I understand that you know a great deal more about Eckhart (and probably most things) than I do, but through you, I really do get a sense of the magnificent teachings that Eckhart has given us. Although my first 50 years were spent looking at Eastern religions, I get a strong feeling 'coming home' as I listen to you and how you explain these ideas. It so helps me as I then delve into the actual sermons and lectures. Should 'I' (?) ever awaken, get to heaven, or whatever, I have to thank you because you have been such a tremendous source of help and inspiration - even if we do disagree about which image to use to represent Eckhart! Thank you so much.
I had to smile as I read this. Thank you!! I do wish we had a better picture to use for Eckhart. That one has so much of his personality. But ultimately, it’s not him. I wish we had the same kind of image that we have for Cusanus
@@goodtothinkwith Personally, I think the death mask image that you show on your pages is a better representation - but that's just my own bias of how I want to see him. A very kind and basically 'normal' image - not the dour image of Fra Teodoro. But, that's just me - it certainly doesn't stop me appreciated your lectures and admiring your understanding. I love the way you can explain some of the nuances of MHG - I just about cope with normal English!
" Somebody asked Meister Eckhart - a really religious person - "When Jesus says 'Ask and it shall be given' why don't people ask? If it is just for asking's sake, why don't people ask? If he says seek and ye shall find, and he says only knock and the doors shall be opened unto you, then why don't people knock?" Eckhart laughed and he said, "For two reasons first you may ask and it may not be given to you, so people don't want to be frustrated; second, and a deeper reason, you may ask and it may be given to you. That is more frightening." That's why people don't try. They simply pay lip-service And you know, the whole world seems to be religious in a way people go to the temple to the mosques, to the churches They read the Bible, Koran, Gita, they recite the Vedas, they do mantras, but still there seems to be no religious consciousness at all The earth is surrounded by a very, very dark cloud of unconsciousness. There seems to be no light. The night seems to be utterly dark, not even a single star. You have to be very, very aware of this, because you can do the same as people have been doing down the ages. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism - they are not true religions. They are pseudo, counterfeits. Christ is true, Christianity is false. Buddha is true, Buddhism is false. Buddhism is created by us, Buddha is not created by us; but we create Buddhism according to our needs, according to our ideas, according to our prejudices. WE create Buddha, we create Buddhism, we create a myth of Buddha. The real Buddha is not created by us. The real Buddha comes into existence IN SPITE of us. He has to fight to be! He has to find ways and means to exist. He has to find a way to get out of the prison that we call the society. But once somebody has become awakened, we gather around him and we start spinning and weaving a system around him which is all of our own making. It has nothing to do with the person at all. The stories that are told about Buddha are untrue; so are the stories about Christ. The real person is lost. We create such mist, such dust around, that nobody can see the real person. That is the work of the theologians. For two thousand years Christian theologians have been creating such dust that it is impossible to see Jesus. He is completely lost in their logic-chopping, in their theories, they have created Himalayas of words. Nobody is bothered about who this main really is, what his message is. The message is very simple, it is not complicated. The message is not that you should worship Jesus or Buddha. The message is that you should become a Christ or a Buddha - less than that won't do. Don't become a Christian, become a Christ. If you have any respect for yourself become a Christ, don't become a Christian. Become a Buddha don't become a Buddhist. No 'ism' can contain Buddha, no church can contain Christ. But the human heart can contain Buddha. ONLY the human heart can contain him, because the human heart is as infinite as the existence itself. Don't worship him outside. If you have understood Buddha, RESPECT YOURSELF! Feel reverence for your own being; that will be reverence towards Buddha. If you have understood Christ, start looking inwards - you will find him there. He is not outside, not in the churches. He is in the innermost core of your being. If religion really happens in the world there will not be religions but only a kind of religiousness, a suffused light, a quality, indefinable - just as love is or awareness is; a different quality of consciousness. And the time for it has come. And when the time for a certain idea comes, no force in the world can prevent it."
This is reminiscent of what the Benedictine monk, Cyprian Smith, said about everything being instrumental - part of the path. In Buddhism, we often hear that the rules of the order, the practices and the scriptures are not Buddhism itself, but are tools we can use on the way to Buddhism. Smith said the same thing for Christianity (in an Eckhartian spirit), which isn’t something we don’t hear often enough. People are often too wary of esotericism since it seems exclusive. But mysticism and religious experience in general are exclusive and esoteric. It’s basically admitting that there is spiritual progress and there’s no substitute for seeing it for yourself
Sorry for the interruption, but no. Not Christ conciousness. Be the Christ. Be. The same way as " be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. " "I and the Father are One." God/Chris appears AS you, me, Paul, Jesus etc. but its the same one God/Chris. " In Him we live, move and have our being. " @waterdragon2012
"Like all things in the world, its meaning is temporary and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it."
Thanks for encapsulating Eckhart without losing what he most likely wanted to say. Thanks for making discussions like this edifying and possible 🙏 As with everything else, even though it may seem that Dominicans Friars were neo-platonic , that would be like speaking for Eckhart. For the sake of completion and context, hell should be juxtaposed with Grace and Redemption via the Cross. Eckhart did not preach buddha and did not believe in detachment of service after all 😊
Clearly expounded. Interestingly this correlates to what Julian of Norwich refers when she had her 16 visions - where she says she could not see sin and sin is of no account to God - she was struggling to understand evil if God is all in all. This video has helped clarify it in my mind too - thanks.
the personality will burn in hell ,and that's awesome ,because you are no personality ,you are Being. Hell is the presence of God to those whom hate God. To a hatefull person ,the never ending love of God which encompasses all creation feels like an everlasting burning fire. You can hide from this Love through worldy attachments while in the body ... When you leave the body however ,there will be no escape from it. I don't think this will be forever though like an extremly long time ,because where you go when you leave the body ,is a place where no time exists. But no matter what happens ,no matter which path you take ,you will evnetually return from where you came from ,because you've never even left there...
@@jensbekaert166 The original question was phrased correctly: 'How should we understand the IDEA of hell?'. In your worst nightmares you wrongly identified with the person which made the dream SEEM like hell to you. Until you awakened from the dream and had to leave the personal perspective. Then you can realize the nightmare appeared in consciousness, was experienced by consciousness and consisted of nothing but consciousness. Consciousness is all there is. As in any dream. Including the dream called life. The dreamt up Jens will never leave his dreamt up body, there will just be an awakening from the dream called life to your essential nature: consciousness.
@@GeertMeertens well yes ,but one so strongly indentified with their personality will ,as i see it ,at least shortly experience immense pain because if you are still identified with the person ,yet the person will be destroyed because it can't hold on to the body anymore in death ,the forced letting go of azttachements will feel like something best described as hell ,this is what i think ppl refer to when they say that when you die you'll experience evrything you've ever done to another being ,which is how the mind perceives ,i believe, the process of forcefully letting go of attachments and the feeling of being seperated. Allthough this will be a short moment ,one can say it is eternal ,because only NOW ,the shortest moment ever ,is eternal. Allthough this proces is just as the world ,nothing more then illusion ,when the illusion is believed ,it will be experienced as true.
If we feel these desires, why are they sins? We cannot control what we desire… therefore, how can we be in sin for wanting something that we have no control over? Wouldn’t it be even worse to deny ourselves that which we want most? Isn’t that part of this short life of ours? I truly believe that we exist eternally. And if that’s the case, we’ve always existed. I know that this is going in a different direction, but if we’ve always existed, then we came here by choice. I don’t know why, exactly, but eternal existence would tell us that we made a choice. That what we consider sins might be the best part of choosing to be here. Idk… I feel like I’m rambling, but it’s clear in my head. 3:20 should we not make the best of things because soon, it’ll all be over, and that’s when we truly wake and realize that this was all like a dream.
This is an excellent topic and something that needs to be discussed since the “your desires are bad!” sentiment drives people away from religion - though perhaps the formulation “you are bad for having those desires” is even worse and more to the point. St Paul said that prohibitions water the desires (Romans 7:7-13). So there is some room for that discussion in traditional Christianity. I plan on tackling that idea in the “future of religion” series that I started with the video on Eckhart and Kierkegaard. Your idea would be relevant to a blend of Eckhart and Nietzsche. That may sound strange, but many theologians tried different forms of that in the twentieth century
@@goodtothinkwith I’ve never heard the name “Eckhart” until about 3 days ago. Since, I’ve heard it a few times. This can’t be a coincidence. Wow I was reading about his view on not letting go. That the demons we see, or are afraid of, aren’t always what we think. Thanks for your comment
Both are inventions to scare you and both require you to believe you are just a person, as in any dream. Consciousness is all there is. Look back on any dream to verify this. If consciousness is all there is, you have got be consciousness dreaming life.
