Ground of the soul

The ground of the soul (Middle High German grunt) is Meister Eckhart’s name for the innermost depth of the soul, beneath and beyond its powers of knowing, willing and remembering. No image or creature reaches it; it has no name, as God has none. Eckhart also called it the spark of the soul and the little castle in the soul, into which not even God enters as known in three persons, but only the Godhead itself.

In the ground, Eckhart taught, God’s ground and the soul’s ground are one ground, and there the Father gives birth to the Son in the soul. To reach it the soul must let go of all images and of its own will, in detachment. Tauler made the ground the centre of his teaching on the inner life, describing a turning inward to it, often through suffering and humility.

Comparable language appears elsewhere in Christian mysticism: Teresa of Ávila places the union with God in the innermost dwelling at the centre of the soul’s castle, and John of the Cross speaks of God touching the soul in its deepest centre. Readers since Rudolf Otto have compared the ground with the Upaniṣadic ātman, the self that is one with Brahman.