ECKHART'S VISION OF THE PROCESS OF
SELF-REALIZATION
"And therefore, when a man accommodates himself barely to God, with
love, he is unformed, then informed, and then transformed in the divine
uniformity wherein he is one with God. . . . You must give up yourself,
altogether give up self, and then you have really given up."
" 'In the beginning God created heaven and earth.' . . . These words
suggest first the production or emanation of the Son and the Holy Spirit
from the Father in eternity, then the production or general creation of the
whole universe from the One God in time, and many of the properties of
both Creator and creature."
The Godhead is a "solitary One," a "darkness or nescience": it is divine
"desert"--utterly featureless, a pure untrammeled One without movement or
number. Emanating from this desert-like emptiness is the Trinitarian God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which are the dynamic, differentiated, creative
phase of the Divinity. This "production" or "emanation" of the Three Persons
out of the silent Godhead is condensed by Eckhart into the term bullitio,
literally "boiling," which metaphorically expresses the boiling over into itself
of the Trinitarian God out of the One. On the other hand, ebullitio describes
the production or general creation of the whole universe from the One God. .
. . The key characteristic of bullitio is that while the Trinitarian God involves
the activity of emanation, distinction, and numerical diversity, the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit never lose their absolute unity with the non-diverse One.
There is "unity of substance and a distinction and property of persons in the
Godhead."
" . . . the statement 'I am who I am' [Exodus 3:14--more correctly
translated "I will be what I will be."] indicates a certain reversion and
turning back of his being and into and upon itself, and its abiding or
remaining in itself; also a sort of boiling up (bullitio) or giving birth to
itself: an inward glowing, melting and boiling in itself and into itself, light
in light and into light wholly penetrating its whole self, totally and from
every side turned and reflected upon itself. As the wise man says: 'Monad
begets--or begot--monad, and reflected its love or ardor upon itself.' . . .
This is why John says: 'In him was life' [John 1:4]. Life means a sort of
thrusting out, whereby a thing, inwardly swelling up, wholly bursts forth in
itself, every part of itself in every other part, before it pours forth and boils
over (ebulliat) outwardly."
This idea of the One giving birth to the many while itself remaining an
unchanged Unity is stressed in the image of the Godhead or One "boiling into
or upon itself." The Trinitarian God is not created outside of the Godhead, but
remains fused within it: "The first outburst (uzbruch) and the first effusion God
runs out into is His fusion into His Son, who flows back into the Father."
"God and Godhead are as different as heaven and earth. . . . Everything
that is in the Godhead is one, and of that there is nothing to be said. God
works, the Godhead does no work: there is nothing for it to do, there is no
activity in it. It never peeped at any work. God and Godhead are
distinguished by working and not working." |
