by Meister Eckhart

On Detachment — in Latin De Aversione et Conversione, in the Pfeiffer edition Von Abgeschiedenheit — is the ninth tractate in C. de B. Evans's 1924 translation of Franz Pfeiffer's collected works of Meister Eckhart. It is one of Eckhart's most celebrated and most argued-over texts: a sustained philosophical case that detachment, understood as the complete emptying of the self from all attachment to creature, surpasses every other virtue — love, humility, mercy — in drawing the soul toward God. The argument is bold even by Eckhart's standards. He does not merely rank detachment highly; he demonstrates, systematically and with a craftsman's pleasure in the demonstration, why nothing else comes close.

Eckhart (c. 1260–1328) was a Dominican friar, theologian, and mystic, born in Hochheim in Thuringia. He studied and taught in Paris, held the chair of theology at Cologne, served as Prior of Erfurt and Vicar of Thuringia and Bohemia, and rose to the rank of Vicar-General of the Bohemian province. In 1326 the Archbishop of Cologne brought heresy charges against him; Eckhart appealed directly to the Pope, died in 1328 before the verdict, and was posthumously condemned in the bull In Agro Dominico (1329). His influence ran deep into the Rhineland mystics — Tauler, Suso, Ruusbroec — and through them into the whole tradition of Christian mystical theology. D.T. Suzuki declared him the one Western mystic who could speak the language of Zen.

This archive presents the complete text of the tractate in the translation of C. de B. Evans, published in London by John M. Watkins, 1924, as Volume I of his edition of Meister Eckhart's works. Evans translated from Franz Pfeiffer's 1857 critical edition of the Middle High German text (Deutsche Mystiker des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. ii), where the work appears as Tractate IX. Source digitised at the Internet Archive (identifiers: meistereckhart0001eckh; in.ernet.dli.2015.31707). The tractate is reproduced here as a public-domain archival text.

I have read many writings of heathen philosophers and sages, of the old covenant and of the new, and have sought earnestly and with all diligence which is the best and highest virtue whereby a man may knit himself most narrowly to God and wherein he is most like to his exemplar, as he was in God, wherein was no difference between himself and God, ere God created creature. And having approfounded all these scriptures to the best of my ability, I find it is none other than absolute detachment from all creatures.

As our Lord said to Martha, 'unum est necessarium,' which is as good as saying, He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.

Our doctors sing love's praises, as did St Paul, who said, 'Whatsoever things I do and have not charity I am nothing.' But I extol detachment above any love. First, because at best love constrains me to love God. Now it is far better my constraining God to me than for me to be constrained to God. My eternal happiness depends on God and me becoming one ; but God is apter to adapt himself to me and can easier communicate with me than I can communicate with God. Detachment forces God to come to me, and this is shown as follows. Everything is fain to be in its own natural state. But God's own natural state is unity and purity and these come from detachment. Hence God is bound to give himself to a heart detached. — Secondly, I rank detachment above love because love constrains me to suffer all things for God's sake : detachment constrains me to admit nothing but God. Now it is far better to tolerate nothing but God than to suffer all things for God's sake. For in suffering one has regard to creatures, whence the suffering comes, but detachment is immune from creature. Further, that detachment admits of none but God I demonstrate in this wise : anything received must be received in aught. But detachment is so nearly naught that there is nothing rare enough to stay in this detachment, except God. He is so simple, so ethereal, that he can sojourn in the solitary heart. Detachment then admits of God alone. That which is received is received and grasped by its receiver according to the mode of the receiver ; and so anything conceived is known and understood according to the mind of him who understands and not according to its own innate conceivability.

And humility the masters laud beyond most other virtues. I rank detachment before any meekness and for the following reasons. Meekness can be without detachment, but complete detachment is impossible without humility. Perfect humility is a matter of self-naughting ; but detachment so narrowly approximates to naught that no room remains for aught betwixt zero and absolute detachment. Wherefore without humility is no complete detachment. Withal two virtues are always better than one. — Another reason why I put detachment higher than humility is this : humility means abasing self before all creatures and in that same abasement one goes out of oneself to creatures. But detachment abideth in itself. Now no going out however excellent, but staying in is better still. As the prophet hath it, 'omnis gloria filiae regis ab intus,' the king's daughter is all glorious within. Perfect detachment is without regard, without either lowliness or loftiness to creatures : it has no mind to be below nor yet to be above ; it is minded to be master of itself, loving none and hating none, having neither likeness nor unlikeness, neither this nor that, to any creature ; the only thing it fain would be is same. But to be either this or that it does not want at all. He who is this or that is aught ; but detachment is altogether naught. It leaves things unmolested.

Here someone may object, But surely in our Lady all the virtues flourished in perfection and among them absolute detachment. Now granting that detachment is better than humility, why did our Lady glory in her lowliness instead of her detachment, saying, 'quia respexit dominus humilitatem ancillae suae' : 'He regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden' ?

