"spark" which is the point of contact between the soul and its Maker
is something higher than the faculties, being "uncreated." He seems
to waver about identifying the "spark" with the "active reason," but
inclines on the whole to regard it as something even higher still.
"There is something in the soul," he says, "which is so akin to God
that it is one with Him and not merely united with Him." And again:
"There is a force in the soul; and not only a force, but something
more, a being; and not only a being, but something more; it is so
pure and high and noble in itself that no creature can come there,
and God alone can dwelt there. Yea, verily, and even God cannot come
there with a form; He can only come with His simple divine nature."
And in the startling passage often quoted against him, a passage
which illustrates admirably his affinity to one side of Hegelianism,
we read: "The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which He
sees me. Mine eye and God's eye are one eye and one sight and one
knowledge and one love."

I do not defend these passages as orthodox; but before exclaiming
"rank Pantheism!" we ought to recollect that for Eckhart the being
of God is quite different from His personality. Eckhart never taught
that the Persons of the Holy Trinity become, after the mystical
Union, the "Form" of the human soul. It is the impersonal light of
the divine nature which transforms our nature; human personality is
neither lost nor converted into divine personality. Moreover, the
divine spark at the centre of the soul is not the soul nor the
personality. "The soul," he says in one place, using a figure which
recurs in the "Theologia Germanica," "has two faces. One is turned
towards this world and towards the body, the other towards God." The
complete dominion of the "spark" over the soul is an unrealised
ideal.[14]