Last week I saw a Nova program on PBS television called “Universe Revealed: Milky Way.” It was about the coming to be of our solar system born 9 billion years ago. I heartily recommend it for setting Earth history and human history in a fuller context. The journey included pictures of the Milky Way from many angles made possible by the Gaia Telescope launched in 2010.
It was amazing and it is amazing that one species at least, ours, can look back into time and thereby learn how God works, how creation and Creator have danced together over these 13.8 billion years that, among other things, has brought our Earth and ourselves into existence.
Black holes play a major role in the making of galaxies we are told (though we know very little about them). Black holes seem to be a kind of Nothing, but a nothing that does something very important. A nothing that produces.
Eckhart talks about God that way when he tells us that God is nothing. It is not, however, as if he were without being. He is rather neither this thing nor that thing that we might express. He is a being above all being. He is a beingless being.
To be a beingless being is to be a no-thing. A non-object. For such a no-thing, the highest affirmation is a negation–God is not this and not that.
Commenting on Paul’s blindness at the moment of his conversion, as reported in the Book of Acts (9:8), Eckhart says that when Paul rose from the ground he saw nothing, and this nothingness was God. Indeed, he saw God, and that is what he calls a nothingness….I cannot see what is One. He saw nothing, that is to say, God. God is nothingness, and yet God is something.
Our God talk is a nothing insofar as we are “to pray God to rid us of God.” What does Eckhart mean by that? We are capable of turning God into a God who would not be God when we imaging that we can know God. To imagine this is to reduce God to our size. Such a God is not worthy to worship. “If I had a god whom I was able to know, I would never be able to regard him as God.” God is beyond our knowledge of God and bigger than all our knowledge.
This is why God remains a “hidden God” and we are to “be silent and not flap our gums about God.”
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Passion For Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart, pp. 194, 183, 182.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.
Banner Image: “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Photo by Dim Hou on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
Do you think it is happenstance that there are black holes in the universe that are generative but that also sometimes our psyches feel like a black hole—from which generativity flows as well? From the via negativa comes the via creativa?
Recommended Reading
Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart
Matthew Fox’s comprehensive translation of Meister Eckhart’s sermons is a meeting of true prophets across centuries, resulting in a spirituality for the new millennium. The holiness of creation, the divine life in each person and the divine power of our creativity, our call to do justice and practice compassion–these are among Eckhart’s themes, brilliantly interpreted and explained for today’s reader.
“The most important book on mysticism in 500 years.” — Madonna Kolbenschlag, author of Kissing Sleeping Beauty Goodbye.
13 thoughts on “Nothingness, continued”
Yes Matthew, the inner microcosm of our psyche and the outer macrocosm of our Cosmos are interrelated~One…The mystics have taught us that the Loving Mind~Heart~Consciousness of God is within All of God’s Evolving co-Creation. The mystery of Consciousness is the mystery of God because God makes up that Consciousness in All living things and inanimate matter, especially our own unique eternal soul consciousness… God is All in All Diverse Loving Oneness… our Beautiful Beloved Cosmic Christ Consciousness….
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When we recognize nothingness and darkness as our divine everything, even the Lover of our soul, we have pierced the cloud of unknowing. }:- a.m.
Matthew, Your meditation grabbed me immediately when I read “it is amazing that one species at least, ours, can look back into time and thereby learn how God works, how creation and Creator have danced together over these 13.8 billion years that, among other things, has brought our Earth and ourselves into existence.” When I was a young boy I had a recurring dream for years of an evening when all the planets would show themselves to us–they would one by one come close enough to our planet that we could clearly see them. Now however, with The Webb and Gaia Telescopes we are seeing even more than I dreamed as a child. Then you share a number of quotations by Meister Eckhart; two of which were truly mind-blowing! The first one is: “God is nothing. It is not, however, as if he were without being. He is rather neither this thing nor that thing that we might express. He is a being above all being. He is a beingless being.” Where it says that God is “neither this thing nor that thing” sounds like the Sanskrit expression “Neti Neti which means, “Not this, nor that.” And though I am not a big St. Paul fan, Eckhart’s comments about Paul’s conversion experience are amazing! He says: “when Paul rose from the ground he saw nothing, and this nothingness was God. Indeed, he saw God, and that is what he calls a nothingness….I cannot see what is One. He saw nothing, that is to say, God. God is nothingness, and yet God is something.” And now for our Queries for Contemplation. You ask us today: “Do you think it is happenstance that there are black holes in the universe that are generative but that also sometimes our psyches feel like a black hole—from which generativity flows as well? From the via negativa comes the via creativa?” Yes, you could say from the via negativa comes the via creativa. For in my book: TWO WAYS TO LOSE YOUR FAITH I wrote in a chapter on the disappointment that one experiences when losing faith in what they were taught: “I have ever been the student of my disappointments, and they have been my most faithful teachers.”
