The Seer

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.

~ From an Interview with Eckhart Tolle: The Power of Now and the End of Suffering, by publisher: Sounds True. circa July/2008

~ Read More of Eckhart’s interview.

~ Watch a YouTube video clip of a talk on ‘Enlightenment’ given by Eckhart two years ago.

You could say that intuition is a kind of knowing, but you don’t know how you got there. You know something, but you don’t know by what path you’ve arrived at what you know. It’s a sudden arising of knowledge or knowing something, but “I don’t know how I know this.”

What is at work here is non-conceptual intelligence, when intuition arises.Intuition is not arrived at by thinking, not by logic. It’s arrived at in a way that we cannot explain. It is closely related to creativity and inspiration. Inspiration also comes from that place.

Intuition is given to you. [It is given to] all great artists, musicians, writers, and even great scientists who made deep discoveries that were revolutionary — like Einstein. Einstein had a ’sense’ of his theory of relativity. Before he could fully prove it, he already knew it was true.

It was intuition that came to him. Of course, he had done a lot of thinking before that happened.

Sometimes you have to do a lot of thinking, and then suddenly, thinking doesn’t get you anywhere anymore, and you stop thinking, and you go out and take a few deep breaths. Or you go out into nature and sit under a tree. And suddenly, intuition is there. Something you couldn’t have arrived at through thinking.

It’s vital for every human being to contact that place within, where intuition arises, because otherwise you are confined to the limitations of your conceptual mind … your life is just repetitive, and no new ideas can come. If it’s a fresh and new idea, it comes from a place where all creativity arises — which ultimately, is the stillness within. That’s where intuition arises.

If you can be still even for a moment, then there’s a possibility that some intuitive thing arises as a thought or as a spontaneous thing that you say, and you’ve surprised yourself. Maybe somebody needs your help or advice, and rather than thinking “I should be helping that person. What can I say next to help them?”, rather than that, you just become still, listen, look. And suddenly you may find yourself saying something. It’s intuitive. Suddenly a deeper intelligence comes and uses your mind. That’s what we call intuition.

Realize that this is at the basis of all creative activities, all truly creative activities. Perception is something that comes from the outside, and intuition comes from the inner. It comes from you. It is essentially one with who you are, intelligence itself.

The easiest way to develop intuition is to develop the ability to be still at times. Rather than ‘trying’ to develop intuition, go to the place where all intuition arises. You don’t need to worry about becoming more intuitive if you focus more on being still. Not necessarily for long periods of time, but have moments of stillness in your life, so that every day is interspersed with moments of stillness.

You could just close your eyes and take one or two deep breaths. Or you don’t even have to close your eyes, but while you’re listening or looking at somebody, feel yourself breathing. Feel the inner aliveness within your body. If you are looking at your computer screen, look away for a moment, or close your eyes for a moment, and take one or two conscious breaths. It brings you to stillness.

Wherever you are, there are always opportunities for a moment of stillness. And that is vital, because otherwise your life is unbalanced. If you don’t find stillness, all you have is activity — one thing after another. And this covers up your potential intuitive faculty, continuously.

Seek out moments of stillness. Even the busiest person can do it. If you’re driving home, or driving to work, every traffic light is an invitation to stillness. [There are] so many opportunities for stillness. Stillness is where intuition arises.

~ by Eckhart Tolle (who was born on this day in 1948 — Happy Birthday Eckhart: )

Question: Does the feeling and expression of gratitude help to raise consciousness?

Eckhart Tolle: We are talking about a deeper gratitude. There are more superficial forms of gratitude, and that is not what we are talking about. By that I mean, to be grateful that someone else is worse off than you are … sometimes that is a source of gratitude. People say, “Oh I really should be grateful, because look at this person – they are worse off than I am, so I should be grateful.” That’s not the true gratitude, that’s the gratitude that is arrived at through thinking, where you compare yourself to others.

The deeper gratitude is not arrived at through some conceptual process, where you explain to yourself why you should be grateful. That’s a superficial form of gratitude, that’s not really what it is, that’s ultimately to do with ego. More fundamental than the true form of gratitude is the deep sense of appreciation. It’s not to do with what you are telling yourself in your head, it’s something that you sense in the present moment, it’s an appreciation of the ‘is-ness’ of this moment.