I answer that, in God there is detachment and humility as well, so far as virtues can be attributed to God. Know, it was his loving meekness that made God stoop to enter human nature while it remained within itself as motionless, what time he was made man, as it was while he created the heavens and the earth, as I shall show you later. And seeing that our Lord when he chose to be made man did persist in his motionless detachment, by that same token did our Lady know that he expected her to do the same, albeit for the nonce he had regard expressly to her lowliness and not to her detachment. So remaining unmoved in her detachment she yet gloried in her lowliness and not in her detachment. Had she but once remembered her detachment to say, 'He regarded my detachment,' her detachment would by that have been disturbed and would not have been absolute and perfect since a going forth has taken place. Any event, however insignificant, will always cause some troubling of detachment. There you have the explanation of our Lady's glorying in her lowliness instead of her detachment. Quoth the prophet, 'audiam, quid loquatur in me dominus deus,' 'I will be still and listen to what my Lord and my God may be saying within me,' as though to say, if God would parley with me then he must come in for I will not go out. It is Boëthius who exclaims, 'Ye men, why do ye look without for that which is within you?'

I prize detachment more than mercy too, for mercy means naught else but a man's going forth of self by reason of his fellow-creatures' lack, whereby his heart is wrung. Detachment is exempt from this ; it stays within itself permitting nothing to disturb it. In short, when I reflect on all the virtues I find not one so wholly free from fault, so unitive to God as is detachment.

It was Avicenna the philosopher who said, 'The mind detached is of such nobility that what it sees is true, what it desires befalls and its behests must be obeyed.' For you must know that when the free mind is quite detached it constrains God to itself and could it remain formless and free from adventitiousness it would take on the nature of God. But God grants this to none beside himself ; so God can do no more for the solitary soul than make it a present of himself. The man who is in absolute detachment is rapt away into eternity where nothing temporal affects him nor is he in the least aware of any mortal thing ; he has the world well dead, he having no relish for aught earthly. St Paul meant this when he declared, 'I live and yet not I : Christ liveth in me.'

Peradventure thou wilt say, What then is detachment that it should be so noble in itself ? — True detachment means a mind as little moved by what befalls, by joy and sorrow, honour and disgrace, as a broad mountain by a gentle breeze. Such motionless detachment makes a man superlatively Godlike. For that God is God is due to his motionless detachment, and it is from his detachment that he gets his purity and his simplicity and his immutability. If then a man is going to be like God, so far as any creature can resemble God, it will be by detachment. This leads to purity and from purity to simplicity and from simplicity to immovability ; and it is these three which constitute the likeness between man and God, which likeness is in grace, for it is grace which draws a man away from mortal things and purges him from things 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 must be remembered that in this immutable detachment God has stood for aye and does still stand. Know also, that when God created the heavens and the earth he might not have been making anything at all for all that it affected his detachment. Nay, I say more : prayers and good works wrought by a man in time affect no more the divine detachment than if no prayers nor virtuous works had come to pass in time ; nor is God any kindlier disposed towards that wight than if his prayers and deeds had all been left undone. Further I declare, when the Son in his Godhead was pleased to be made man and was and suffered martyrdom, God's motionless detachment was no more disturbed than if he had never been made man.

Haply thou wilt say, I gather then, that prayers and virtuous deeds are all in vain ; God takes too little interest in them to be affected by them. And yet they say God likes to be entreated upon all occasions.

Now mark, and realize if possible, that in his first eternal glance (if a first glance may be assumed), God saw all things as they would happen and he saw in that same glance both when and how he would make creatures. He saw the humblest prayer that would be offered, the least good deed that anyone would do and saw withal which prayers and which devotions he would hear. He saw that to-morrow thou shalt call upon him earnestly, urgently entreating him ; and not for the first time to-morrow will God grant thy supplication and thy prayer : he has granted it already in his eternity ere ever thou becamest man. Suppose thy prayer is foolish or lacking earnestness, God will deny it thee not then, he has denied it thee already in his eternity. Thus God, who has seen everything in that first eternal glance, in no wise acts from any why at all, for everything is a foregone conclusion.

