ABOUT OUR UNITY WITH THE INFINITE, part I

ABOUT OUR UNITY WITH THE INFINITE, part I - by Guenther Zuehlsdorf, translation from the original German edition into Portuguese by Huberto Rohden and translated into English by Flavio de Mello.

 

 

 

"How can we forever keep a drop of water without drying? Throwing it in the sea" of Buddhist philosophy.

 

 

The completion of the thought of unity between the individual soul and the universal soul, is the central theme of the Upanishads - and is also the central theme of mysticism. Meister Eckhart, for example, said that we only exist due to the fact that the Divinity is present in us. Divinity is to Eckhart, designated as the "Ente", pure Being, the supra-existential Uno, the immutable and self-existent Eternity. It is quite significant the discrimination he makes between the "foundation of the soul" and the "spark of the soul". He understands by foundation of the soul the uncreated emanation of the Infinite Spirit, or God; and as spark of the soul, he designates the individual soul, concrete, which receives his human existence from the divine essence.

 

 

According to Eckhart, it should be understood by foundation of the soul the exact point where the Divine is consciously present in human, the point where is realized the contact of the human soul with God. To illustrate this process, Eckhart uses the comparison with the mirror: the sunlight which is reflected in the water and returns to the sun, is identical to its origin; but the water is still water, and does not become sun, although an erroneous observation lead us to believe that the light comes from the water, not the sun. Shankara compares unification or unity between the individual soul and the universal soul with what happens with the caterpillar and the butterfly; as well as the caterpillar assumes the aspect of a beautiful lepidopteron, thus becomes the soul that is always conscious of God as God, resembling its model.

 

 

However, the soul could not take the form of its model if this model, from the beginning, did not exist in it as a prototype, or as intimate essence of human nature. The "foundation of soul" of Meister Eckhart corresponds, roughly, to the Brahman or param-atman (Universal Soul) of the Hindus - while the "spark of the soul" would look like the jiva-atman (individual soul) of the Eastern mystics. This individual soul, when separated from the universal pillar of the param-atman or cosmic consciousness, has no real existence; it has only derived existence, like all other things that have come to the existential zone of finite things.

 

 

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