Eckhart's teaching was a mystic pantheism, influential on later religious mysticism and speculative philosophy. In both his Latin and German works Eckhart describes the four stages of union between the soul and God as dissimilarity, similarity, identity & breakthrough.

In 1325 he was charged for heresy by the Archbishop of Cologne, and two years after his death his writings were condemned by Pope John XXII.

* Pantheism: the Universe (Nature) and God are considered equivalent and synonymous. As opposed to anthropomorphism, that is the attribution of uniquely human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings, natural and supernatural phenomena, material states and objects or abstract concepts.