And though God does stay all the while in motionless detachment yet are men's prayers and virtuous works not all in vain, he who does well being well rewarded. As Philippus says, 'God creator holds all things in the course and order he has given them from the beginning.' With him nothing is past and nothing future, who has loved all his saints even as he foresaw them ere ever the world became. Yet when there come to pass in time the things he speculated in eternity then people think that God has changed his mind, though whether he be wrathful or benignant it is we who change and he remains the same ; just as the sunshine hurts weak eyes and benefits the strong ones what time the light itself remains unchanged. God does not see in time nor is his outlook subject to renewal. Isodorus argues in this sense in his book on the Arch-Good. He says, People are always asking what God did before he created the heavens and the earth and whence there came to God the new will to make creatures ? His answer is that no new will at all arose in God ; for what though creature was not in itself as it is now yet it was from eternity in God and in his mind. God did not make the heavens and the earth as we should say, man-fashion, 'Let them be !' but creatures are all spoken in his eternal Word. Moses said to God, 'Lord, if Pharaoh ask me who thou art, what am I to say ?' And God replied, 'Say, He-who-is hath sent me.' Or in other words, He who is unchanging in himself, he it is hath sent me.

Here someone may object, But was Christ in motionless detachment when he cried, 'My soul is sorrowful even unto death !' Or Mary when she stood beneath his cross ? yet much is said about her lamentations. How is all this compatible with motionless detachment ? — Know then, that according to philosophers there are in everyone two men : one, the outward man, is his objective nature ; this man is served by the five senses, albeit he is energised by the power of the soul. The other one, the inner man, is man's subjective nature. Now I would have you know that the Godly-minded man employs his soul-powers in his outward man no more than his five senses really need it ; and his interior man only has recourse to the five senses so far as it is guide and keeper to these five senses and can stop them being put to bestial uses as they so often are by those who live according to the baser appetites, as do the mindless beasts, and who deserve the name of beast rather than that of man. What surplus energy she has beyond what she expends on her five senses the soul bestows upon her inner man, and supposing he has toward some right high endeavour she will call in all the powers she has loaned to the five senses and then the man is said to be senseless and rapt away, his object being either some unintelligible form or some formless intelligible. Remember, God requires every spiritual man to love him with all the powers of his soul. 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,' he says. Some squander all their soul-powers on their outward man. Namely, those whose thoughts and feelings hinge on temporal goods, all unwitting of an inner man. And even as the virtuous man will now and then deprive his outward self of all the powers of the soul what time he is embarking on some high adventure, so bestial man will rob his inner self of all its soul-powers to expend them on his outer man. Withal it must be realized that the outward man is able to be active and leave the inward man entirely passive and unmoved. Now in Christ too existed an outward and an inward man and also in our Lady, and what Christ and our Lady said concerning outward things was prompted by their outward man, the inner man remaining in motionless detachment. So was it when Christ said, 'My soul is sorrowful unto death.' And despite her lamentations and various things she said, Our Lady, in her inner man, stood all the while in motionless detachment. Take an illustration. The door goes to and fro upon its hinges. Now the projecting door I liken to the outward man and the hinge I liken to the inner man. As it shuts and opens the door swings to and fro while the hinge remains unmoved in the same place without undergoing any change. And likewise 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 absolutely nothing, for it is the culminating point where God can do precisely as he will. God cannot have his way in every heart, for though God is almighty yet he cannot work except where he finds readiness or makes it. I add, or makes it, by reason of St Paul in whom he found no readiness but whom he did make ready by infusion of his grace ; wherefore I affirm, God works according to the aptitude he finds. He works differently in man and in a stone, and for this we have a natural analogy. If you heat a baker's oven and place in it the dough, some made of barley, some of oats and some of wheat and some of rye, then albeit in the oven the heat is all the same it does not tell alike on all the doughs, but one yields a fine bread, another one more coarse and a third a coarser still. The heat is not to blame : it is the material which differs. Nor does God tell alike on every heart but according to the readiness and the capacity he finds. In any heart containing this or that there is something to hinder God's highest operation. For a heart to be perfectly ready it has to be perfectly empty, this being its condition of maximum capacity. To take another common illustration. Suppose I want to write on a white tablet, then anything already written there, however excellent it be, will interfere and hinder me from writing ; ere I can write I must erase completely whatever is already on the tablet which is never better fitted for me to write upon than when there is nothing there at all. And so for God to write his very best within my heart everything dubbed this or that must be ousted from my heart leaving it quite without attachment. God is free to work his sovran 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 whoso prays desires of God something : something added to him or something taken from him. But the heart detached has no desire for anything nor has it anything to be delivered from. So it has no prayers at all ; its only prayer consists in being uniform with God. In this sense we may take St Dionysius' comment on the saying of St Paul, 'Many there be that run but one receiveth the prize.' All the powers of the soul competing for the crown which falls to the essence alone. According to Dionysius this running is none other than the flight from creature to union with uncreated nature. Attaining this the soul loses her name ; God absorbs her in himself so that as self she comes to naught, just as the sunlight swallows up the dawn and naughts it. To this pass nothing brings the soul but absolute detachment. And here it is germane to quote St Augustine's dictum : 'The soul has a private door into divine nature at the point where for her things all come to naught.' This door on earth is none other than absolute detachment. At the height of her detachment she is ignorant with knowing, loveless with loving, dark with enlightenment.