I've experienced the hell scene in a dream of mine. All the people I passed by in a dungeness garage had the signs of how they died (broken glass cuts on face) as I'm looking up seemingly strapped to a gurney shadow figures look down on me as a woman's voice says he's not ready yet send him back and when I awoke I had some slight body pains also heart was racing and It felt so jarring.
Okay you could stop lying now. This is a story so that you can get likes, replies, and recognition. What is it with you guys from the third world that live on the web and write all of these outrageous comments?
Okay you can stop lying now thank you. We all know that this is just a story so that you can get likes replies and recognition. What is up with all you guys from the third world that come up with these outrageous stories and post them on all these various internet platforms? Do you guys have anything better to do?
No. Because he's not talking about "to burn" as in the chemical reaction, but rather "to burn" as in the experience a man his when he is injured by heat. It's also important that this is an entirely different world view from what we have. When he talks about "the nature of fire" he's not talking about something we think of at all in modern conversation. So trying to extrapolate in the exact same way as with modern explanations will be a mistake, because we don't necessarily have the right perspective to extrapolate properly.
I understand that you know a great deal more about Eckhart (and probably most things) than I do, but through you, I really do get a sense of the magnificent teachings that Eckhart has given us. Although my first 50 years were spent looking at Eastern religions, I get a strong feeling 'coming home' as I listen to you and how you explain these ideas. It so helps me as I then delve into the actual sermons and lectures.
Should 'I' (?) ever awaken, get to heaven, or whatever, I have to thank you because you have been such a tremendous source of help and inspiration - even if we do disagree about which image to use to represent Eckhart!
Thank you so much.
I had to smile as I read this. Thank you!! I do wish we had a better picture to use for Eckhart. That one has so much of his personality. But ultimately, it’s not him. I wish we had the same kind of image that we have for Cusanus
@@goodtothinkwith Personally, I think the death mask image that you show on your pages is a better representation - but that's just my own bias of how I want to see him. A very kind and basically 'normal' image - not the dour image of Fra Teodoro. But, that's just me - it certainly doesn't stop me appreciated your lectures and admiring your understanding. I love the way you can explain some of the nuances of MHG - I just about cope with normal English!
" Somebody asked Meister Eckhart - a really religious person - "When Jesus says 'Ask and it shall be given' why don't people ask? If it is just for asking's sake, why don't people ask? If he says seek and ye shall find, and he says only knock and the doors shall be opened unto you, then why don't people knock?" Eckhart laughed and he said, "For two reasons first you may ask and it may not be given to you, so people don't want to be frustrated; second, and a deeper reason, you may ask and it may be given to you. That is more frightening." That's why people don't try. They simply pay lip-service And you know, the whole world seems to be religious in a way people go to the temple to the mosques, to the churches They read the Bible, Koran, Gita, they recite the Vedas, they do mantras, but still there seems to be no religious consciousness at all The earth is surrounded by a very, very dark cloud of unconsciousness. There seems to be no light. The night seems to be utterly dark, not even a single star.
You have to be very, very aware of this, because you can do the same as people have been doing down the ages.
Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism - they are not true religions. They are pseudo, counterfeits. Christ is true, Christianity is false. Buddha is true, Buddhism is false. Buddhism is created by us, Buddha is not created by us; but we create Buddhism according to our needs, according to our ideas, according to our prejudices. WE create Buddha, we create Buddhism, we create a myth of Buddha. The real Buddha is not created by us. The real Buddha comes into existence IN SPITE of us. He has to fight to be! He has to find ways and means to exist. He has to find a way to get out of the prison that we call the society. But once somebody has become awakened, we gather around him and we start spinning and weaving a system around him which is all of our own making. It has nothing to do with the person at all. The stories that are told about Buddha are untrue; so are the stories about Christ. The real person is lost. We create such mist, such dust around, that nobody can see the real person. That is the work of the theologians.
