On detachment: Eckhart's treatise on letting go of all things

I have read many writings of heathen philosophers and sages, of the old covenant and of the new, and I have searched carefully and with all diligence for the best and highest virtue by which a person can bind himself most closely to God and become most like his exemplar, as he was in God, where there was no difference between himself and God, before God created any creature. And having gone as deep into these scriptures as I am able, I find it is nothing other than complete detachment from all creatures.

* See also Speculum, B. 4.

As our Lord said to Martha, unum est necessarium, 'one thing is needful,' which is as good as saying: whoever wants to be serene and pure needs only one thing, detachment.

Our teachers sing the praises of love, as did St Paul, who said, 'Whatever I do, if I do not have love, I am nothing.' But I rank detachment above any love, for two reasons. First, because at best love forces me to love God. Now it is far better for me to force God to come to me than for me to be forced to go to God. My eternal happiness depends on God and me becoming one, but God is better able to adapt himself to me and can communicate with me more easily than I can communicate with God. Detachment forces God to come to me, and this can be shown as follows. Everything wants to be in its own natural state. But God's own natural state is unity and purity, and these come from detachment. So God is bound to give himself to a heart that is detached. Second, I rank detachment above love because love forces me to suffer all things for God's sake, while detachment forces me to let in nothing but God. Now it is far better to allow nothing but God than to suffer all things for God's sake. For in suffering one still has regard to creatures, since that is where the suffering comes from, but detachment is free of all creatures. Further, I can show that detachment lets in nothing but God in this way: whatever is received must be received into something. But detachment comes so close to nothing that there is nothing empty enough to hold this detachment except God. He is so simple, so without substance, that he can dwell in a heart that is utterly alone. Detachment, then, admits God alone. Whatever is received is received and grasped by the receiver according to the nature of the receiver, and so whatever is conceived is known and understood according to the mind of the one who understands it, not according to its own capacity to be known.

And the masters praise humility above most other virtues. I rank detachment above any humility, for these reasons. Humility can exist without detachment, but complete detachment is impossible without humility. Perfect humility means emptying the self to nothing, but detachment comes so close to nothing that there is no room left between zero and complete detachment. So without humility there is no complete detachment. And besides, two virtues are always better than one. Here is another reason I put detachment above humility: humility means lowering oneself before all creatures, and in that very lowering one goes out of oneself toward creatures. But detachment stays within itself. Now no going out, however excellent, is better than staying in. As the prophet says, omnis gloria filiae regis ab intus, 'the king's daughter is all glorious within.' Perfect detachment has no regard at all, neither lowliness nor loftiness, toward creatures. It has no wish to be below nor to be above. It wants only to be master of itself, loving no one and hating no one, having neither likeness nor unlikeness, neither this nor that, to any creature. The only thing it wants is to be nothing. But it does not want to be this or that at all. Whoever is this or that is something, but detachment is altogether nothing. It leaves all things untouched.

Here someone may object: but surely in our Lady all the virtues were present in perfection, and among them complete detachment. Now granting that detachment is better than humility, why did our Lady glory in her lowliness rather than her detachment, saying, quia respexit dominus humilitatem ancillae suae, 'because he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden'?

I answer that in God there is detachment as well as humility, as far as virtues can be attributed to God at all. Know that it was his loving humility that made God stoop to enter human nature, while he remained within himself as motionless as he was while he created the heavens and the earth, as I will show you later. And since our Lord, when he chose to become man, continued in his motionless detachment, by that same token our Lady knew that he expected the same of her, even though for that moment he had regard specifically to her lowliness and not to her detachment. So, remaining unmoved in her detachment, she still gloried in her lowliness and not in her detachment. Had she for even a moment remembered her detachment and said, 'He regarded my detachment,' her detachment would have been disturbed by that very thought and would not have remained whole and perfect, since a going forth would have taken place. Any event, however small, will always disturb detachment to some degree. There you have the explanation of why our Lady gloried in her lowliness and not in her detachment. The prophet says, audiam, quid loquatur in me dominus deus, 'I will listen to what the Lord God says within me,' as if to say: if God wants to speak with me, he must come in, for I will not go out. It is Boethius who exclaims, 'You men, why do you look outside for what is within you?'

