Let us imagine we want to convert an excerpt from Meister Eckhart's Fourth Sermon, "On Eternal Birth" to a binary string of data contained within an image. We can if we desire then convert the image to an audio composition. We will be using symbol strings composed of ones and zeros as the vehicle for the conversion of the initial object (the text) into another (the image).
“Thus it is true that, if you are to experience this noble birth, you must depart from all crowds and go back to the starting point, the core of the soul out of which you came. The crowds are the agents of the soul and their activities: memory, understanding, and will, in all their diversifications. You must leave them all: sense perception, imagination, and all that you discover in self or intend to do. After that, you may experience this birth – but otherwise not – believe me! He was not found among friends, nor relatives, nor among acquaintances. No. He is lost among these altogether.
Thence we have a question to ask: Is it possible for man to experience this birth through certain things which, although they are divine, yet they come to the man through the senses from without? I refer to certain ideas of God, such as, for example, that God is good, wise, merciful, or whatever – ideas that are creatures of the reason, and yet divine. Can a man have the experience of the divine birth by means of these? No! Truly no. Even though these ideas are all good and divine, still he gets them all through his senses from without. If the divine birth is to shine with reality and purity, it must come flooding up and out of man from God within him, while all man’s own efforts are suspended and all the soul’s agents are at God’s disposal.
This work, when it is perfect, will be due solely to God’s action while you have been passive. If you really forsake your own knowledge and will, then surely and gladly God will enter with his knowledge shining clearly. Where God achieves self-consciousness, your own knowledge is of no use, nor has it standing. Do not imagine that your own intelligence may rise to it, so that you may know God. Indeed, when God divinely enlightens you, no natural light is required to bring that about. This natural light must in fact be completely extinguished before God will shine in with his light, bringing back with him all that you have forsaken and a thousand times more, together with a new form to contain it all.”
The following strings of data are equivalent. The first string is from the above text. The second string is its ASCII equivalent in binary form.
“Thus it is true that, if you are to experience this noble birth, you must depart from all crowds and go back to the starting point, the core of the soul out of which you came.”
“101010011010001110101111001101000001101001111010001
0000011010011110011010000011101001110010111010111001
0101000001110100110100011000011110100010110001000001
1010011100110010000011110011101111111010101000001100
0011110010110010101000001110100110111101000001100101
1111000111000011001011110010110100111001011101110110
0011110010101000001110100110100011010011110011010000
0110111011011111100010110110011001010100000110001011
0100111100101110100110100001011000100000111100111011
1111101010100000110110111101011110011111010001000001
1001001100101111000011000011110010111010011001101110
0101101111110110101000001100001110110011011000100000
1100011111001011011111110111110010011100110100000110
0001110111011001000100000110011111011110100000110001
0110000111000111101011010000011101001101111010000011
1010011010001100101010000011100111110100110000111100
1011101001101001110111011001110100000111000011011111
1010011101110111010001011000100000111010011010001100
1010100000110001111011111110010110010101000001101111
1100110010000011101001101000110010101000001110011110
1111111010111011000100000110111111101011110100010000
0110111111001100100000111011111010001101001110001111
0100001000001111001110111111101010100000110001111011
01110010101011100001010”