Signs of the true ground: Eckhart's test for a soul rooted in God

According to one master, many people arrive at specific understanding, at formal, conceptual knowledge, but few get beyond the science and the theory. Yet one person whose mind is free of concepts and forms is more dear to God than a hundred thousand who are given to discursive reasoning. God cannot enter and do his work in them because of the restlessness of their imagination. If they were free of mental images they could be caught up and carried beyond all rational concepts, as St Dionysius says, and could also hold the light of faith, which is above reason, at its starting point, where God finds the rest and peace to dwell and work in them as he wills, when he wills, and in whatever way he wills. God works in these people without hindrance, so he can do in them his most precious work of all, drawing them up through faith into himself. No one can make these people out. Their life is a riddle, and so are their ways, to anyone who does not live the same way. No one can reach this truth, this blessed life, this high and perfect fulfillment, except through abstract knowledge and pure understanding.

Many a lofty intellect, angels not excepted (for by nature an angel is nothing but pure mind), has gone astray and fallen away forever from the eternal truth, and this can also happen to those who, like the angels, hold on to their own particular way and find satisfaction in exercising their own intelligence. This is why the masters, and the saints as well, insist on the need for careful observation and close examination, to test the light that flashes in, the light of understanding and insight that a person has here in time, so that he is not deceived by illusion. If you want to know and recognize the truly sound and genuine seers of God, whom nothing can deceive or mislead, they can be known by twenty four signs.

The first sign is given to us by the chief teacher of knowledge and wisdom and understanding beyond reason, who is himself the truth, our Lord Jesus Christ. He says, 'By this you will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another and keep my commandment. What is my commandment? That you love one another as I have loved you.' It is as though he said: you may be my disciples in knowledge and wisdom and high understanding, but without true love it will do you little good, if any good at all.

Balaam was so clever that he understood what God had been trying to reveal for many hundred years. Yet this was of little help to him, because he lacked true love. And Lucifer, the angel who is in hell, had a perfectly pure intellect and to this day knows a great deal. He suffers all the more pain in hell because he failed to hold fast, with love and faith, to what he knew. The second sign is selflessness: they empty themselves of themselves, giving things free rein. The third sign: they have given themselves up entirely to God, so God works in them undisturbed. The fourth sign: wherever they still find themselves, they leave themselves behind, which is a sure way to advance. The fifth sign: they are free of all self-seeking, which gives them a clear conscience. The sixth sign: they wait on God's will without ceasing and carry it out to the utmost of their ability. The seventh sign: they bend their will to God's will until their will matches God's. The eighth sign: they fit and bind themselves to God, and God to them, so closely in the power of love that God does nothing without them and they do nothing without God. The ninth sign: they reduce themselves to nothing and make use of God in all their works, in all places, and in all things. The tenth sign: they take nothing at all from any creature, neither good nor bad, but take everything from God alone, even when God brings it about through his creature. The eleventh sign: they are not caught by any pleasure or physical enjoyment or by any creature. The twelfth sign: they are not pushed or driven by rebellion, they stand firm for the truth. The thirteenth sign: they are not misled by any false light or by the appearance of any creature, they go by what has merit in itself. The fourteenth sign: armed and equipped with all the virtues, they come out victorious from every struggle against vice. The fifteenth sign: they see and know the naked truth and praise God without ceasing for this knowledge. The sixteenth sign: perfect and just as they are, they think little of themselves. The seventeenth sign: they are sparing with words and generous with deeds. The eighteenth sign: they preach to the world through right practice. The nineteenth sign: they are always seeking God's glory and nothing else at all. The twentieth sign: if anyone fights them, they would rather let him win than accept help from anything but God. The twenty-first sign: they want neither comfort nor possessions, and consider themselves undeserving of even the least of them. The twenty-second sign: they regard themselves as the most unworthy of all people on earth, so their humility never fails. The twenty-third sign: they take the life and teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ as the perfect pattern for their own lives, and in its light they are always examining themselves, with the sole aim of removing everything in themselves unlike that high ideal. The twenty-fourth sign: to outward appearance they seem to do little, though they are working all the time at a life of virtue, and so many people think poorly of them, which they nevertheless prefer to the praise of the common crowd.

These are the signs of the true ground in which the image of perfect truth lives, and whoever does not find them in himself may consider his knowledge worthless, and so may others.