I prize detachment above mercy too, for mercy means nothing other than a person going out of himself because of his fellow creature's need, which disturbs his heart. Detachment is free of this. It stays within itself, allowing nothing to disturb it. In short, when I consider all the virtues, I find none so entirely free of fault, so fit to unite with God, as detachment.

It was Avicenna the philosopher who said, 'The detached mind is of such nobility that what it sees is true, what it desires comes to pass, and its commands must be obeyed.' For you should know that when the free mind is wholly detached, it compels God toward itself, and if it could remain without form and without anything added to it, it would take on the nature of God. But God grants this to no one but himself, so the most God can do for the solitary soul is make it a gift of himself. The person who is in complete detachment is carried away into eternity, where nothing temporal touches him, and he is not aware of anything mortal at all. He has the world entirely dead to him, having no taste for anything earthly. St Paul meant this when he said, 'I live, and yet not I: Christ lives in me.'

Perhaps you will say, what then is detachment, that it should be so noble in itself? True detachment means a mind as little moved by what happens to it, by joy and sorrow, honor and disgrace, as a broad mountain is moved by a gentle breeze. This kind of motionless detachment makes a person supremely like God. For God is God because of his motionless detachment, and it is from his detachment that he gets his purity, his simplicity, and his unchangeableness. If a person is going to be like God, as much as any creature can resemble God, it will be through detachment. This leads to purity, and from purity to simplicity, and from simplicity to immovability, and these three are what make up the likeness between man and God, a likeness that exists in grace, for it is grace that draws a person away from mortal things and cleanses him from what is corruptible. I would have you know that to be empty of creatures is to be full of God, and to be full of creatures is to be empty of God.

Now it should be remembered that in this unchanging detachment God has always stood and still stands. Know too that when God created the heavens and the earth, it would have made no difference to his detachment if he had made nothing at all. In fact I say more: prayers and good works done by a person in time affect the divine detachment no more than if no prayers or good works had ever happened in time, nor is God any more kindly disposed toward that person than if his prayers and deeds had never been done at all. Further I declare that when the Son in his Godhead chose to become man and suffered martyrdom, God's motionless detachment was no more disturbed than if he had never become man.

Perhaps you will say, I take it then that prayers and good deeds are all useless, since God cares too little about them to be affected by them. And yet they say God likes to be asked on every occasion.

Now notice, and try to grasp if you can, that in his first eternal glance, if we may assume such a thing as a first glance, God saw all things as they would happen, and in that same glance he saw both when and how he would make creatures. He saw the humblest prayer that would ever be offered, the smallest good deed anyone would ever do, and he saw as well which prayers and which devotions he would hear. He saw that tomorrow you would call upon him earnestly, pleading urgently, and it is not tomorrow, for the first time, that God will grant your request and your prayer: he has already granted it in his eternity before you ever became a person. Suppose your prayer is foolish or lacks earnestness: God does not refuse it then, he has already refused it in his eternity. So God, who has seen everything in that first eternal glance, acts from no 'why' at all, since everything is already settled.

And though God remains always in motionless detachment, people's prayers and good works are not therefore useless, for whoever does well is well rewarded. As Philippus says, 'God the creator holds all things in the course and order he gave them from the beginning.' For him nothing is past and nothing is future, and he has loved all his saints just as he foresaw them before the world ever came to be. Yet when the things he thought out in eternity come to pass in time, people think that God has changed his mind, though whether he seems angry or kind, it is we who change, and he remains the same, just as sunlight hurts weak eyes and benefits strong ones while the light itself stays unchanged. God does not see in time, and his outlook is not renewed. Isidore argues this way in his book on the highest good. He says people are always asking what God did before he created the heavens and the earth, and where this new will to make creatures came from in God. His answer is that no new will ever arose in God, for although the creature was not yet in itself what it is now, it was from eternity in God and in his mind. God did not make the heavens and the earth the way we would say, man-fashion, 'Let them be!' Rather, all creatures are spoken in his eternal Word. Moses said to God, 'Lord, if Pharaoh asks me who you are, what shall I say?' And God replied, 'Say, He-who-is has sent me.' In other words: he who is unchanging in himself, he it is who has sent me.

