Eckhart’s Image of the Eye and the Wood: An analogy which explains ‘all that I have ever preached about’

Abstract

To speak about Meister Eckhart is to speak about spiritual realization. Almost every single sermon of this master of Christian metaphysics and spirituality is 'realizational': each one of them issues an imperative summons to realize to 'make real' the 'one thing needful'. Now this 'one thing' is difficult to grasp, impossible to define, but the need for it enters into the very definition of human consciousness. How then to express it, and to express it in· a way which heightens our sense of need for it, at the same time as pointing the way to the fulfilment of this need? Eckhart provides a particularly compelling model of how to express the inexpressible, and is certainly one of the most successful 'preachers' known to us, if our criterion of 'success' be this: rendering the imperative of spiritual realization not just intelligible but irresistible. One of the central aspects of this success lies in Eckhart's use of images, analogies, metaphors, symbols all of which, in different ways, do not so much express an ingenious use of language, as elicit the spiritual move required of all of us: just as the image is one step removed from that of which it is an image, so our consciousness is called to move from its outer surface to its own inner depth. Eckhart's communication of spiritual realities through verbal means, whether this be through images, analogies or doctrinal expositions, arises from this inner depth, and does not merely point to it: