What They Saw
In Christian history, Thomas Aquinas is well known as the author of the huge theological treatise, Summa Theologica. However, the following facts seem to be not known widely: The Summa Theologica was not completed for Thomas died before completing the comprehensive work.
Furthermore, about three months prior to his death, on Dec. 6, 1273, after he saw something shown to him by God during a time of contemplative prayer, he became totally a different man. One day before Dec. 6, he was ardently writing Summa Theologica, but he suddenly stopped writing. Even though he was encouraged by many to complete the work, he replied, “I cannot do it any more. Compared to what I saw, the works I did are like straws.” So, he never resumed his work.
‘What,’ we may ask, ‘did this eminent churchman see, that made the product of all his scholarly mental activity seem like mere chaff by comparison?’ What all the great sages and mystics ’saw’ was that … the transcendent reality out there is the same reality in the very depths of the heart, in the hiddenness of subjectivity.
Meister Eckhart says, for instance, that “the eye by which I see God is the same eye by which God sees me.” How is that possible since God does not have form, and certainly doesn’t have eyes?! Well, obviously the eye is a metaphor for something else. Let us substitute the personal pronoun I for eye, and see where it leads us.
Thus we have: “The “I” by which I see or know God is the same “I” by which God sees and knows me.” That’s better, or closer to the meaning, but I think we can do better than that.
Let’s interpret the personal pronoun “I” as a metaphor for consciousness, and then read it again. It would go something like this: “The consciousness by which God knows me, and sees me, is the same consciousness by which I know and see God.” I believe that’s Eckhart’s meaning … and what Thomas saw.
~ by Wayne Teasdale