As I shared in my video accompanying yesterday’s Daily Meditation, Meister Eckhart devotes a lengthy treatise to the topic of our royal personhood applying it to the power politics of his time. So much so that Marxist scholar Ernst Bloch credits Eckhart with inspiring Karl Marx’s criticism of social and class injustice.
Eckhart also says this:
What our Lord calls a nobleperson, the prophet calls a great eagle. Who then is nobler than he who is born, on the one hand of the highest and the best that the creature has, and on the other hand, from the inmost ground of the divine nature and of his desert?
Eckhart was speaking in German—which is itself a political act because German in his day was a series of dialects of the peasants. He is speaking to the peasants in their own language about how they are all aristocrats born of the inmost ground of Divinity.
This did not endear him to certain powerbrokers–including religious ones–of his culture.
Indeed, at his trial in Avignon, he was accused of “confusing the simple people” by preaching to them in their own language and telling them they were aristocrats.
Eckhart plays with two German words–the word eagle (Adler) and the word edler which means “more noble.” Adler and edler, we are eagles and “more noble.”
The eagle in indigenous cultures is considered a great conduit between earth and heaven, the divine and humans, because they soar so high.
Remember that before the invention of the airplane, which is to say during the vast amount of time of indigenous peoples’ culture, the eagle was the highest-flying object one could observe from earth.
Eckhart is also connecting the New Testament (nobleperson) to the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew Bible (eagle). A noble person is a prophetic person, and a prophetic person is a noble person.
To be continued.
Adapted from Matthew Fox, “Meister Eckhart and Karl Marx: The Mystic as Political Theologian,” in Fox, Wrestling with the Prophets, pp. 165-198.
Banner Image: Bald eagle flying over Coquihalla Highway, Yale, Canada. Photo by Rachel McDermott on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
Do you soar like an eagle? Are you a noble person because you are born of the highest and the best that the creature has, and also from the inmost ground of the divine nature and its desert?? How are you assisting others to do and be and feel the same?
Recommended Reading
Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life
In one of his foundational works, Fox engages with some of history’s greatest mystics, philosophers, and prophets in profound and hard-hitting essays on such varied topics as Eco-Spirituality, AIDS, homosexuality, spiritual feminism, environmental revolution, Native American spirituality, Christian mysticism, Art and Spirituality, Art as Meditation, Interfaith or Deep Ecumenism and more.
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5 thoughts on “Eckhart on Our Nobility, continued”
Your Meditation questions are very challenging Matthew! Even though the mystics like Meister Eckhart remind us of our nobility and Divine Nature (my faith/intuition does also), I believe it’s also essential on our spiritual journeys to heal and transform past traumas and conditionings that prevent us from experiencing and living our Eternal Souls/True Heart Selves Present within us with DIVINE LOVE~Compassion~ONENESS with one another, Sacred Mother Nature, and within All Our Sacred LOVING Co-Creation~Evolving COSMOS….
If it is “noble” to spread the word about the many facets of the mystical revelation and its wisdom-path, then I personally try to express this “inner nobility” by sharing, for free, the information I’ve learned from direct experience and from years of investigation.
Do I help others to “feel the same” ? That may not be the right question. How about, “does anyone actually read any of it??” I really don’t know. I usually speak into a void of silence (talking to myself?? Does that still count as “Nobility”??).
I only know that this mystical knowledge has been stolen from most Western people for centuries, hoarded, suppressed, mostly forgotten, and now it’s being turned into wildly imaginative (but profitable!) mass-media entertainment. I’m trying to resurrect the original flame. It’s not a matter of being “noble” as a mystic; it’s a matter of returning, to all people, the genuine knowledge they’re entitled to, giving back the same mysticism that’s in both their innermost being and in the Bible, and thus passing along the graced gift of mysticism that I was granted. Only then do people have the free choice whether to believe and nurture their own inner mystical Wisdom.
I appreciate this affirmation of human royalty and responsibility, but I hear also the voice of dominion and this makes me uncomfortable. It feels like it comes too close to the idea that we humans are superior to all the parts of the universe that are not human. On the contrary, I believe we are equal partners in Creation, partners with all sentient beings–all animals and all others, too–tree and vine and fungi, and mountain and rock and stone and valley and lake and sea and river, stars and moon and sun. and wind and all.
I agree with your comment Robin, thank you for expressing this feeling so well.
Dear Mathew Fox, I appreciate your comments. Meister Eckhart allegedly also said: “It is a lie, any talk of God that is not comforting.” I was born in Germany 80+ years ago to Catholic parents. After I left home I decided that I would never set foot in a church again. About 30 some years ago I discovered the Unitarian Universalist church and sometime later
Buddhism, but not as a religion. Through Buddhism I discovered compassion. Recently I came across a lecture on Meister Eckhart (the man from whom God hid nothing) on Youtube by a professor Michael Sucrue. After listening to that a couple of times, I thought: “Meister Eckhart’s God Is a God I might be able to believe in.” A friend actually gave me a book “Meister Eckharts Schriften,” which she had inherited from her German parents. I started to read it but soon gave up; it’s very difficult reading. We need to get rid of God and use some common sense. We can’t say that we want peace and then go and manufacture guns and rockets and bombs, etc. and vote for people who are in favor of that. Oh, but we need to defend ourselves and THEY started it. That’s Kindergartners’ talk. As J.S. Spong said: “We don’t need to be reborn, we need to grow up.” Are we going to grow up before it’s too late?