BOOK REVIEW: MASTER ECKHART’S WAY TO COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS
a guide to practical mysticism ‘Our longing for eternity is actually the longing of eternity for us. The seeker for God is also the one who is sought by God.’
M
ore than ever, modern people ask in this time for the deeper meaning of life. This is why, after seven centuries, the great German mystic, Meister Eckhart (1260-1328), receives a lot of attention again. His religio surpasses all confessions. He was well-acquainted with the religious and philosophical teachings of the West, Greece and Egypt, of the Near East and distant Asia – he stood on the top of the mountain and knew that all roads from the valley come together at the top. Nowadays, we acknowledge that Eckhart, who fathomed the unfathomable, was the greatest proclaimer in the West of a universal, cosmic religion. Johann Eckhart or Eckehart was a member of the Dominican Order or the Ordo Praedicatorum, a monastic order that distinguished itself by its intellectual aspirations. In the thirteenth century, they had, guided by their founder 42 pentagram 3/2011
Guzman, supplied most mental ammunition – and had, from Spain and the South of France, boosted hatred sufficiently – to begin the crusades against the Albigenses. In this context, they had sharpened their thinking in order to refute the statements of the Cathars. In the beginning of the fourteenth century, the members of this order were also the ones who fought the last outward and fragmented groups of Cathars – with thorough interrogations – and had, via the worldly powers, put their still remaining, individual members to death in the cruellest fashion. What nevertheless happened was that the liberating work, and all the activities, undertaken for the West on the basis of the inspiration by the brotherhood, was usually shaped within those orders, for the simple reason that there was no opportunity to do so anywhere else. This is why important attempts to achieve renewal and reformation originated within the monastic orders. Just think of Waldo, the found-
