Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim

German Theologian, Philosopher and Mystic

"God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being and let God be God in you."

"All things are created out of nothingness. Their true origin is thus the void."

"Nothing in the universe is so like God as silence."

"When you are thwarted, it is your own attitude that is out of order."

"The eye by which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and God's eye are one and the same - one in seeing, one is knowing, and one in loving."

"As long as I am this or that, or have this or that, I am not all things and I have not all things. Become pure till you are neither are nor have either this or that; then you are omnipresent and, being neither this nor that, are all things."

"He who seeks God under settled form lays hold of the form, while missing the God concealed in it."

"Any flea as it is in God is nobler than the highest of angels in himself."

"The highest wisdom consists in this, for man to know himself, because in him God has placed his eternal word [logos]."

"If we hold fast to the distinction between today and tomorrow and yesterday, we hold fast to nothingness."

"In the Kingdom of Heaven all is in all, all is one, and all is ours."

"Separate yourself from all twoness. Be one on one, one with one, one from one."

"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."

"Man's last and highest leave-taking is leaving God for God."

"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 verdant, every flowering in all the joy and glory of His actual Self. Sometimes I have called this principle the Tabernacle of the soul, sometimes 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 above 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 can in any wise behold it."

"Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time. And not only time but temporalities, not only temporal things but temporal affections; not only temporal affections but the very taint and smell of time."

"The more God is in all things, the more He is outside them. The more He is within, the more without."

"The soul that would experience this birth must detach herself from all outward things: within herself completely at one with herself... You must have an exalted mind an a burning heart in which, nevertheless, reign silence and stillness."

"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."

"To gauge the soul we must gauge it with God, for the Ground of God and the Ground of the Soul are one and the same."

"Action and becoming are one."

"Acting and becoming are one. God and I are one in this work: He acts and I become. Fire transforms all things it touches into its own nature. The wood does not change the fire itself, but the fire changes the wood into itself. In the same way we are transformed into God so that we may know him as he is."

"When is a man in mere understanding? I answer, “When a man sees one thing separated 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.”"

"What a man takes in by contemplation that he pours out in love."

"God is closer to the soul than the soul is to itself and therefore God is in the soul’s core – God and all the Godhead."

"God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction."

"God, whatever He is, has essence and essence is absolute stillness; it is immovable."

"God’s is-ness is my is-ness, neither more nor less."

"God’s never tied man’s salvation to any pattern. Whatever possibilities inhere in any pattern of life inhere in all, because God has given it so and denied it to none. One good way does not conflict with another, for not all people may travel the same road."

"I affirm that there is a power in the soul which is unmoved by time or the flesh: this power floweth from the Spirit, yet abideth therein. Yea, it is all spirit."

"He who has gotten the whole world plus God has gotten no more than God by himself."

"If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as you love another person less than you love yourself, you will not succeed in loving yourself; but if you love all alike, including yourself, you will love them as one person and that person is both God and man."

"Man should remember that God speaks the truth and promises by Himself, the Truth. If God were to be false to His word, His Truth, He would be false to His Divinity, and then He would not be God. It is his promise that our pains shall be changed to joy."

"It is my humility that gives God his divinity and the proof of it is this. God’s peculiar property is giving. But God cannot give if he has nothing to receive his gifts. Since I make myself receptive to his gifts by my humility so I by my humility do make God giver and since giving is God’s own peculiar property I do by my humility give God his property."

"That we should know ourselves and God so far as we are able, that is God’s will. It behooves us therefore to be vastly careful not to hamper in any way the work which the exalted workman designs to carry out in us to his glory, but so to maintain ourselves that the material is always ready for the workman to do his work in us."

"The eye by which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one and the same."

"The eye through which God sees us is the eye through which we see God."

"Nothing hinders the soul from knowing God so much as time and place. Time and place are fractions, God is an integer."

"Nothing hinders the soul’s knowledge of God as much as time and space, for time and space are fragments, whereas God is one! And therefore, if the soul is to know God, it must know him above time and outside of space; for God is neither this nor that, as are these manifold things. God is One!"

"The life of work is necessary and the life of contemplation is good. In service the man gathers the harvest that has been sown in contemplation."

"The Masters say that the soul has two faces. The higher one always sees God, the lower one looks downward and informs the senses. The higher one is the summit of the soul, it gazes into eternity. It knows nothing about time and body."

"The Now in which God created the first man and the Now in which the last man will disappear and the Now in which I am speaking - all are the same in God, and there is only one Now."

"The quieter it is the more powerful, the worthier, the deeper, the more telling and more perfect the prayer is."

"The spiritual life is not a process of addition, but rather of subtraction."

"The soul is created in a place between Time and Eternity: with its highest powers it touches Eternity, with its lower Time."

"The soul has nothing in common with anything else. It is unconscious of the yesterday or the day before, and of tomorrow and the day after, for in eternity there is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence, and is at this moment, and as it will be after death."

"The very best and utmost of attainment in this life is to remain still and let God act and speak in thee."

"To get at the core of God at his greatest, one must first get into the core of himself at his least, for no one can know God who has not first known himself. Go to the depths of the soul, the secret place of the Most High, to the roots, to the heights; for all that God can do is focused there."

"There is nothing to test the perfection of love better than trust. Wholehearted love for another person carries confidence with it. Whatever one dares to trust God for, he really finds in God and a thousand times more."

"To produce real moral freedom, God’s grace and man’s will must cooperate. As God is the Prime Mover of nature, so also he creates free impulses toward himself and to all good things. Grace renders the will free that it may do everything with God’s help, working with grace as with an instrument which belongs to it. So the will arrives at freedom through love, nay, becomes itself love, for love unites with God."