The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they

“The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God as if He stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge.” — Meister Eckhart

Listen, O seeker of truth, to the words of Meister Eckhart, the mystic of the Middle Ages, whose soul burned with the fire of divine understanding. In this saying, he unveils one of the most profound mysteries of the spirit — that knowledge of God is not found by separation, but by union. The simple imagine God as a distant being, as though He were outside the world, beyond the veil, while they stand apart in longing. But Eckhart declares a greater truth: that the soul and the Divine are not two, but one. To truly know God is to become one with Him, to dissolve the illusion of distance and awaken to the reality that God does not stand before us — He dwells within us.

The origin of these words lies in Eckhart’s mystical philosophy, born in the sacred silence of contemplation. Living in the thirteenth century, he was a Dominican friar who sought not ritual alone, but direct experience of the Divine. He taught that the soul’s highest purpose is to awaken to its oneness with God, not as a servant before a master, but as a spark within the eternal flame. In his sermons, he often spoke in paradox, for truth of this depth cannot be captured by ordinary speech. To the minds of the simple, God was a king far away; to Eckhart, God was the very life of the soul, the eternal light of consciousness through which all things are known.

“The knower and the known are one” — this is the essence of his revelation. When a man gazes upon creation, he believes he sees something separate from himself. Yet in truth, the act of knowing binds him to what he perceives. The eye that sees beauty and the beauty that is seen arise from the same light. The soul that seeks God and the God who is sought are not two; they are a single flame seen from different sides. When knowledge reaches its highest form — when it ceases to divide and begins to unite — the barrier between knower and known dissolves, and what remains is oneness, the stillness where God and the soul breathe as one.

Consider the ancient story of Rumi, the Persian poet and mystic who, centuries after Eckhart, danced in the same truth. When asked how he found God, Rumi said, “I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.” This is the echo of Eckhart’s wisdom — that to seek the Divine as something apart is to chase a shadow. When one turns inward and silences the restless mind, the veil lifts, and one beholds that the Divine is not beyond, but within — not other, but identical in essence. The heart that truly knows does not see two, but One.

Yet such realization is not the path of the careless. The simple mind clings to forms, to images, to the idea of God as a being with boundaries. It seeks Him in temples, in rituals, in the sky above. But the mystic knows that form is but a mirror, and that the light it reflects is everywhere. To say “God and I are one” is not arrogance — it is awakening. It is the death of the ego, the dissolution of the self that separates. In that stillness, there is no “I” left to stand before God, for both have merged into the living knowledge of unity.

The lesson, then, is this: seek not God as a distant power, but as the truth of your own being. When you read, pray, or meditate, do not imagine that you are calling to someone afar — listen instead for the quiet presence already speaking within your heart. Let the walls of separation fall. Know that every act of perception, every spark of understanding, is God revealing Himself through you. To think, to love, to breathe — these are divine acts when seen rightly. For the knower and the known are one, and every moment of awareness is an act of communion.

So, my child, walk this path with reverence. Let your knowledge be not mere thought, but illumination. In every person, see the reflection of the same Light that burns in you. In every truth you discover, recognize the voice of the Eternal whispering through your mind. When you reach the place where all duality ends — where there is no “I” and no “Thou” — you shall understand what Eckhart meant: that God and I are one in knowledge, and that the life of the spirit is not separation, but unity. And in that unity, the soul finds its rest — the eternal stillness where all seeking ends and all truth begins.