‘Something Within Me Which Shines’: Knowing and Unknowing God and the Self

Abstract

ABSTRACTPhilosophers of the theory-of-mind have always grappled with how to describe and image human mental processes, given the impossibility of accessing a perspective outside consciousness from which to analyse it. This article considers the history of models of the mind before exploring in detail Meister Eckhart’s conception of psychology, epistemology and ontology. Eckhart’s German Sermons and Talks of Instruction are drawn on to tease out his understanding of the mind/brain and the sensible, rational and intellectual faculties. The article looks especially to Eckhart’s writings on union with the divine and the apophatic struggle to conceive or intelligibly communicate, from the human perspective, the transcendent, timeless and unrestricted knowledge which is the Godhead.KEYWORDS: Mysticismontologyself-knowledgepsychologybrainsoul Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, Sermon 1, 31; Churchland, “How Do Neurons Know?”, 42.2 Smith, ‘Picturing the Mind’, 159, 163; Kemp and Fletcher, ‘Medieval Theory of the Inner Senses’, 569, 562.3 Kemp and Fletcher, ‘Medieval Theory of the Inner Senses’, 565 and 569. We still speak of the brain as being composed of ventricles: ‘The ventricles of the brain are a communicating network of cavities filled with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and located within the brain parenchyma. The ventricular system is composed of 2 lateral ventricles, the third ventricle, the cerebral aqueduct, and the fourth ventricle.’ (https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1923254-overview?reg=1).4 Gomez-Marin, ‘Commentary: Metaphors We Live By’, 1; Brette, ‘Brains as Computers’. See, for example, in Margery Allingham’s 1963 novel The China Governess: ‘The front of his mind was satisfied that he had merely had an interview with a difficult old man, but behind it, in the vast, blind computing machine where the mind and the emotions meet and churn, something very odd indeed seemed to have taken place.’ Allingham, The China Governess, 103.5 Piccinini, ‘Computationalism in the Philosophy of Mind’, 520; Richards and Lillicrap, ‘Brain-Computer Metaphor Debate’, 4.6 Maslennikov, Schchapin and Nekorkin, ‘Transient Sequences in a Hypernetwork Generated’, 1: ‘based on graph theory, statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics … [which enables] formulating basic principles of the organization of the central nervous system’.7 Mazabow, Burke and Stuart, ‘Neuro-Epistemology’, 63–4. Birmingham University’s John Barnden has created a website, mapping metaphors of the mind, https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~jab/ATT-Meta/Databank.8 Gomez-Marin, ‘Commentary: Metaphors We Live By’, 1.9 Ibid., 2; referring to Henri Bergson and Aldous Huxley respectively.10 Churchland, ‘How Do Neurons Know?’, 50: ‘for the neurophilosopher … questions abound … with deep roots reaching back to the ancient Greeks, with ramifying branches extending throughout the history and philosophy of Western thought’.11 Kemp and Fletcher, ‘Medieval Theory of the Inner Senses’, 573, 568. See also: ‘The theory is consistent with discrete stage-processing models which have been popular in twentieth-century cognitive psychology. Like the theory of the inner senses, such models assume that information is transformed in discrete stages, with the information becoming more abstract’, (568).12 Churchland, ‘How Do Neurons Know?’, 50.13 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works, Sermon 1, 31.14 Ibid., Sermon 90, 441.15 Kelley, Meister Eckhart on Divine Knowledge, 6.16 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works, Sermon 1, 29.17 Ibid., ‘you have no image but of what is outside yourself (which is drawn in through the senses and continually points to that of which it is the image).’ Through Aquinas, Eckhart would have been aware of the sensus communis as a specific internal sense which takes care of ‘mental activities that he considers as pre-analytic data’ and is the means by which ‘a perceiver is aware that she is indeed sensing … the internal sense faculty through which a perceiver is aware that she is aware.’ Lisska, Aquinas’s Theory of Perception, 203.18 Ibid., 30.19 Ibid., Sermon 2, 41–2: ‘The soul is scattered abroad among her powers and dissipated in the action of each: the power of sight in the eye, the power of hearing in the ear, the power of tasting in the tongue.’20 Ibid., Sermon 1, 33.21 Ibid., Sermon 3, 50.22 Ibid., Sermon 2, 41–2.23 Ibid., Sermon 1, 33. The apocryphal Eckhartian ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise explores this when ‘Catherine’ demands from her confessor to be taught the shortest way to union with God, only to receive an Augustinian admonishment to turn away from the world: ‘All creatures direct you to it. They all say “Go forth, we are not God!” Daughter, in that you have instruction enough … If you were touched by the truth, you would neither act nor not act on my account. You know well enough that I am a creature. I want you to realise that you do not live for the truth as long as a creature can give or take from you.’ ‘The Sister Catherine Treatise’, 350–1, 353. Dar zû wisent dich alle creaturen. Si sprechent alle: ‘Gang fürbas, wir sind gott nütt!’ Tochter, hie mitt hestu ler genûg’ … ‘Wissest, warestu von warheit berürt, du enhetest dur mich geton noch gelaussen! Du macht wol wissen, das ich ein creatur bin: Die wil dir die creature geben vnd nemen mag, so wissest, das du der warheit nütt enlebest. (‘Schwester Katrei’, 324, 326–8)24 Ibid., Sermon 8, 79; Sermon 4, 56. Also, Sermon 1, 30, on the soul before her reditus to God: ‘and thus she works with her powers and not with her essence’.25 Ibid., Sermon 4, 56.26 Ibid., Sermon 8, 80–1.27 Ibid., Sermon 4, 56. We also see in Sermon 2, 43: ‘Another question arises. You might say, “Sir, you place all our salvation in ignorance.” That sounds like a lack. God made man to know, as the prophet says, “Lord, make them know!”’ (Tob. 13:4). Where there is ignorance there is a lack, something is missing, a man is brutish, an ape, a fool, and remains so long as he is ignorant. ‘Ah, but here we must come to a transformed knowledge, and this unknowing must not come from ignorance, but rather from knowing we must get to this unknowing. Then we shall become knowing with divine knowing, and our unknowing will be ennobled and adorned with supernatural knowing.’28 Ibid., Sermon 87, 420 (popularly known as Pr.52).29 Ibid., Sermon 1, 35.30 Kelley, Meister Eckhart on Divine Knowledge, 56.31 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works, Sermon 22, 154.32 Ibid., Sermon 68, 349.33 Ibid., Sermon 68, 349.34 Dobie, ‘Meister Eckhart’s “Ontological Philosophy of Religion”’, 576.35 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works, Sermon 3, 46–7, 49.36 Ibid., Sermon 96, 462.37 Ibid., Sermon 96, 463.38 Dobie, ‘Meister Eckhart’s “Ontological Philosophy of Religion”’, 581.39 Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, 141, explains: ‘The Cause of all is above all and is not inexistent, lifeless, speechless, mindless. It is not a material body, and hence has neither shape nor form, quality, quantity, or weight. It is not in any place and can neither be seen nor be touched. It is neither perceived nor is it perceptible. It suffers neither disorder nor disturbance and is overwhelmed by no earthly passion. It is not powerless and subject to the disturbances caused by sense perception. It endures no deprivation of light. It passes through no change, decay, division, loss, no ebb and flow, nothing of which the senses may be aware. None of all this can either be identified with it nor attributed to it.’40 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works, Sermon 3, 46–7.41 Pseudo-Dionysius, Complete Works: 135. ‘The holiest and highest of the things perceived with the eye of the body or the mind are but the rationale which presupposes all that lies below the Transcendent One. Through them, however, his unimaginable presence is shown.’42 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works, Sermon 3, 46–7: ‘In the one case there is activity, where the mind does the work itself; in the other case there is passivity, when God undertakes the work, and then the mind should, nay, must, remain still and let God act. Now before this is begun by the mind and completed by God, the mind has a prevision of it, a potential knowledge that it can come to be thus.’43 Ibid., 49.44 Pseudo-Dionysius, Complete Works, 135, 141.45 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works: Sermon 68, 349. Compare also Sermon 67, 343: ‘Now let us consider the