We are using words as pointers. When I say ‘appreciation’, some people might ask, “What do you mean by appreciation?” It’s to feel that the world around you is alive, and you share in the aliveness of the world that surrounds you. There’s the outer aliveness, in other human beings, even in your surroundings – whether it’s nature, or even in a room, you sense the aliveness of what’s around you at this moment, through your own aliveness.

And with that comes the feeling, “it’s good to be alive.” You appreciate the many forms of life that are arising at this moment. You don’t impose judgment on the form that life takes at this moment, because the form that life takes changes continuously around you – one moment you’re here, the next moment you’re somewhere else. It’s a deep sense of Being-ness, or aliveness, and through that you appreciate what is, in your life.

And by saying ‘in your life’, it always means in the present moment, because apart from the present moment, there is no such thing as ‘your life’. If there’s something else there that’s not the present moment that you call ‘your life’, it’s a mental construct. You have formed an image of “me” and “my life”, it’s a story, and you mistake that for your life.

Fundamentally your life is whatever form this moment takes. Your life is always what is now. That’s your life. Not some story you’re telling yourself in your head. Through that appreciation, you are sensing a sense of Oneness with what’s outside and what’s inside. There is no longer a separation that is created by excessive conceptual thinking between other people and the self, the separation is created by judgment. There is a sense of allowing the present moment to be as it is.

All these are fundamental aspects of gratitude. It’s that openness to the ‘is-ness’ of this moment. With that openness, comes an appreciation for the ‘is-ness’ of this moment. There is no longer a denial or a rejection of what is, because you have some story in your mind that clashes with what is around you at this moment. And that’s how many people live, so they go through life continuously, there’s a clash between their ideas of what should be now, and what is ‘now’.

The greatest form of suffering and frustration and non-fulfillment is the clash between the mental story of what ’should’ be and what is. That’s really the root of the madness. There cannot be gratitude when that operates in your life. When something seemingly negative happens, people may find it very hard to say, “Okay, I should be grateful, even for this.”

I’m not saying you should do that, because even that is an idea in your head. It’s better to forget about trying to be grateful when something seemingly negative happens, and simply let go of the mental judgment of it, and say, “This is what is, this is what happened, and this is the situation now.”

If you can be free of mental judgment and denial or projection, complaining, and so on … just allow what is, and then something deeper emerges, even in a seemingly negative situation. By coming into this place of acceptance, of the inevitable ‘is-ness’ of now, your inner state is no longer ultimately dependant on what is happening or not happening outside. That is a vital transformation of consciousness, where the external world no longer determines your state of consciousness.

So when something seemingly bad happens, say, “this is.” Whether it is a small thing or a large thing, be open to that. If you’re open to the ‘is-ness’ of what is, something within you which we could call ‘peace’ arises. Sometimes it’s very subtle, and you can’t notice it at first. You’re not grateful for the seemingly bad thing, but you’re grateful that you can still be at peace, even in this situation.

Internally you feel that by accepting, peace arises. Even in seemingly bad circumstances. And what is that peace? It’s an inner sense of aliveness, being-ness, presence. It’s the source of all gratitude. There can be gratitude even when something bad happens. Not for the bad, but for the fact that even in the face of something seemingly negative, there is still peace in the background. But you won’t find that until you first accept what is.

Gratitude is very important. It transforms your whole life, if you can remember the importance of being grateful for life. As you go through your day, every day, you can even have little reminders — of the importance of being appreciative of life. Every person has to verify for themselves, what can I be grateful for at this moment? Sense the being that you are — not just the physical, but the sense of your own presence. That’s a great source of joy, to feel your own presence, it cannot really be defined. That’s the ultimate gratitude.

As Christmas approaches, and without taking any stance for or against the occasion, those who celebrate may experience Christmas and the days leading up to it as stressful. What was originally meant to be a time of stillness and peace has been made into its opposite by the human mind.

The occasion we are celebrating at Christmas is, of course, the birth of Jesus two thousand years ago. In a deeper sense, however, Christmas represents the birth of Christ within the human soul, the arising of who you are in your essence – stillness, the unconditioned, timeless dimension of consciousness.