Here someone may object: but was Christ in motionless detachment when he cried, 'My soul is sorrowful even to death'? Or Mary, as she stood beneath his cross, where so much is said of her weeping? How can any of this fit with motionless detachment? Know then that according to the philosophers there are two people in everyone. One, the outward person, belongs to his objective nature. This person is served by the five senses, though he is given energy by the power of the soul. The other, the inward person, belongs to man's inner, subjective nature. Now I would have you know that the person whose mind is set on God uses his soul's powers on his outward self no more than the five senses truly require, and his inward self turns to the five senses only so far as needed to guide and watch over them, so that they are not put to the kind of base uses they are so often put to by those who live by their lower appetites, like mindless beasts, and who deserve the name of beast more than the name of man. Whatever strength of soul is left over, beyond what is spent on the five senses, the soul gives to the inward person, and if it is drawn toward some high undertaking, the soul will call back all the powers lent out to the five senses, and then the person is said to be senseless and rapt away, with his attention fixed either on some form beyond understanding or some content of thought beyond all form. Remember, God asks every spiritual person to love him with all the powers of the soul. 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,' he says. Some people spend all their soul's powers on the outward self, namely those whose thoughts and feelings are fixed on passing goods, entirely unaware that they have an inward self at all. And just as the virtuous person will sometimes withdraw all the powers of the soul from the outward self when setting out on some high undertaking, so the bestial person will strip his inward self of all its powers and spend them on the outward self. It should also be understood that the outward self can be active while the inward self remains entirely still and unmoved. Now in Christ too there was an outward and an inward person, and likewise in our Lady, and whatever Christ and our Lady said about outward things came from their outward self, while the inward self remained in motionless detachment. So it was when Christ said, 'My soul is sorrowful unto death.' And despite her weeping and the various things she said, our Lady, in her inward self, remained always in motionless detachment. Take an illustration. The door swings back and forth on its hinge. I compare the outward door to the outward person, and the hinge to the inward person. As the door opens and shuts, it swings back and forth, while the hinge stays in the same place, unmoved, undergoing no change. And it is the same here.

What then, I ask, is the object of absolute detachment? I answer that the object of absolute detachment is neither this nor that. It is nothing at all, for it is the point where God can do exactly as he wills. God cannot have his way in every heart, for though God is almighty, he cannot work except where he finds readiness or makes it. I add, or makes it, because of Saint Paul, in whom he found no readiness but whom he made ready by pouring in his grace. So I say that God works according to the aptitude he finds. He works differently in a man and in a stone, and for this we have a natural comparison. If you heat a baker's oven and put into it dough, some made of barley, some of oats, some of wheat and some of rye, then even though the heat in the oven is the same throughout, it does not affect all the doughs alike. One yields a fine bread, another a coarser one, and a third coarser still. The difference lies entirely in the material. Nor does God affect every heart alike, but according to the readiness and capacity he finds there. In any heart that holds on to this or that there is something that hinders God's highest work. For a heart to be perfectly ready it must be perfectly empty, and this is its only condition.

Take another common example. Suppose I want to write on a white tablet. Then anything already written there, however good it may be, will get in my way and stop me from writing. Before I can write I must erase completely whatever is already on the tablet, which is never better suited for my writing than when there is nothing on it at all. So too, for God to write his very best within my heart, everything called this or that must be driven out of my heart, leaving it entirely without attachment. God is free to work his sovereign will when the object of this solitary heart is neither this nor that.

Then again I ask, what is the prayer of the solitary heart? I answer that detachment and emptiness cannot pray at all, for whoever prays wants something from God, something added to them or something taken away. But the heart that is detached wants nothing and has nothing it needs to be freed from. So it has no prayers at all. Its only prayer is to be made one with God, uniform with him. In this sense we might take Saint Dionysius's comment on Saint Paul's saying, 'Many run, but only one receives the prize.' All the powers of the soul compete for the crown, which belongs to the essence alone. According to Dionysius, this running is nothing other than the flight from the creature into union with the uncreated nature. When the soul reaches this, she loses her name. God absorbs her into himself so that, as a separate self, she comes to nothing, just as the sunlight swallows the dawn and reduces it to nothing. Nothing brings the soul to this point except absolute detachment. Here it is fitting to quote Saint Augustine's saying: 'The soul has a private door into the divine nature, at the point where, for her, all things come to nothing.' This door on earth is nothing other than absolute detachment. At the height of her detachment she is ignorant with knowing, without love in her loving, dark

Here too we might quote a master's words: blessed are the poor in spirit, who have given back to God all things just as he possessed them when we did not yet exist. No one can do this except a heart wholly without attachment.

