Mystical Dialogue
The Sister Catherine Treatise takes the form of a series of dialogues between a woman (Sister Catherine) and her Confessor (not named but sometimes said to be Eckhart).
Sister Catherine is determined to find "the shortest way" to God and comes to her Confessor for advice. In the first section her Confessor urges her to rebuke sin and seek purity so as to receive God. She leaves with the intention of doing so.
Years later Sister Catherine returns to speak again to her Confessor, but this time the roles are reversed. Sister Catherine has experienced God and, after falling seemingly dead for three days (in imitation of Christ), reawakens to claim that she has achieved a unity with God which is eternal and which will last throughout this life and beyond. Sister Catherine is presented as having gone further down the road of spiritual development to her Confessor and he finds himself praising her for her Holiness rather than the other way round.
Sister Catherine speaks of her unity with God in the following terms:
"I am where I was before I was created: that place is purely God and God. There are neither angels nor saints, nor choir, nor this nor that. Many people speak of eight heavens and of nine choirs. They are not where I am. You should know that everything stated in such a way and presented to people in images is but an incitement to seek God. Realise that in God is nothing but God. You must also understand that no soul may come unto God before it has become God as it was before it was created. No one may come into the naked Godhead except the one who is naked as he was when he flowed out of God. The masters say that no one may enter here as long as he has any attachment to lower things, even if it is only as much as the tip of a needle can carry." (Sister Catherine Treatise: Trans Elvira Borgstaedt. Paulist Press 1986)
The rest of the treatise consists of a continued dialogue with the Confessor - often held at a fever-pitch of excitement and emotion - in which both Sister Catherine and the Confessor exchange ideas about God's immanence, the possibility of humanity's union with Him in this life, the role of Mary Magdalene's relationship with Christ as his Lover and chief Apostle and the need to recognise the deceptions of the reality and unreality of Union with God i.e. what true Union is as opposed to false Union. Here the treatise is careful to delineate the danger of those who interpret the Free Spirit ideals as carte blanche to commit sinful and/or immoral acts. The treatise finishes with Sister Catherine abjuring the Confessor to strive after higher feats of spiritual understanding, the pupil having become the master (or mistress) and the Confessor needing the guidance of the Sister to achieve union with God.
Read more about this topic: Sister Catherine Treatise
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