WANDERING JOY - MEISTER ECKHART'S MYSTICAL PHILOSOPHY

This remarkable work shows Meister Eckhart, the thirteenth-century Western mystic, as the great teacher of the birth of God in the soul that shatters the dualism between God and the world and the self and God. It is at once an exposition of Eckhart's mysticism- perhaps the best in English-and, because Eckhart is a profound philosopher for whom knowing precedes being, it is also an exemplary work of contemporary philosophy. Schürmann shows us that Eckhart is our contemporary. Writing as if from experience, he describes the threefold movement of detachment, releasement, and "dehiscence" (splitting open) that leads to the experience of "living without a why" in which all things are in God and which is sheer joy. Going beyond that, he describes the transformational force of approaching the Godhead, the God beyond God. "A man who has experienced the same no longer has a place to establish himself. He has settled on the road, and for those who have learned how to listen, his existence becomes a call. This errant one dwells in joy. Through his wanderings the origin beckons."