6 Spirituality Studies 11-1 Spring 2025 I do not know with what boldness a man rebukes another who is angry for a moment, when he himself harbors hatred in his heart.” (Caesarius 2010, 137) [3]. In spiritual matters as suggested by Jesus, the subjective dimension has precedence over the objective one, whereas the reverse might be said to be true when it comes to the law. This principle appears in countless occurrences in the Gospel, such as in the paradigmatic instance of the adulterous woman (John 8: 1–11). Christian theologians across history have argued that the sinful self misperceives reality, beginning with its own. Its misperception of itself is correlative to its being focused on others’ faults. Luther (quoted in Meyer 1880, 226) refers to this negative correlation as follows: That He [note: the Lord] may the more earnestly warn us, He takes a rough simile, and paints the thing before our eyes, pronouncing some such opinion as this, – that everyone who judges his neighbor has a huge beam in his eye, while he who is judged has only a tiny chip, (and) that he is ten times more deserving of judgment and condemnation for having condemned others. By stating that “everyone who judges his neighbor has a huge beam in his eye”, Luther seems to imply that the flaw in one’s perception and the act of judgment itself are intrinsically interdependent. There is a sinful synergy between lack of justice as discernment, and lack of charity as sense of unity. By contrast, removing the beam from a mystical perspective means doing away with what prevents us from seeing what we are, and what things are. It results in perceiving oneself and others within the context of a unity that has been restored by the removal of the beam of separateness. To judge does not mean, in this case, to be aware of evil – for this awareness is a requirement for discernment, but to be blind to the unity that removes from evil its absoluteness. The first human transgression was the consumption of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. With it the beam got into the human’s eye. In the parable, separation, and difference, resulting from the beam, prevents one from reaching self-knowledge and love of the neighbor in unity. It is in this unitive spirit of mystical knowledge that Meister Eckhart (quoted in Blakney 1941, 200) comments on the mote and the beam. As he states, Augustine says: ‘No soul may come to God except it come to him apart from creature things and seek him without any image.’ That, too, is what Christ meant when he said: ‘First cast out the beam out of thine own eye and then thou shalt see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother’s eye!’ This suggests that creatures are to be compared to beams in the soul’s eye and that they hinder union with God because they are creaturely. Therefore, because even the soul is a creature, even it must first be cast out. Indeed, it must cast out even the saints and angels and even our blessed Lady, because these are all creatures! The beam that is in the beholder’s eye is none other than the creature, indeed anything that it is perceived as separate from myself: “As long as a man has an object under consideration, he is not one with it. Where there is nothing but One, nothing but One is to be seen” (Blakney 1941, 200). The object here does not merely refer to other creatures, but to the soul itself qua creature. Meister Eckhart takes the mystical interpretation of the beam a step further by extending it to the symbolism of the “creature within”. The beam is the soul that clings to itself as a separate entity. It is not possible to “come to God” without removing the duality that lies in the relative subject itself: “because even the soul is a creature, even it must first be cast out” (Blakney 1941, 200). With this in mind, we will now turn to the treatment of the deluded eye within Hinduism, specifically Śankara’s Advaita Vedānta, as a striking symbol of the dispelling of dualistic illusion. 2.2 The Snake and the Rope Correct discernment shows us the true nature of a rope, and removes the painful fear caused by our deluded belief that it is a large snake (Śankarācārya 1991, 6). The symbolism of the deluded eye appears in Śankara’s Advaita, or Vedānta of non-duality, in a way that is a priori less moral and more epistemological than in the Gospel. While Vedānta refers literally to a commentary on Vedic scriptures, Advaita Vedānta specifically teaches that the main content of scriptures is the doctrine of non-duality according to which only the absolute Self or Ātman is real while everything else is but “appearance”, Māyā (Deutsch 1973). As in other soteriological systems originating from India the spiritual focus of this tradition lies in overcoming ignorance, fear, and suffering. In the oft-quoted passage from the Crest-jewel of Discrimination attributed to Śankara, the Sanskrit word duhkha, which is also the central concept of the Buddhist worldview – most often translated as suffering, is associated to the term bhaya, “fear”. The two terms are translated in the opening quote above as “painful fear” (Sa. bhaya duhkha). Both suffering and fear originate
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