For two thousand years Christian theologians have been creating such dust that it is impossible to see Jesus. He is completely lost in their logic-chopping, in their theories, they have created Himalayas of words. Nobody is bothered about who this main really is, what his message is.
The message is very simple, it is not complicated. The message is not that you should worship Jesus or Buddha. The message is that you should become a Christ or a Buddha - less than that won't do. Don't become a Christian, become a Christ. If you have any respect for yourself become a Christ, don't become a Christian. Become a Buddha don't become a Buddhist. No 'ism' can contain Buddha, no church can contain Christ. But the human heart can contain Buddha. ONLY the human heart can contain him, because the human heart is as infinite as the existence itself. Don't worship him outside. If you have understood Buddha, RESPECT YOURSELF! Feel reverence for your own being; that will be reverence towards Buddha. If you have understood Christ, start looking inwards - you will find him there. He is not outside, not in the churches. He is in the innermost core of your being.
If religion really happens in the world there will not be religions but only a kind of religiousness, a suffused light, a quality, indefinable - just as love is or awareness is; a different quality of consciousness. And the time for it has come. And when the time for a certain idea comes, no force in the world can prevent it."
This is reminiscent of what the Benedictine monk, Cyprian Smith, said about everything being instrumental - part of the path. In Buddhism, we often hear that the rules of the order, the practices and the scriptures are not Buddhism itself, but are tools we can use on the way to Buddhism. Smith said the same thing for Christianity (in an Eckhartian spirit), which isn’t something we don’t hear often enough. People are often too wary of esotericism since it seems exclusive. But mysticism and religious experience in general are exclusive and esoteric. It’s basically admitting that there is spiritual progress and there’s no substitute for seeing it for yourself
So beautiful, thank you!
I’m guessing what you mean when you say become a Christ is have Christ-consciousness? In other words, to TRULY invite Him into your heart
Sorry for the interruption, but no. Not Christ conciousness. Be the Christ. Be.
The same way as " be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. " "I and the Father are One."
God/Chris appears AS you, me, Paul, Jesus etc. but its the same one God/Chris.
" In Him we live, move and have our being. "
@waterdragon2012
@@johneleven25 how?
I found this very well explained and thought-provoking. Thank you!
So glad to hear that, thanks!!
Really Enjoy your work. Thankyou.
I’m so glad you’re enjoying it, thank you!
"Like all things in the world, its meaning is temporary and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it."
I am a German and it is true that the niht in 'daz niht in der helle brinnet" has to be translated as "nothing".
Great! Please do More Sermons, please!
Thank you so much! That’s the plan. I’m planning on doing sermon 2 and the new (1998) manuscript version of sermon 52 first
The video for Sermon 52 is coming out at 11 EST today! It’s been a long time coming 😊
Thanks for encapsulating Eckhart without losing what he most likely wanted to say. Thanks for making discussions like this edifying and possible 🙏
As with everything else, even though it may seem that Dominicans Friars were neo-platonic , that would be like speaking for Eckhart.
For the sake of completion and context, hell should be juxtaposed with Grace and Redemption via the Cross.
Eckhart did not preach buddha and did not believe in detachment of service after all 😊
You’re quite welcome - thank you for the kind words!
Clearly expounded. Interestingly this correlates to what Julian of Norwich refers when she had her 16 visions - where she says she could not see sin and sin is of no account to God - she was struggling to understand evil if God is all in all. This video has helped clarify it in my mind too - thanks.
I’m so glad it helped! That’s another figure I need to cover at some point…
@@goodtothinkwith I shall look forward to that...
How should we understand the idea of hell?
Identifying with the body/mind only (the person) and regarding the rest as other or others. A requirement for any nightmare.
the personality will burn in hell ,and that's awesome ,because you are no personality ,you are Being. Hell is the presence of God to those whom hate God. To a hatefull person ,the never ending love of God which encompasses all creation feels like an everlasting burning fire. You can hide from this Love through worldy attachments while in the body ... When you leave the body however ,there will be no escape from it. I don't think this will be forever though like an extremly long time ,because where you go when you leave the body ,is a place where no time exists. But no matter what happens ,no matter which path you take ,you will evnetually return from where you came from ,because you've never even left there...
