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For
two years, a small man sits quietly on a park bench. People walk by,lost in their thoughts. One
day someone asks him a question. In the weeks that follow there are more
people and more questions. Word spreads that the man is a mystic, and has
discovered something that brings peace and meaning into our lives. It
sounds like fiction, but today that man, Eckhart Tolle, is known worldwide for his teachings on
spiritual enlightenment through the power of the present moment. His first
book, The Power of Now, is an international bestseller, and has been
translated into 17 languages. More than 20 years have passed since Eckhart Tolle answered his
first question on that park bench. While his audience has grown, his
message remains the same: that it is possible to stop struggling in your life,and find joy and
fulfillment in this moment, and no other.
Sounds True: Can you describe to us your own experience of spiritual
awakening (and of course, can you define spiritual awakening as well)? Was
there a singular event that occurred or has it been a gradual process?
Eckhart Tolle:
Since ancient times the term awakening has been used as a kind of
metaphor that points to the transformation of human consciousness. There
are parables in the New Testament that speak of the importance of being
awake, of not falling back to sleep. The word Buddha comes from the
Sanskrit word Budh, meaning, to be
awake. So Buddha is not a name and ultimately not a person, but a
state of consciousness. All this implies that humans are potentially
capable of living in a state of consciousness compared to which normal
wakefulness is like sleeping or dreaming. This is why some spiritual
teachings use terms like shared hallucination or universal hypnotism to
describe normal human existence. Pick up any history book, and I suggest
you begin with studying the 20th century, and you will find that a large part
of the history of our species has all the characteristics we would normally
associate with a nightmare or an insane hallucination.
The nature of spiritual awakening is frequently misunderstood. The adoption
of spiritual beliefs, seeing visions of God or celestial beings, the
ability to channel, to heal, to foretell the future, or other paranormal
powers – all such phenomena are of value and are not to be dismissed, but
none of them is in itself indicative of spiritual awakening in a person who
experiences them. They may occur in a person who has not awakened
spiritually and they may or may not accompany the awakened state.
Every morning we awaken from sleep and from our dreams and enter the state
we call wakefulness. A continuous stream of thoughts, most of them
repetitive, characterizes the normal wakeful state. So what is it that we
awaken from when spiritual awakening occurs? We awaken from
identification with our thoughts. Everybody who is not awake
spiritually is totally identified with and run by their thinking mind – the
incessant voice in the head. Thinking is compulsive: you can't stop, or so
it seems. It is also addictive: you don't even want to stop, at least not
until the suffering generated by the continuous mental noise becomes
unbearable. In the unawakened state you don't use
thought, but thought uses you. You are, one could almost say,
possessed by thought, which is the collective conditioning of the human
mind that goes back many thousands of years. You don't see anything as it
is, but distorted and reduced by mental labels, concepts, judgments,
opinions and reactive patterns. Your sense of identity, of self, is reduced
to a story you keep telling yourself in your head. Me and my story : this what your life is reduced to in the unawakened state. And when your life is thus reduced,
you can never be happy for long, because you are not yourself.
Does that mean you don't think anymore when you awaken spiritually? No, of
course not. In fact, you can use thought much more effectively than before,
but you realize there is a depth to your Being, a vibrantly alive stillness
that is much vaster than thought. It is consciousness itself, of which the
thinking mind is only a tiny aspect. For many people, the first indication
of a spiritual awakening is that they suddenly become aware of their
thoughts. They become a witness to their thoughts, so to speak. They are
not completely identified with their mind anymore and so they begin to
sense that there is a depth to them that they had never known before.
For most people, spiritual awakening is a gradual process. Rarely does it
happen all at once. When it does, though, it is usually brought about by
intense suffering. That was certainly true in my case. For years my life
alternated between depression and acute anxiety. One night I woke up in a
state of dread and intense fear, more intense than I had ever experienced
before. Life seemed meaningless, barren, hostile.
It became so unbearable that suddenly the thought came into my mind, I cannot live with myself any longer. The thought
kept repeating itself several times. Suddenly, I stepped back from the
thought, and looked at it, as it were, and I became aware of the
strangeness of that thought: If I cannot live with myself, there must be
two of me – the I and the self that I cannot live with. And the question
arose, Who is the 'I' and who is the self that I cannot live with? There
was no answer to that question, and all thinking stopped. For a moment,
there was complete inner silence. Suddenly I felt myself drawn into a
whirlpool or a vortex of energy. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my
body started to shake. I heard the words, Resist nothing, as if spoken
inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. Suddenly,
all fear disappeared, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no
recollection of what happened after that.
The next morning I awoke as if I had just been born into this world.
