RUTA CRÍTICA LÍNEAS DE ACCIÓN DEL MODELO EDUCATIVO EN EDUCACIÓN MEDIA SUPERIOR (CONT.) 2017

A guiding theme of Eckhart is Gelâzenheit, sometimes translated as ‗letting-be‘ or as ‗detachment‘. Reiner Schürmann158

considers the most appropriate translation of Gelâzenheit to be ‗releasement‘. Releasement functions in Eckhart as part of the preparation for the birth of God in the soul, which is Eckhart‘s main theme. Eckhart‘s passion is that we should ‗make actual‘ the implicit ‗seed of God‘ within us; that is to say, we should allow the divine birth in our souls. This might or might not yield unusual experiences; Eckhart is less concerned with the nature of an actual experience of union than he is with the underlying principle of unity. He

158

Schürmann (1941-1993) in Wandering Joy: Meister Eckhart’s Mystical Philosophy, Lindisfarne Books, Great Barrington, MA, 2001, p.xviii.

mentions Paul‘s ecstatic experience159

, but does not deal with anything resembling a phenomenology of ecstasy. He is prepared to take theological risks: he has an elevated understanding of humanity; he has a non-dual tendency.

To prepare the way for non-dual spiritual experience, Eckhart explores the meaning of Gelâzenheit. This exploration forms a key part of the biblical exegesis and exposition which is central to his philosophy. Beyond abstraction and beyond image, he desires to present the ultimate mystery: the divine Subject, the Infinite. Then his claim is that the soul is destined for mystical union with the divine, not only in the hereafter, but within this life. This concern would remain abstract, if not abstruse, without the emphasis on the divine Subject being peculiarly accessible within a life of releasement.160

When I preach, I am accustomed to speak about detachment, and that a man should be free of himself and of all things; second, that a man should be formed again into that simple good which is God; third, that he should reflect on the great nobility with which God has endowed his soul, so that in this way

he may come to wonder at God; fourth, about the purity of the divine nature, for the brightness of the divine nature is beyond words. God is a word, a word unspoken. 161

159

As related by the apostle in 2 Cor. 12: 1-7.

160

Cf. Jesus, in the desert following his baptism: he is represented as relinquishing; as finding release from the extraneous; as entering the ‗emptiness‘ or perhaps ‗the Eckhartian nothingness‘, of which more later.

161

From Sermon 53 in Meister Eckhart: TheEssential Sermons,Commentaries, Treatises and Defense, trans. & ed. Colledge, E., & McGinn, B., Paulist Press, New York, 1981, p. 203)

God and the experience of God are ‗past telling of tongue‘ (G. M. Hopkins). But this does not inhibit Eckhart from ‗telling‘ at considerable length. His insistence on Gelâzenheit is clearly stated in the extract above; the outlook is drastic. The short treatise On Detachment implies that detachment or releasement is a deeper quality than even love itself. The noun Gelâzenheit is from the verb lassen, which means ‗to leave aside‘. Eckhart‘s use of the noun is thought to be original. I have alluded to a parallel between Eckhart and Asian thought: detachment (or perhaps better for the Asian context: ‗non-attachment‘) is mutually a key concept. Hee-Sung Keel describes Eckhart‘s view of Gelâzenheit in terms of a radical breakthrough.162 He explains:

The self-denial he has in mind does not simply mean the denial of a particular desire or action but the denial of desire itself, or the will itself, including the will to do God‘s will.

It means freedom from will as such, the self-will.

Detachment, then, means for Eckhart abandoning self-will and possessiveness in thought and action.163

In a famously unusual interpretation of the words that Jesus reportedly says to Martha (‗There is need of only one thing‘ Lk. 10:42, NRSV) Eckhart states that ‗… whoever wants to be free of care and to be pure must have one thing, and that is detachment‘.164 To Eckhart, God himself is detached. From the tradition of divine timelessness, he deduces that God is unmoved by transitory events.

162

Eckhart‘s MHG term is durchbruch (or, in the Latin sermons reditus) for ‗breakthrough‘ and/or ‗return‘.

163

Meister Eckhart: an Asian Perspective, Keel, H-S., Leuven, Belgium, Peeters Press, 2007, p.176.

