I came to know Eckhart
Tolle's work in stages; first via the printed words of his best-selling
The Power Of Now, then through his new book Stillness Speaks on
CD, and finally in person at the Omega Institute in upstate New
York. Each encounter brought me closer to the man's stillness and
his wisdom, which I gauged by the stillness I felt within myself
as I absorbed what he had to say.
Eckhart has a magical, elfin quality about him, and was dressed
in a button-down cardigan and corduroy pants. He speaks very softly,
but as we got into our conversation, he became quite animated and
impassioned. Our hour went by rapidly, and neither one of us moved
much from our spots on the sofa as the meeting went on.
JM: I'd like to talk about your transformation
at age 29, at which time you say your personality was erased. Many
people spend their lives trying to get something like that to happen,
and here it happened to you at a young age. Can you talk a little
bit about that?
ET: I was unhappy, depressed and anxious. I was
not trying to become enlightened or anything like that. I was looking
for some kind of answer to the dilemma of life, but I had been looking
to the intellect for the answer -- (semi-colon to em dash) philosophy,
religion and intellectual inspiration. The more I was looking on
that level, the unhappier I became. I reached a point where the
phrase came into my head---and this is in the book The Power of
Now---"I can't live with myself any longer." That part
of my self - that entity became so heavy and painful. Suddenly I
stepped back from myself, and there seemed to be two of me - the
"I", and this "self" that I cannot live with.
Am I one or am I two? And that triggered me like a koan [a Japanese
term for the riddles used in Zen Buddhism as a means of gaining
spiritual awakening]. It happened to me spontaneously. I looked
at that sentence - "I can't live with myself". I had no
intellectual answer. Who am I? Who is this self that I cannot live
with? The answer came on a deeper level. I realized who I was. When
I'm speaking about it now, it becomes intellectualized because I'm
using words, but that realization was beyond words. What "I"
as consciousness had identified with was a very heavy mental and
emotional form consisting of thought and accompanied by an energy
field. At that moment the identification with that mind structure
was withdrawn. It collapsed, and what remained was a spacious, peaceful
consciousness. The identification was broken, and because of that,
the mental/emotional structure - the psuedo-self - collapsed. My
sense of identity broke down and was replaced by something that
is very hard to put into words. Awareness. Consciousness. The words
only came a few years later. I couldn't even talk about it. I had
been anxious and depressed for years and suddenly I was deeply at
peace.
JM: Do you think your transformation had less
to do with achieving peace than letting go of the anxiousness and
the worry?
ET: Yes. It wasn't really the achievement of anything;
it was the realization by letting go of the identification. Something
suddenly was there that actually had always been there but had been
obscured continuously by identification with the heavy mind structure.
As I came to work with other people, I realized every human being
already has that dimension. No matter how anxious, depressed, disturbed
and fearful they may be. That dimension is already in there, in
every human being. And so I came to understand why some masters
sometimes say, "You are already enlightened." That dimension
is already in there, it just needs to be discovered. Something needs
to be released and something needs to be recognized.
JM: You know, when I walked in here, I had no
idea who was going to be here. I'd read your books but had never
seen you except in photographs. When you opened the door, it was
like the sun was in this flat. I couldn't help but forget any reservations
or shyness I may have had, and I almost burst out laughing.
ET: The reason for this is that in that act of
meeting you, there were no thoughts about who you are or who I am.
There was the openness of consciousness recognizing itself in another
human being. And that is extremely joyful. And it's also joyful
for someone who experiences that with someone else, because they
feel more themselves in that moment.
JM: It's rare that you meet such a person. One
thing that struck me while listening to your CD Stillness Speaks
on the way to our interview is that you say people make themselves
miserable and in turn they make others miserable. It hadn't occurred
to me that a person who habitually finds problems and "disasterizes" things affects everyone, the same as your smile affects me.
ET: Yes. It affects everybody else, it draws everybody
else into their drama, and it's meant to do that. That happens both
on a personal level, and you also see it in corporations and politics.
I sometimes meet people who work for corporations, and some of them
have said it's amazing that anything gets done at all considering
how much energy is uselessly burned up through inner conflict in
the organization. And it makes everyone's life miserable.