Everything seemed fresh and pristine and intensely alive. A vibrant
stillness filled my entire being. As I walked around the city that day, the
world looked as if it had just come into existence, completely devoid of
the past. I was in a state of amazement at the peace I felt within and the
beauty I saw without, even in the midst of the traffic. I was no longer
labeling and interpreting my sense perceptions – an almost complete absence
of mental commentary. To this day, I perceive and interact with the world
in this way: through stillness, not through mental noise. The peace that I
felt that day, more than 20 years ago, has never left me, although it has
varying degrees of intensity.
At the time, I had no conceptual framework to help me understand what had
happened to me. Years later, I realized that the acute suffering I felt
that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from
identification with the unhappy self, the suffering little me, which is
ultimately a fiction of the mind. This withdrawal must have been so
complete that the suffering self collapsed as if the plug had been pulled
out of an inflatable toy. What was left was my true nature as the ever
present I AM : consciousness in its pure state
prior to identification with form. You may also call it pure awareness or
presence.
ST: In your own life story there seems to have been a relationship
between intense personal suffering and a breakthrough spiritual experience.
Do you believe that for all people there is some connection between
personal suffering and the intensity that is needed for a spiritual
breakthrough?
ET: Yes, that seems to be true in most cases. When you are trapped
in a nightmare, your motivation to awaken will be so much greater than that
of someone caught up in a relatively pleasant dream. On all levels,
evolution occurs in response to a crisis situation, not infrequently a
life-threatening one, when the old structures, inner or outer, are breaking
down or are not working anymore. On a personal level, this often means the
experience of loss of one kind or another: the death of a loved one, the
end of a close relationship, loss of possessions, your home, status, or a
breakdown of the external structures of your life that provided a sense of
security. For many people, illness – loss of health – represents the crisis
situation that triggers an awakening. With serious illness comes awareness
of your own mortality, the greatest loss of all.
For many people alive at this time, loss is experienced as loss of
meaning. In other words, life seems to lack purpose and doesn't make
sense anymore. Loss of meaning is often part of the suffering that comes
with physical loss, but it can also happen to people who have gained
everything the world has to offer – who have made it in the eyes of the
world – and suddenly find that their success or possessions are empty and
unfulfilling. What the world and the surrounding culture tells them is
important and of value turns out to be empty and this leaves a kind of
painful inner void, often accompanied by great mental confusion.
Now the question arises: What exactly is the connection between suffering
and spiritual awakening? How does one lead to the other? When you look
closely at the nature of human suffering you will find that an essential
ingredient in most kinds of suffering is a diminishment of one's sense
of self. Take illness, for example. Illness makes you feel smaller, no
longer in control, helpless. You seem to loose your autonomy, perhaps
become dependent on others. You become reduced in size, figuratively
speaking. Any major loss has a similar effect: some form that was an
important part of your sense of who you are – a
person, a possession, a social role – dissolves or leaves you and you
suffer because you had become identified with it and it seems you are
losing yourself or a part of yourself. In reality, of course, what feels
like a diminishment or loss of your sense of self is the crumbling of an
image of who you are held in the mind. What dissolves is identification
with thought forms that had given you your sense of self. But that sense of
self is ultimately false, is ultimately a mental
fiction. It is the egoic mind or the little me as I sometimes call it. To be identified with a
mental image of who you are is to be unconscious, to be unawakened
spiritually. This unawakened state creates
suffering, but suffering creates the possibility of awakening. When you no
longer resist the diminishment of self that comes with suffering, all
role-playing, which is normal in the unawakened
state, comes to an end. You become humble, simple, real.
And, paradoxically, when you say "yes" to that death, because
that's what it is, you realize that the mind-made sense of self had
obscured the truth of who you are – not as defined by your past, but
timelessly. And when who you think you are dissolves, you connect with a
vast power which is the essence of your very being. Jesus called it:
eternal life. In Buddhism, it is sometimes called the deathless realm.
Now, does this mean that if you haven't experienced intense suffering in
your life, there is no possibility of awakening? Firstly, the fact that you
are drawn to a spiritual teaching or teacher means you must have had your
share of suffering already, and the awakening process has probably already
begun. A teacher or teaching is not even essential for spiritual awakening,
but they save time. Secondly, humanity as a whole has already gone through
unimaginable suffering, mostly self-inflicted, the culmination of which was
the 20th century with its unspeakable horrors. This collective suffering
has brought upon a readiness in many human beings for the evolutionary leap
that is spiritual awakening. For many individuals alive now, this means:
they have suffered enough. No further suffering is necessary. The end of
suffering: that is also the essence of every true spiritual teaching. Be
grateful that your suffering has taken you to this realization: I don't
need to suffer anymore.