Just as Christmas is the celebration of light arising when the darkness is greatest and the nights are longest (in the northern hemisphere), the spiritual birth in the human soul often happens at a time of great despair and suffering. This is the dark night of the soul that often comes before the spiritual awakening.

Once the awakening has happened, most people undergo a process during which the darkness within them, the unconsciousness of the ego, is seen more clearly and dispelled by the light of consciousness, the light of Presence. In other words: living in the Now dispels the darkness!

Collectively, Christmas comes to symbolize the spiritual birth on earth, the arising of a new consciousness in humanity. This is what lies at the core of all religions: the realization of enlightenment, the Christ within, or your Buddha nature. May the spirit of Christmas deepen the stillness, love, peace and joy that you are. Peace and blessings to all.

~ by Kim Eng. See her new DVD — Presence through Movement – Qi Flow Yoga — by Kim Eng with Eckhart Tolle

When Eckhart Tolle TV began, Eckhart referred to it as an ‘experiment’. When asked recently how he felt about it now, Echart replied:

“What I’ve found hard at first with this unfamiliar medium was to have a relationship with a camera – because I’m not used to having a relationship with cameras, I have relationships with people who listen. And the camera, not being alive, I found it hard to speak into the camera, because I felt that there was nobody there.

We had a small studio audience, so I tended to look around the room at other people, at the live beings rather than the seemingly ‘dead’ camera. And people had to continuously point at the camera saying “Look here, look here!” so that you establish a relationship with the people, far more people than in the studio audience who are actually watching from their homes.

And yet, I tried several times and I just couldn’t establish a relationship with the camera, until the third or fourth time. Suddenly, it happened. And spontaneously I visualized the camera not as an object in itself, but as – to use a term from science fiction – a ‘wormhole’. So, I could feel that as I looked into the camera, the camera was no longer there as an obstacle, it was an opening.

So an inner shift had happened inside me, in relationship to the camera. And I could now feel that the camera was actually an opening, and through it I was speaking, suddenly, into the opening. I felt that I was reaching people – the other end of the wormhole. At first, the camera was in the way, and then suddenly my inner perception of it changed, and the camera became an opening.

That, for me, was the most surprising and revolutionary thing that happened, that I can now have a relationship with all the people who are sitting at the other end of the wormhole, in their homes, in their living rooms, or wherever they are. The vital thing here is to sense, to feel, that there is a connection, there is an energy outflow. The experiment seemed to work quite well … because this shift happened.

The next stage of the experiment is just to see how the teaching works through that, over the next year or so. I need to see that it works for people — that it’s transformational for the people who are watching at home. Also, another criterion that I always use for myself, is whether I enjoy doing it. If you are doing something and you don’t really enjoy doing it, then the energy flow isn’t there.

It’s also good to know that the Internet, which is used for many ‘insane’ purposes, is used to bring about a shift in consciousness, raising consciousness rather than lowering consciousness. In itself it’s neutral, like any technology – it is neither good nor bad, it depends how it’s used.

Technology tends to amplify patterns that are already there, in the human mind – so you can see the madness of the human mind amplified if you surf around the Internet, you can see it very clearly there. A lot of it is. But it can also amplify the opposite of that, it can amplify the rising consciousness, a new level of consciousness.

So far, there’s probably more madness than sanity on the Internet, but that could change. We are using this medium to see if it can be used for a positive purpose, rather than amplifying the insanity of the human mind – it counteracts that.”

~ Click here to go to EckhartTolleTV.com

In his best-selling book, The Power of Now Eckhart Tolle writes: “The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly.

“By misuse, I mean that people who have never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying.

“This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as “My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false,” or Nietzsche’s famous statement “God is dead.”

“The word God has become a closed concept. The moment the word is uttered, a mental image is created, no longer, perhaps, of an old man with a white beard, but still a mental representation of someone or something outside you, and, yes, almost inevitably a male someone or something.

“Neither ‘God’ nor ‘Being’ nor any other word can define or explain the ineffable reality behind the word, so the only important question is whether the word is a help or a hindrance in enabling you to experience That toward which it points. Does it point beyond itself to that transcendental reality, or does it lend itself too easily to becoming no more than an idea in your head that you believe in, a mental idol?”

~ To read the rest of this insightful article, >>>Click Here.

