The HarperCollins Spiritual Classics series presents short, accessible introductions to the classic spiritual writers of the West. Abridged from Paulist Press’s distinguished Classics of Western Spirituality series, which boasts the best modern translations available, this new series seeks to find new readers for these dynamic spiritual voices-voices that have changed lives throughout the centuries and still do today.

…it is necessary that all things be bathed in the blood of Christ and led back into the Father through the Son’s meditation, just as the Father does all things through the Son; and so the flowing back will correspond to the flowing out. -Meister Eckhart, 1260-1327

The thought of Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327), Dominican philosopher and spiritual master, is among the most daring and difficult in the history of Western mysticism.Thoroughly grounded in the Scholastic method of his day and steadfastly loyal to the Church, Eckhart’s love of speculation, paradox, and the apophatic way (the teachings that the definition of God is beyond the realm of what human beings can sense), nevertheless, resulted in the controversial condemnation of certain of his teachings by papal bull in 1329. His doctrines of detachment, the return of the soul to God, and the birth of the Son in the soul have continued to perplex his critics and nourish his disciples through the ages.