Meister Eckhart & Spiritual Alchemy

"The self-manifestation of God in the Trinity is followed by his manifestation in his creatures. Everything in them that is truly real is God's eternal being, but God's being does not manifest itself thus in its entire fullness. In this antithesis may be expressed the relation of Eckhart's philosophy to panentheism, both as regards similarities abd differences. According to Eckhart, God's creatures have not, as Thomas Aquinas held, merely ideal preexistence in God, i.e. their conceptual essence (essential quidditas) coming from the divine intelligence, but their existence (esse) being foreign to the divine being. Rather, the true being of creatures is immanent in the divine being.... Should God withdraw his being from his creatures, they would disappear as the shadow on the wall disappears when the wall is removed [Brahman- the ground of being]. This perishible being is the creature confined within the limits of space and time. On the other hand, every creature, considered according to its true entity, is eternal."
"Eckhart...distinguished between the psyche and the spiritual element in human beings, as did such early Gnostics as Valentius. Valentinian 'spiritual seed' can be compared to Eckhart's 'fuenklein', 'scintilla animae', '
ground of the soul', or 'soul-spark', which he identifies with "Imago Dei" [made in the image of God] from the Bible. This indestructible and divine element in the human being is for Eckhart ... only a potentiality, a latent function that needs to be nourished by virtuous living and spiritual vigilance in order to grow and expand. ...through classic Christian stages of purificative, contemplative, and illuminative life, it comes to the unitive life where soul-spark is transformed intom Logos."
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrines_of_Meister_Eckhart


This seems to equate with the Dao jia (or Philosophic Taoism), or the Neo-Confucian Hsin-Shu, or Esoteric Buddhist Alchemy whose ideal result is the immortal Xian or the 'truly human' Jen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_Buddhism

http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-6/chapter_viii.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xian_%28Daoist_immortal%29 (hidden in pop religion and folk superstition)

nekkid.