@@jensbekaert166 The original question was phrased correctly: 'How should we understand the IDEA of hell?'. In your worst nightmares you wrongly identified with the person which made the dream SEEM like hell to you. Until you awakened from the dream and had to leave the personal perspective. Then you can realize the nightmare appeared in consciousness, was experienced by consciousness and consisted of nothing but consciousness. Consciousness is all there is. As in any dream. Including the dream called life. The dreamt up Jens will never leave his dreamt up body, there will just be an awakening from the dream called life to your essential nature: consciousness.
@@GeertMeertens well yes ,but one so strongly indentified with their personality will ,as i see it ,at least shortly experience immense pain because if you are still identified with the person ,yet the person will be destroyed because it can't hold on to the body anymore in death ,the forced letting go of azttachements will feel like something best described as hell ,this is what i think ppl refer to when they say that when you die you'll experience evrything you've ever done to another being ,which is how the mind perceives ,i believe, the process of forcefully letting go of attachments and the feeling of being seperated. Allthough this will be a short moment ,one can say it is eternal ,because only NOW ,the shortest moment ever ,is eternal. Allthough this proces is just as the world ,nothing more then illusion ,when the illusion is believed ,it will be experienced as true.
If we feel these desires, why are they sins? We cannot control what we desire… therefore, how can we be in sin for wanting something that we have no control over? Wouldn’t it be even worse to deny ourselves that which we want most? Isn’t that part of this short life of ours? I truly believe that we exist eternally. And if that’s the case, we’ve always existed. I know that this is going in a different direction, but if we’ve always existed, then we came here by choice. I don’t know why, exactly, but eternal existence would tell us that we made a choice. That what we consider sins might be the best part of choosing to be here. Idk… I feel like I’m rambling, but it’s clear in my head. 3:20 should we not make the best of things because soon, it’ll all be over, and that’s when we truly wake and realize that this was all like a dream.
This is an excellent topic and something that needs to be discussed since the “your desires are bad!” sentiment drives people away from religion - though perhaps the formulation “you are bad for having those desires” is even worse and more to the point. St Paul said that prohibitions water the desires (Romans 7:7-13). So there is some room for that discussion in traditional Christianity. I plan on tackling that idea in the “future of religion” series that I started with the video on Eckhart and Kierkegaard. Your idea would be relevant to a blend of Eckhart and Nietzsche. That may sound strange, but many theologians tried different forms of that in the twentieth century
@@goodtothinkwith I’ve never heard the name “Eckhart” until about 3 days ago. Since, I’ve heard it a few times. This can’t be a coincidence. Wow I was reading about his view on not letting go. That the demons we see, or are afraid of, aren’t always what we think. Thanks for your comment
What would be the difference between hell and purgatory then
Both are inventions to scare you and both require you to believe you are just a person, as in any dream. Consciousness is all there is. Look back on any dream to verify this. If consciousness is all there is, you have got be consciousness dreaming life.
I've experienced the hell scene in a dream of mine. All the people I passed by in a dungeness garage had the signs of how they died (broken glass cuts on face) as I'm looking up seemingly strapped to a gurney shadow figures look down on me as a woman's voice says he's not ready yet send him back and when I awoke I had some slight body pains also heart was racing and It felt so jarring.
Okay you could stop lying now. This is a story so that you can get likes, replies, and recognition. What is it with you guys from the third world that live on the web and write all of these outrageous comments?
Okay you can stop lying now thank you. We all know that this is just a story so that you can get likes replies and recognition. What is up with all you guys from the third world that come up with these outrageous stories and post them on all these various internet platforms? Do you guys have anything better to do?
Well, that was easy🤷 Glad we got that out of the way.
Silent Hill 2 awaits
I remember silent hill
The parable of the coal suggests the position that nothing burns anything
No. Because he's not talking about "to burn" as in the chemical reaction, but rather "to burn" as in the experience a man his when he is injured by heat.
It's also important that this is an entirely different world view from what we have. When he talks about "the nature of fire" he's not talking about something we think of at all in modern conversation. So trying to extrapolate in the exact same way as with modern explanations will be a mistake, because we don't necessarily have the right perspective to extrapolate properly.
i think it means that when you are one with God ,one with evrything ,that then you are one with fire aswell ,and fire can't burn itself.
The devil has no being. The devil is the lie. The devil is an archetypal figure that represents the ego which is pure illusion.