When you accept the form that this moment takes, that is the miracle: the form of this moment becomes an opening into the formless within you. And the worse, the more challenging that this moment is and you accept it, the deeper it takes you into the unconditioned space consciousness or into peace.

So if you were faced with a dreadful disaster in your life, it arises at this moment, everything is collapsed. And you face it and see the isness of this moment just is as it is, you look death in the face. You accept the form that this moment takes completely and suddenly, you sense something that really cannot be described; it’s a spaciousness or peace around that dreadful event. It happens within a field of peace or space.

And I wouldn’t use here the word happy; you are not happy when that happens, nor are you unhappy. It is beyond happiness and unhappiness. There is a serenity and a peace that come. You make room for it to happen, you allow it to happen. You make space for it to happen,

Humans don’t make space for things to happen; they want to remove space from things. So if something is happening and you make space for it, you become the space. And this is the grace that is hidden underneath so-called bad events.

~ From: Journey Into Yourself by Eckhart Tolle

The phrase “Here and Now” is known to all. It is strange to even mentions it, like saying, “Breathe!” Isn’t it clear that we breathe? Well, just as breathing is sometimes strenuous so the experience of Now can be hard work. It happens to us when our attention is bombarded by troublesome thoughts that are not from here and now. Valuable psychic energy is wasted and the result is nervousness and exhaustion. It’s like pressing the accelerator in low gear.

How and when did we lose our connection to ‘Here and Now’?

When we were young and vulnerable, we operated on an automatic and reactive mindset aimed at survival. This mindset is security centered. The mind will struggle for security by constantly trying to make sense of life. That means trying to predict the future based on past experience. The mind gradually develops a ’story’ about oneself. The story consists of explanations of what happened in the past, interpretations of the present and predictions about the future.

Within the story, a child perceives him or herself as the main cause of his or her pains. This often develops into the delusion of “I am not lovable as I am.” The heavy price is a loss of authenticity, of connection to the flow of life, to NOW.

What does it mean to ‘live in the Now’?

Living in the Now means our attention is entirely focused at the present moment, as if we ‘forgot ourselves’ in favor of what is happening right now. Self forgetfulness is to forget the story your mind has created through your life. The story is like a prison whose bars are past memories. Returning to Now is liberation from this prison.

When your attention is fully Now, you don’t sense the effort but the lightness of a playful state of mind. You allow yourself to be who you really are. Does it mean that one should not learn from the past and plan for the future? On the contrary! Being with the flow of life is to experience learning because life is a movement forward through learning and growing.

The Now attention is not engaged in blame, guilt or catastrophising the future but simply in what one can learn for a better future. In Now the attention is free from the ’stories.’ Creating a healthy distance from your stories is what you want to achieve through a process of self-awareness. As you learn to disidentify with the relentless thoughts you free your attention to respond more effectively to the Now.

How can we return to Now?

Returning to Now is, to my view, the most transformative experience a person can have in his or her life. This is a transition in the center of gravity of one’s identity. From controlling-analytical mind — EGO — to the spirit, this loving-abundant capacity within each of us.

While our Ego-attention is operating on the survival pain/pleasure principle, our spirit operates on the abundance principle of unlimited possibilities for flourishing. The one who learns how to shift attention from survival mode to flourishing mode has freed him or herself from the conditioned ego. This will result in a more authentic life, a life that reflects one’s true potential, one’s true nature.

The spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, wrote in The Power of Now that a connection to life occurs when we disidentify with this mindset that psychologically lives the past and future. The liberation is not by taking control of it but by connecting with and observing it. The brain involuntarily generates electro-chemical events that we experience as thoughts and emotions. This is the nature of the mind. Resistance will only feed the same mindset.

We must understand that thoughts are neither right nor wrong. It is our relationship with them that give them the power. It’s like watching a movie: the impact on us is as strong as the belief that what we see is true. Our challenge is to see mental events — thoughts, images, memories etc., as what they really are — a content from the past running on the screen of our mind.

The method we use in order to train the mind to do so is known as mindfulness. Put simply, you learn to notice whatever is happening in the Now. As you develop the skill to just notice, you develop gradually the observer within you. In a state of self-awareness you are not carried away by your thoughts and feelings. The idea is simple, but not the implementation. One has to properly study and practice this ability.