That God would rather be in a solitary heart than in anything else, I argue this way, starting from your question: what does God seek in all things? I answer in his own words from the Book of Wisdom: 'In all things I seek rest.' Now there is nowhere perfect rest except in a detached heart. Therefore God is happier there than in any other thing or virtue. Know that the more we are disposed to receive the God who flows into us, the happier we will be. Perfect receptivity gives perfect happiness. Now one becomes receptive to the influence of God only through being made uniform with God. As a person's uniformity with God is, so is their sense of God flowing into them. Uniformity comes from submission to God, and the more one is subject to creatures, the less one is uniform with God. But the heart that is wholly detached and empty of all creatures, being completely subject to God and uniform with him in the highest degree, is fully open to his divine inflow. This is why Saint Paul urges us to 'put on Christ,' that is, to take on uniformity with Christ. For know this: when Christ became man, he did not take on a particular man, he took on human nature. Go out of all things yourself, and then what remains is what Christ put on alone, and you have put on Christ.

Whoever wants to know the value and purpose of absolute detachment should take to heart Christ's words to his disciples about his human nature: 'It is good for you that I go away. If I do not go away, the Comforter cannot come to you.' It is as if he were saying, you love my visible form too much for the perfect love of the Holy Spirit to be yours. So set aside the form and unite with the formless essence, for God's spiritual comfort is not something you can grasp with the senses, and it is offered only to those who despise every merely human consolation.

Listen, good people, all of you: no one is happier than the one who stands in complete detachment. No earthly, bodily pleasure comes without bringing some spiritual harm along with it, for the flesh desires things that run against the spirit, and the spirit desires things that oppose the flesh. Whoever sows the seeds of love in the flesh reaps death, but whoever sows good seeds of love in the spirit reaps eternal life from the spirit. The more a person flees from creatures, the faster their creator comes to them. Consider this, all you thoughtful souls. If even the love we are given to feel for the bodily form of Christ can keep us from receiving the Holy Spirit, how much more must we be kept from reaching God by an excessive love of the comforts of creatures? Detachment is the best of all things, for it cleanses the soul, clears the mind, kindles the heart and wakes the spirit. It sharpens desire and strengthens virtue, giving insight into God. It separates us from the creature and makes us one with God, for love apart from God is like water thrown into fire, but love united with God is like honey in the honeycomb. Listen, all rational souls: the swiftest horse to carry you to your goal is suffering. No one will ever taste eternal joy except those who stand with Christ in the depths of bitterness.

Nothing is more bitter than gall except suffering, and nothing is as sweet as honey except having suffered. The surest foundation for this perfection is humility, for whoever here creeps in the deepest depths of their nature will rise in spirit to the highest height of the Godhead, for joy brings sorrow and sorrow brings joy. People's ways are many. One lives this way, another that way. Whoever wants to reach the highest life while still here in time should take, in a few words drawn from all of scripture, the summary of the way of life that I will now set down.

Keep yourself detached from all people. Keep yourself free of everything that comes to you as an image from outside. Free yourself from everything that brings addition, attachment or burden, and turn your mind at all times toward a saving contemplation in which you hold God fixed within your heart as the one object your eyes never leave. Let every other discipline, fasting, vigils, prayers, or whatever it may be, serve this as its end, using no more of them than is needed for this purpose, and so you will reach the goal of all perfection.

Here someone might object: but who can keep up unwavering contemplation of the divine object? I answer, no one living here in time. This is told to you only so that you may know the highest thing, the thing on which your hopes and desires should be set. But when this vision is taken from you, if you are a good person you will feel as though you have been robbed of your eternal happiness, and then you should return to it at once so that it may come to you again. And in all this you must watch your thoughts closely at all times, and let their goal and refuge be this, as far as you are able. Lord God, glory be to you forever. Amen.