ST: Your teaching about the power of now seems so simple. Is that
really our primary spiritual task – to fully engage the present moment?
ET: Identification with thoughts and the emotions that go with those
thoughts creates a false mind-made sense of self, conditioned by the past:
the little me and its story. This false self is never happy or fulfilled
for long. Its normal state is one of unease, fear, insufficiency, and nonfulfillment. It
says it looks for happiness, and yet it continuously creates conflict and
unhappiness. In fact, it needs conflict and enemies to sustain the sense of
separateness that ensures its continued survival. Look at all the conflict
between tribes, nations, and religions. They need their enemies, because
they provide the sense of separateness on which their collective egoic identity depends. The false self lives mainly
through memory and anticipation. Past and future are its main
preoccupation. The present moment, at best, is a means to an end, a
stepping stone to the future, because the future promises fulfillment, the
future promises salvation in one form or another. The only problem is the
future never comes. Life is always now. Whatever happens, whatever you
experience, feel, think, do - it's always now. It's all there is. And if
you continuously miss the now – resist it, dislike it, try to get away from
it, reduce it to a means to an end, then you miss the essence of your life,
and you are stuck in a dream world of images, concepts, labels,
interpretations, judgments – the conditioned content of your mind that you
take to be yourself. And so you are disconnected from the fullness of life
that is the "suchness" of this moment.
When you are out of alignment with what is, you are out of alignment with
life. You are struggling to reach a point in the future where there is
greater security, aliveness, abundance, love, joy ... unaware that those
things make up the essence of who you are already. All that is required of
you to have access to that essence is to make the present moment into your
friend. And you may realize that most of your life you made the present
moment into an enemy. You didn't say "yes" to it, didn't embrace
it. You were out of alignment with the now, and so life became a struggle.
It seemed so normal, because everyone around you lived in the same way. The
amazing thing is: Life, the great intelligence that pervades the entire
cosmos, becomes supportive when you say "yes" to it. Where is
life? Here. Now. The "isness" of this
moment. The now seems so small at first, a little segment between past and
future, and yet all of life's power is concealed within it. When there is
spiritual awakening, you awaken into the fullness, the aliveness, and also
the sacredness of now. You were absent, asleep, and now you are present,
awake. The secret of awakening is to unconditionally accept this moment as
it is. Some people do it because they can no longer stand the suffering
that comes with nonacceptance of the isness of this moment. They are almost forced into
awakening. Others have suffered enough and are ready to voluntarily embrace
the now. When you become present in this way, the judgments, labels, and
concepts of your mind are no longer all that important, as a greater
intelligence is now operating in and through you. And yet the mind can then
be used very effectively and creatively when needed.
Now the question may arise: Would there be anything left to strive for when
you are so present in the now? Wouldn't you become passive in that state?
Many meaningless activities may fall away, but the state of presence is the
only state in which creative energy is available to you. When your
fulfillment and sense of self are no longer dependent on the future
outcome, joy flows into whatever you do. You do what you do because the
action itself is fulfilling. Whatever you do or create in that state is of
high quality. This is because it is not a means to and end, and so a loving
care flows into your doing.
ST: Being in the present sounds so obvious, and yet is quite hard to
sustain. Do you have any practical tips for people for maintaining
awareness of the present moment?
ET: Although the old consciousness or rather unconsciousness still
has considerable momentum and to a large extent still runs this world, the
new awakened consciousness – presence – has already began to emerge in many
human beings. In my book The Power of Now, I mention ways in which
you can maintain present moment awareness, but the main thing is to allow
this new state of consciousness to emerge rather then believe that you have
to try hard to make it happen. How do you allow it to emerge? Simply by allowing
this moment to be as it is. This means to relinquish inner resistance
to what is – the suchness of now. This allows
life to unfold beautifully. There is no greater spiritual practice than
this.
ST: On your video The Flowering of Human Consciousness, you
talk about a new consciousness that is emerging in our time. What do you
mean? Hasn't the present moment always been available to genuine seekers?
What's new about our current time in history? Are you pointing to a certain
evolutionary process – an acceleration in human
spiritual development?
