The 13th Century German (Dominican) Mystic, Master Eckhart is after my own mind. He follows the true tradition of the Vedanta though possibly not knowing anything about it.
He took the “I” from the “I am That I am” of the Moses (God is said to have spoken that to him as per Exodus III, 14) and made it a universal spiritual currency. Christianity has always gone the other way. It glorified the God as creator and everything else as created. But Master Eckhart would have none of that.
He maintained “I am what I was, what I will remain. What I am now and ever. In that break through I become so rich that God is no more sufficient”
This was a brave move. I think he was saved from the stakes because of the abstruse nature of his philosophy. He was accused of heresy and was tried by the papal court, but seems to have escaped inquisition by the intervention of his death.
He based his theory on the analysis of three things.
1. Who is real god
2. Who am I
3. What is time?
As I stated before Eckhart believed that a person supersedes god in the trueness of one’s awareness.
To the question of Who am I? He answers one is the uncreated essence and ‘was’ and ‘will be’ eternally.
Eckhart doesn’t deny God in the real sense. He is said to be the ‘Act pure’ which combine all the three dimensions of time into one, the eternal present.
He also comes near the Kena Upanishad statement (Yasyaa matham…etc) that “those who think they know truth remains ignorant and those who think they don’t know it becomes knowledgeable about it” in his following statement.
''a man ought to be empty of his own knowledge, as he was when he did not exist”
May be he was the only one who came near to truth in his times in Europe and perhaps even much much later.
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