To this mountain
you will ascend
only if you remain still
understanding!
That path leads you
to an amazing desert,
which stretches endlessly
wide and far.
That desert has no place
and has no time,
it has its own way of being.
Through that untouched desert,
where the created understanding
has never stepped
and will never step,
through that desert is Good:
You know it exists; yet no one
knows what it is!
It is here, it is there,
close and far,
deep, high,
and yet at the same time
neither this nor that.
My soul,
come out! O God, enter!
Let all my being
drown in God, who is non-being,
who is a river without a bottom!
If I flee from You,
You will come to me.
If I lose myself,
I will find You,
O sovereign good!
(poems attributed to Meister Eckhart OP /1260–1327/,
poems from youth, IV, V, VIII)