soul, which has a tiny drop of intellect, a little spark, a twig. She has powers which work in the body. One is the power of digestion … The soul also has a power in the eye … There is another power in the soul, with which she remembers. This power is able to picture in itself things which are not present, so that I can recognize things as well as if I saw them with my own eyes, and even better – I can easily think of a rose in winter – and with this power the soul works in nonbeing and follows God, who works in nonbeing.’46 Ibid., Sermon 35, 208: ‘love infatuates and entangles us in goodness, and in love I remain caught up in the gate … love seeks desire, intention. Knowledge does not add a single thought, but rather detaches and strips off and runs ahead, touches God naked and grasps Him in His essence’.47 Ibid., Sermon 55, 289.48 Ibid., Sermon 2, 43.49 Ibid., Sermon 96, 463.50 Ibid., Sermon 2, 43.51 Ibid., Sermon 2, 44: ‘Silence your faculties, if you really wish to experience this birth in you’; Sermon 3, Walshe 49: ‘He takes away the active intellect from him and, installing Himself in its stead, He Himself undertakes all that the active intellect ought to be doing.’52 Ibid., Sermon 3, 49.53 Kelley, Meister Eckhart on Divine Knowledge, 61. Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works, Sermon 2, 39.54 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works, Sermon 35, 208.55 Kelley, Meister Eckhart on Divine Knowledge, 2.56 Pseudo-Dionysius, Complete Works, 139.On divine language and human language: ‘We are not told in what language God spoke to Adam. Tradition has pictured it as a sort of language of interior illumination … a language which, although not translatable into any known idiom, is still, through a special grace or dispensation, comprehensible to its hearer.’ Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language, 7.57 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works, Sermon 35, 208.58 Ibid., Sermon 1, 29, 33, 34, 35, 36; Sermon 3, 48, 51, 54; Sermon 4, 57, Sermon 6, 69; Sermon 22, 152 etc.59 Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language, 7.60 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works, Sermon 22, 152.61 Ibid., 152.62 Ibid., Sermon 35, 208.63 Ibid., Sermon 87, 425.64 Ibid., Sermon 1, 35; Sermon 2, 42.65 Kieckhefer, ‘Meister Eckhart’s Conception of Union with God’, 212.66 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works, Talk of Instruction 4, 489.67 Kieckhefer, ‘Meister Eckhart’s Conception of Union with God’, 219.68 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works, Talks of Instruction, 499.69 Ibid., Sermon 65, 332.70 Ibid., Sermon 7, 72.71 Kelley, Meister Eckhart on Divine Knowledge, 110.72 Impey, Meister Eckhart’s Commentary on the Gospel of John (unpublished), 8, paragraph 11.73 The Eckhartian Schwester Katrei treatise suggests that: ‘He who recognises the being of a pear stem in its highest aspect knows God in all of his might and knows everything God has ever created according to being.’ ‘The Sister Catherine Treatise’, 369.74 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works, Sermon 69, 352.75 Impey, Meister Eckhart’s Commentary on the Gospel of John, 12, paragraph 20.76 Eckhart, Complete Mystical Works, Sermon 7, 73. To have any realization of thus being God's Son, we need to distinguish between the outward and the inward understanding. The inward understanding is that which is based intellectually in the nature of our soul. Yet it is not the soul's essence but is, rather, rooted there and is something of the life of the soul. In saying the understanding is the life of the soul we mean her intellectual life, and that is the life in which man is born as God's son and to eternal life. This understanding is timeless, without place without Here and Now. In this life all things are one and all things are common: all things are all in all and all in one.77 Ibid., Sermon 8, 79.78 Ibid., Sermon 8, 79.79 Ibid., Sermon 11, 97.80 Ibid., Sermon 4, 59.Additional informationNotes on contributorsRebecca StephensRebecca Stephens is a scholar and a teacher in her daily life. Chair of The Eckhart Society, she is a regular speaker at the Society's annual conference, co-organizes and presents Eckhartian One Day Events in York and Cambridge, and is an Associate Editor of the journal, Medieval Mystical Theology.