ET: Yes, the present moment has always been available to spiritual
seekers, but as long as you are seeking you are not available to the
present moment. Seeking implies that you are looking to the future for some
answer, or for some achievement, spiritual or otherwise. Everybody is in
the seeking mode, seeking to add something to who they are, whether it be money, relationships, possessions, knowledge, status
– or spiritual attainment. Seeking means you need more time, more future,
more of this or that. And there is nothing wrong with it. All that has its
place in this world. To make money, to gather knowledge, to learn a new
skill, to explore new territory, even to get from A to B – for all these
things you need time. For almost everything you need time, except for one
thing: to embrace the present moment. You need no time to open yourself to
the power of now and so awaken to who you are beyond name and form and
realize that in the depth of your being, you are already complete, whole,
one with the timeless essence of all life. For that you not only need no
time, but time is the obstacle to that realization, seeking is the
obstacle, needing to add something to who you are is
the obstacle. The story of your life, how it all unfolds, whether you
succeed or fail in this world...Yes, it matters, yes, it's important –
relatively, not absolutely. Only one thing is of absolute importance and
this is it. If you miss it, you miss the deeper purpose of your life, which
I call the flowering of human consciousness. And ultimately nothing else
will satisfy you.
Some of the first human beings in whom the new consciousness emerged fully
became the great teachers of humanity, such as Buddha, Lao Tzu, or Jesus,
although their teachings were greatly misunderstood, especially when they
turned into organized religion. They were the first manifestations of the
flowering of human consciousness. Later others appeared, some of whom
became famous and respected teachers, whereas others probably remained
relatively unknown or perhaps even completely unrecognized. On the
periphery of the established religions, from time to time certain movements
appeared through which the new consciousness manifested. This enabled a
number of individuals within those movements to awaken spiritually. Such
movements, in Christianity, were Gnosticism and medieval mysticism; in
Buddhism, Zen; in Islam, the Sufi movement; in Hinduism, the teachings
called Advaita Vedanta.
But those men and women who awakened fully were always few and far
between – rare flowerings of consciousness. Until fairly recently, there
was not yet a need for large numbers of human beings to awaken. For the
first time in human history, a large-scale transformation of consciousness
has now become a necessity if humanity is to survive. Science and
technology have amplified the effects of the dysfunction of the human mind
in its unawakened state to such a degree that
humanity, and probably the planet, would not survive for another hundred
years if human consciousness remains unchanged. As I said earlier,
evolution usually occurs in response to a crisis situation, and we now are
faced with such a crisis situation. This is why there is indeed an enormous
acceleration in the awakening process of our species.
This new large-scale spiritual awakening is occurring primarily not
within the confines of the established religions, but outside of those
structures. Some of it, however, is also happening within the existing
churches and religious institutions wherever the members of those
congregations do not identify with rigid and exclusive belief systems whose
unconscious purpose is to foster a sense of separation on which the egoic mind structures depend for their survival.
ST: How much time and effort is required to realize the power of
now? Can this really occur in an instant or is this the work of a lifetime?
ET: The power of now can only be realized now. It requires no time
and effort. Effort means you're trying hard to get somewhere, and so you
are not present, welcoming this moment as it is.
Whereas it requires no time to awaken – you can only awaken now – it does
take time before you can stay awake in all situations. Often you may
find yourself being pulled back into old conditioned reactive patterns,
particularly when faced with the challenges of daily living and of
relationships. You lose the witnessing presence and become identified again
with the voice in the head, the continuous stream of thoughts, with its
labels, judgments and opinions. You no longer know that they are only
labels, judgments, and mental positions (opinions) – but completely believe
in them. And so you create conflict. And then you suffer. And that
suffering wakes you up again. Until presence becomes your predominant
state, you may find yourself moving back and forth for a while between the
old consciousness and the new, between mind identification and presence.
How long is it going to take? is not a good
question to ask. It makes you lose the now.
ET: How would you recommend that people listen and watch The Power
of Now teaching series in order to get the most out of the teachings? In your
opinion, why are audio and video teaching tapes such a powerful way for
people to learn?
ST: If at all possible, you should not be engaged in other activity
while you are listening or watching so that you can give your complete
attention not only to the words but also to the silent spaces between the
words. You will most likely learn many helpful facts about the emerging
state of presence as well as the obstacles you are most likely to
encounter. But this is only the secondary function of these tapes. Their
primary purpose is not to convey information, but to help you access the
state of presence as you listen. As in all true spiritual teachings, the
significance of the words that are being spoken goes far beyond their
informational content. Words that arise spontaneously out of the state of
presence are charged with spiritual power: the power to awaken. All that is
required of you is to be in a state of attentive listening. Don't just
listen with the head. Listen with your entire body, so to speak. Feel the
aliveness, the animating presence, throughout the body as you listen.
I recommend that you listen and/or watch these tapes over and over. Each
time you listen, it will feel as if you were listening for the first time.
Each time you listen, you will grow in presence. But do not listen
compulsively. Allow a gap of at least two or three days, and ideally more,
before you listen to the same tape again. Each time after you finish
listening, just sit in silence for a few minutes.
Enjoy the greatest adventure a human being can be engaged in: to be part of
the emergence of a new consciousness.
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