanding? That I can tell you: `When a man sees All in all, then
a man stands beyond mere understanding.

"Therefore I give you still another thought, which is yet purer and more
spiritual: In the Kingdom of Heaven all is in all, all is one, and all
is ours.

"This identity of the One into the One and with the One is the source and
fountainhead and breaking forth of glowing Love."

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I need not point out how close are these quotations to the Upanishadic
and Advaitic thought.

sarma.