According to Tolle, one of the main gateways to Now is our body. A short exercise of noticing your body experiences will anchor your attention instantly in the Now. Your body is always here, always alive and always changing. By noticing the subtle sensations you increasingly center your core identity as the spiritual self. Observing means unconditional acceptance, without analyzing or judging.

This is an emphatic observation, without ego’s contaminated filter. Such an observation is a skill we left in childhood. While playing in puddles we marveled at the jumping green thing before it became a ‘frog’. Such observation often leads to moments of wonder and awe. Once you experience it, you realize that coming back to Now is like coming back to life.

~ by Hagai Avisar (Hagai will be giving an extended workshop at Gurukula in November. For more details, >>>Click Here)

The word “I” is the most frequently used word in the English langueage … or in any language. Usually, when people use the word “I”, they are refering to ‘me and my story’ — the conditioned entity — the fiction that I identify with as ‘me.’

But there is a deeper meaning to “I” — that is, the delusion of “I” — the delusion of (the egoic) self. For ultimately, “I” is a sacred word, (indicating the unborn, eternal Self).

This is what Jesus referred to when he said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Not, “Before Abraham was, I was already.” There is neither ‘was’ nor ‘will be’ in “I”, it IS eternal Presence — eternal ‘Nowness’. And this is what the Upanishad refers to also — it is the Formless, it is the Unconditioned.

It (the infinite unconditioned “I”) is known, but never in a subject/object relationship — it cannot be known in such a way. So one could say, it cannot be known at all — you can only BE it. Realise that you ARE it, but cannot know it as you know an object in consciousnesss.

For thousands of years, people have been trying to make God into an object in consciousness — the idea of God, the image of God, statements about (God) etc.

This is why the Upanishad says, “Not what people here adore” — that is not God — not that which you see, not that which you hear, not that which you think, not (even) that which you believe in, because belief is thought.

You believe in God — that also is “Not what people here adore” — it is a mental idol — ultimately, it is an ideology.

You believe in God and the person next to you believes in Communism — two ideologies! So it’s “Not what people here adore” — not that which the mind thinks, not that which the mind believes, but That which makes all thinking, all believing, all sense-perception possible. The Formless, out of which all forms arise.

And That is the innermost “I”, the (formless) Essence that gets mixed up in your life with forms — that is, the deepest innermost Self.

Transcribed from a talk given by Eckhart Tolle in Rishikesh, India, as recorded in DVD series, Touching the Eternal — Disk 3. entitled: The Power of Not Knowing. This DVD series is avaiable through our online store. To read the complete article: >>>Click Here.

Our dear friend, Catherine Ingram, has reported on the Vancouver Peace Summit, a three-day gathering of luminaries including the Dalai Lama, Eckhart Tolle, Maria Shriver, numerous Nobel laureates, and a couple dozen other presenters.

The Dalai Lama, Catherine said, emphasized again and again the need for women to have greater roles in leadership in all fields because, he said, they are “biologically” more nurturing and have a greater sensitivity to suffering. He feels that our educational system is the domain in which ethics and a connection to the totality of life needs to be taught now that there is a worldwide diminishment of the role of churches and the cohesion of families, arenas which once provided more spiritual and ethical sustenance. He also implored the educators and scientists attending the conference to introduce emotional and social intelligence in schools and for the media to start concentrating more on “good news,” stories that uplift our spirits instead of scaring us to death.

Eckhart Tolle, she said, suggested the introduction of “awareness” training in schools, not just as one of the subjects but as the main subject — “awareness of emotions, awareness of thoughts, of other human beings and their thoughts,” and for young people to learn to not equate their thoughts with who they are so that a child has a sense early on of his or her own nature and of the nature of the other children.

There was a moment I heard about, Catherine said, that I didn’t actually witness. After one of the sessions, the Dalai Lama and Eckhart Tolle held hands as they walked to lunch. It is an image I would have liked to imprint in memory, one that I might call upon in moments of distress. To most of the world, they are probably the two most respected spiritual leaders of East and West. But in these last days and over the many years I have known them both, they have shown themselves to be wise global citizens, beautifully human and simple, doing their part for a gentler world.