Dangerous Mystic: Meister Eckhart’s Path to the God Within

This impressive book by Harrington (The Faithful Executioner) adroitly places Meister Eckhart’s (1260–1328) key ideas about the accessibility of direct, personal, universal experience of God through the approach of Gelassenheit (“letting-go-ness”) back into proper historical and cultural context. Harrison’s key contention is that Eckhart’s original ideas have been distorted by “modern syncretists” (particularly Eckhart Tolle) and should be reconsidered through an understanding of the era’s literature, the development of the Dominican Order, and religious concerns about the relationship between clergy and laity. Harrington begins by providing a short medieval cultural history to explain Eckhart’s likely youthful influences, then considers Eckhart’s early friarhood and the seeds of his philosophy, and explores the maturation of his thought as an academic and theologian, which led him to become a pariah of the Catholic church. The final chapter looks at the conflicts caused by Eckhart’s preaching on esoteric concepts to everyday people for whom his ideas of a via negativa—living without reliance on good deeds, aestheticism, or intermediaries for salvation—had strong appeal. Harrington’s text shows that Eckhart was a man of his time: his teachings were radical, but grounded in Catholic orthodoxy and not intended to be as dangerous as many modern seekers might believe. This illuminating book successfully explains Meister Eckhart’s philosophy and large influence on Western Christian mysticism.(Mar.)