One cannot know one side of polarity without knowing something about its opposite or counterpart, be it good/evil, war/peace, wakefulness/sleep, life/death, darkness/light, male/female, etc. Mentioning one implies the other. Or as in the case of the DM’s of late, nothing/everything, via negativa/via creativa, or black holes/white holes. All opposites have their relational counterparts that balance and reconcile each other in creation. Properly rendered, they should in theology as well. White holes? A white hole is a time reversed black hole, a region of space-time where matter spontaneously appears and explodes outwards (as in all creativity), rather than implodes and disappears as in a black hole. A white hole is to a black hole what exhalation is to inhalation in breathing, with both sharing the same vortex (“lungs”) operating analogously between the visible and invisible world. Working in the opposite direction as black holes, they spit out (belch) light and matter rather than trapping it. Both “holes” operate in different directions from a common origin (vortex) in the singularity, as all polarities in creation at all scales emerge from and reconcile themselves to a common axis or still point in that singularity. In writing 2 Timothy 3:16, it is no coincidence the apostle Paul declared that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” In the Greek, the word “inspiration” means “God-breathed.” The singularity (divine lungs) in the interior life act as a swinging door accessing two rooms, eternity and space-time, spirit and psyche. Ordinarily, just as nothing can escape a black hole, nothing can enter a white hole, space-time’s most exclusive “club,” except via the swinging-door singularity. In the interior life, the axis or white hole side of the singularity is Christ and his kingdom (‘I am the door’). Like both black and white holes, the eternal is cut-off from the universe’s past and is the link joining its past and future, reconciling them in the eternal now of unitive consciousness. So, in talking about polarities, twins otherwise neglected via dualistic thinking, be fair to them both. They’re the Siamese twins of creation everywhere. After all, states Matt in oft quoting Aquinas, “A mistake about creation is also a mistake about God.” Likewise, as in the case of black/white holes, a mistake about theology is also a mistake about God. Particularly when the Genesis 1 creation account is featured exclusively, to the neglect and reconciliation of its “twin” in Genesis 2, 3, and the remainder of the inspired (God-breathed) Word.
Beautiful.
Eckhart sounds like Mose Maimonides who was called an atheist by his colleagues.
What keeps arising for me personally, regarding the mystery of nothingness… are the words hidden potentiality. This hidden potentiality slowly begins to reveal its beingness… unfolding, evolving and emerging the more one let’s go… emptying oneself of all attachments. There’s a sacredness of acceptance and surrender… and a deep trust that one encounters throughout this creative, transformative mystery… of letting be… which stretches and expands the shape, the substance, the form… of ones sense of soul/self coming into being. One cannot grasp tightly this hidden potentiality in an attempt to hold onto and possess it, but rather one must simply receive it as a blessed gift gently… with an openness to let it flow through oneself… in givenness.
Matthew, I do not know how I started receiving your Daily Meditations. Thank you.
Your recent meditation on the Papal “Penitential Pilgrimage” to Canada in the context of our changing appreciation of the Universe spoke to me. It will launch me in my homiletic approaches tomorrow.
I have come to realize that somehow I have been touched by many of your insights on Creation Spirituality. Maybe it was my exposures during my sabbatical at Corpus Christi College (London UK) in 1971-72 with the scripture scholar, Herbert Richards or during my second sabbatical at SAT Berkeley (Oakland Ca) in 1992.
I have just published my Memoir, Pilgrim Journeys- a post Vatican II ministry of discovering the Sacred with parish and travel pilgrims. ( Now fully distributed and available in all formats). I now recognize how indebted I am to your pioneering ministry in the church. I look forward to reading your most recent book. Blessings.
Ralph Kleiter, ordained 1963, Saskatoon Diocese, Canada
As my friend Elliot Wolfson wrote to me about Ayin vs. Ein Sof, “What can be more nothing than nothing?”
Dear Matthew,
It is a privilege to be thinking about this subject with you and with others to whom it is the grandest of great subjects for contemplation. I like the open-endedness of calling God the Divine Mystery, or Mysterium Tremendans. I like the idea of a horizon that our curiosity impels us toward (Lonergan) and that our consciousness is connected to this creative energy. It is not “Nothingness” to me. Although language fails, I do believe that Being is qualititatively better than non-being. I also believe in coherence, although I recognize that for some, chaos theory is more attractive. I have slowly been reading your book on Meister Eckhart, and really enjoying it. THANK YOU for all you have continued to give us, the blessings and insights are true gifts, and I am grateful!
I am most grateful to you Mathew for expanding our consciousness and integrating so man who have gone before us as mystics and those like yourself among us now!!! The best mystics all have a heuristic quality in their shared thoughts and writings that leads us forward to continuously grow in our own understandings of mystery. William James the Father of American Psychology said that mysticism has this heuristic quality. So too, among scientists the best science has a heuristic quality that leads them to continuous queries and further research. You point this out well in your thoughts, insights, and writings now for the merging once again of mysticism and science in what may the beginning of a New Renaissance freeing us from the darkness we have entered since the last Renaissance. I share with you and your readers my article: “The Dark Night of the Soul Is the Gift of Illumination in Higher Consciousness” that I wrote 15 years ago. https://drdarrylpokea.com/the-dark-night-of-the-soul-is-the-gift-of-illumination-in-higher-consciousness/
Thank you Mathew for expanding our consciousness and integrating so much that stimulates our interest now to learn even more. I share my article: The Dark Night of the Soul Is the Gift of Illumination in Higher Consciousness that I wrote 16 years ago.
Thank you Mathew for expanding our consciousness and integrating so much that stimulates our interest now to learn even more. I share my article: The Dark Night of the Soul Is the Gift of Illumination in Higher Consciousness that I wrote 16 years ago. We