Here too we might cite a master's words, Blessed are the spiritual poor who have abandoned unto God all things as he possessed them when we existed not. This none can do but a heart wholly without attachment.

That God would sooner be in a solitary heart than any other, I argue in this fashion. Starting from thy question, What does God seek in all things ? I answer in his words out of the Book of Wisdom, 'In all things I seek rest.' Now there is nowhere perfect rest save in a heart detached. Ergo, God is happier there than in any other thing or virtue. Know that the more we are disposed to receive the inflowing God, the more happy we shall be ; perfect receptivity gives perfect felicity. Now one makes oneself receptive to the influence of God only by dint of uniformity with God ; as a man's uniformity with God so is his sense of the inflow of God. Uniformity comes of subjection to God, and the more one is subject to creature the less one is uniform with God. But the heart which is quite detached and all devoid of creatures, being utterly subject to God and uniform with God in the highest measure, is wholly receptive of his divine inflow. Hence St Paul's exhortation to 'Put on Christ,' i.e. uniformity with Christ. For know, when Christ was made man it was not a certain man that he assumed, he assumed human nature. Do thou go out of all things, then there remains alone what Christ put on and thou hast put on Christ.

Whoso has a mind to know the excellence and use of absolute detachment let him lay to heart Christ's words to his disciples touching his manhood : 'It is good for you that I go away ; if I go not away the comforter cannot come unto you' ; as though to say, ye have too much love for my visible form for the perfect love of the Holy Ghost to be yours. Wherefore discard the form and unite with the formless essence, for God's ghostly comfort is intangible and is not offered save to those alone who despise all mortal consolations.

List ye, good people all : there is none happier than he who stands in uttermost detachment. No temporal, carnal pleasure but brings some ghostly mischief in its train, for the flesh lusts after things that run counter to the spirit and spirit lusts for things that are repugnant to the flesh. He who sows the tares of love in flesh reaps death but he who sows good love-seed in the spirit reaps of the spirit eternal life. The more man flees from creatures the faster hastens to him their creator. Consider, all ye thoughtful souls ! If even the love which it is given us to feel for the bodily form of Christ can keep us from receiving the Holy Ghost then how much more must we be kept from getting God by inordinate love of creature comforts ? Detachment is the best of all, for it cleanses the soul, clarifies the mind, kindles the heart and wakes the spirit ; it quickens desire and enhances virtue giving intuition of God ; it detaches creature and makes her one with God ; for love disjoined from God is as water in the fire, but love in union is like the honeycomb in honey. Harkee, all rational souls ! The swiftest steed to bear you to your goal is suffering ; none shall ever taste eternal bliss but those who stand with Christ in depths of bitterness.

Nothing is more gall-bitter than suffering, nothing so honey-sweet as to have suffered. The most sure foundation for this perfection is humility, for he whose nature here creeps in deepest depths shall soar in spirit to highest height of Deity ; for joy brings sorrow and sorrow brings joy. Men's ways are manifold : one lives thus, another thus. He who would attain unto the highest life while here in time, let him take in a few words culled out of all the scriptures the summary philosophy which I will now set down.

Keep thyself detached from all mankind ; keep thyself devoid of all incoming images ; emancipate thyself from everything which entails addition, attachment or encumbrance, and address thy mind at all times to a saving contemplation wherein thou bearest God fixed within thy heart as the object from which its eyes do never waver ; any other discipline, fasts, vigils, prayers, or whatever it may be, subordinate to this as to its end, using thereof no more than shall answer for this purpose, so shalt thou win the goal of all perfections.

Here someone may object, But who can persist in unwavering contemplation of the divine object ? I answer, no one living here in time. This is told thee merely so that thou mayst know the highest, that whereon thy aspirations and desires should be set. But when this vision is withheld from thee, thou, being a good man, shalt think to have been robbed of thy eternal bliss and then do thou forthwith return into the same that it may come to thee again ; and withal it does behove thee to keep strict watch upon thy thoughts at all times, there letting, as far as possible, their goal and refuge be. Lord God, glory be to thee eternally. Amen.

Colophon

On Detachment (Von Abgeschiedenheit; Tractate IX in the Pfeiffer edition) by Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1328). This archive reproduces the translation of C. de B. Evans, published in The Works of Meister Eckhart, Volume I, London: John M. Watkins, 1924. Evans translated from the Middle High German text established by Franz Pfeiffer in Deutsche Mystiker des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. ii (Leipzig, 1857). Source digitised at the Internet Archive (identifiers: meistereckhart0001eckh; in.ernet.dli.2015.31707); the Claremont School of Theology scan was used as the primary source for this transcription. A footnote in the Evans edition notes the tractate is also discussed in Spamer, Überlieferung der deutschen Mystik, B. 4. The translation is reproduced here as a public-domain archival text.

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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