This immovable detachment brings a man into the greatest equality with God, because God has it from his immovable detachment that he is God, and it from his detachment that he has his purity and his simplicity and his unchangeability.165

Eckhartian Gelâzenheit is mainly detachment from images and objects, not a retreat from creating and fostering communion and community.166 The person who chooses to participate with the divine God will not be found trying to escape from the world‘s conflicts and sufferings, but will, by identifying mystically with the Son (who suffers at the hands of the world) be reunited mystically with the Father (with whom always the Son identifies). An on- going ‗inner work‘ is required. This will involve action and contemplation, as inseparable. The person who is an ‗active contemplative‘ will have, as his or her inner foundation, Gelâzenheit. Keel states that this ‗inner work‘:

… has nothing to do with indulging in any peculiar religious experience, ecstatic or enstatic. Its sole purpose is to enhance detachment from all things, including religious exercises and experiences themselves, only to be engaged in active life rooted in the ground of one‘s being.167

165_{ibid., p.288.}

166

In connection with the Martha/Mary story of Lk 10, Beverly Lanzetta opines that Eckhart‘s stated preference for the active

life ‗… may be seen to be a Western mystical version of the ―samsāra is nirvāna‖ of the Buddhist world.‘ (Samsāra here connotes conditioned reality; nirvāna connotes Boundless Openness.) Quotation from: Lanzetta, B.J., ‗Three Categories of Nothingness in Eckhart‘, The Journal of Religion 72:2 (April 1992), Chicago, ILL, The University of Chicago Press, p. 268. In chapter four of the present study I make use of Lanzetta‘s article vis-à-vis Eckhartian nothingness.

Eckhartian non-dualism relates to both Gelâzenheit and to a concept of ‗nothingness‘. The soul is required to become ‗nothing‘ (MHG: niht, or in the L sermons nihil) if union with God is to be realized. This is because: ‗… the divine being is equal to nothing, and in it there is neither image nor form.‘168 Elsewhere, Eckhart states that ‗… to be empty of all created things is to be full of God, and to be full of created things is to be empty of God.‘169 Such detachment frees the soul to be able to ‗break through‘ to its Ground, and thereafter to ‗break through‘ to the Ground of the Godhead.

Eckhart puts forward something of a distinction between God and the Godhead. Those who interpret Eckhart as making a clear distinction would tend to describe it as follows. God is the principle of ‗Being‘. God is distinct from the Godhead, which is ‗the Absolute‘ in the unqualified dimension of ‗Beyond-Being‘. But it needs reiterating that the Godhead, or in other words, the unqualified Absolute, is expressed in the traditional tripartite way. Father, Son and Spirit are figured as kenotic expressions of the Infinite which is also One. If Eckhart equates the Godhead with ‗absolute nothingness‘, he is not alluding to a vacuum. He is finding language with which to approach reality; he wants to talk about the field, or the matrix, from which everything emerges or flows.

German Sermon 52 includes the well-known injunction to pray to God that we might be free of ‗God‘.170

Assuming that his audience grasps the context of Gelâzenheit, Eckhart reiterates the apparently disturbing notion.

168

from German Sermon 6, in Colledge & McGinn, op.cit., p.187.

169

When man clings to place, he clings to distinction.

Therefore I pray to God that he may make me free of ‗God‘, for my real being is above God if we take ‗God‘ to be the beginning of created things. For in the same being of God where God is above being and above distinction,

there I myself was, there I willed myself and committed myself to create this man. Therefore I am the cause of myself

in the order of my being, which is eternal, and not in the order of my becoming, which is temporal. And therefore I am unborn, and in the manner in which I am unborn I can never die.

In my unborn manner I have been eternally, and am now, and shall eternally remain.171

The stated desire to be free of ‗God‘ appears to be a way of underlining Eckhart‘s view of an apparent distinction between God and the Godhead. This move on Eckhart‘s part seems to avoid equating God with Presence. God is that which enables Presence, which in turn enables Love; God is agape, but redemption is also configured as agape. As with Traherne and Julian, the language of Eckhart at this point is personal and relational. By way of counterpoint, the language of Ramana Maharshi is both personal and impersonal; this will be discussed in chapter four.

170 _in

Colledge & McGinn, p.200.

171

ibid., p.202f.