JM: Yes. I work for a lot of big media organizations,
and I'm dumbfounded at the wars I see when I walk into some of their
offices. And these are people who are telling us what's going on
in the world! When you see it on that level, it's easier to take
the news a lot less seriously. It's just one person's point of view.
ET: Yes---and sometimes you find the same even
in religious organizations, because religion in many cases is really
ideology. I'm not condemning all religions because that would not
be correct, but to a large extent people have not freed themselves
from their identification with their conditioned thinking. I know
that at the core of each religion there is the truth, heavily obscured
in some cases, but it's there. What happens when an organization
arises is the amplification of the ego, the ego-ic mind structures.
JM: You say "all religions"---have you
investigated religions? Judaism, Christianity, Islam?
ET: Yes, some more than others. Buddhism, Christianity,
to some extent Hinduism. At the core, the truth shines through.
Sometimes we have to look very deeply, but it's there.
JM: I was also struck by your interpretation of
the cross as a symbol of "thy will be done".
ET: It's a strange dualistic symbol. Basically,
it's a torture instrument. To me, Jesus stands for humanity. So
this man is nailed to the torture instrument, totally helpless,
in deep suffering. At that point comes total surrender to what simply
is. "Not my will, but thy will be done." At that point,
the symbolic significance of the cross is changed from being a torture
instrument to a symbol of the divine. So what it points to is that
the very thing that seems to stand in the way of realizing who you
are(change period to em dash) the very suffering that comes with
being here in this physical realm - because eventually some form
of suffering comes to everybody-- can become an opening into that
which we call the divine. If you're lucky, disaster comes before
the physical form is lost and the psychological form dissolves.
This sometimes happens through extreme suffering, when people lose
everything, or they find out they don't have much more time to live.
They are faced with extreme disaster, which cannot be explained
away. Philosophies collapse in the face of extreme disaster. Before
the trauma, they might have had philosophy or religious beliefs,
but when many people face the death of a loved one or their child
or spouse, suddenly they question their beliefs. "This wasn't
supposed to happen to me, I had a business arrangement with God.
I wasn't supposed to suffer." The mind, the "me",
collapses. Explanations fade. So you're faced with disaster you
cannot explain that seems to deny the existence of something deeper.
The cross seems to stand between you and the transcendental dimension
to love. But, strangely, that very cross is the opening also. Somebody
once put it this way: "What stands in the way is the way."
And you realize this when you no longer internally resist the form
that this moment takes. I call it the "is-ness" of this
moment.
JM: Would that be disaster or the honk of a horn
while I'm trying to work?
ET: Yes. A little thing or a big thing, resistance
is basically the same kind of mechanism. An internal "no"
to what is. And since the now is all there ever is in your life,
your entire life unfolds as the present moment. People don't realize
it, but all they ever have is "this". This moment. Always.
It seems so strange to put it into words. Your life is always this
moment. No more, no less. But just "this" is what most
people are unconsciously trying to run away from. They're always
in some future moment where things are hopefully better, or more
fulfilling. Or mentally they project a future moment they see as
fearful, that they have to tackle this possible thing which might
go wrong in the future, and which they try to deal with now. Ignoring
the aliveness that is actually there, concealed in the now. It is
a collective mental habit to run away, to deny and to resist the
is-ness of this moment. Not to be aligned with the now. Everybody
inherits that as a part of their collective mental conditioning.
They're taught to live like that from their parents, from their
schools. They probably inherit even the very mind structures that
create that kind of consciousness. But there's a shift happening
in humanity and consciousness, because it has to happen now. If
it doesn't happen now, mankind probably won't survive. The dysfunction
of the human mind and its condition is becoming more and more intolerable
to the planet, and to humanity. People can't live with themselves
much longer. The planet cannot live with humans much longer! The
dysfunction has become so magnified through technology. Whereas
before, a human warrior could kill a few hundred with a sword, now,
the same dysfunction is magnified. We have weaponry which we are
using for the destruction of the planet, and additionally we are
causing pollution, destruction of forests - there are countless
manifestations of humans using their intelligence in the service
of dysfunction, and madness. It's a strange juxtaposition. Humans
are intelligent, but if you look at history or even watch TV, they're
also incredibly stupid.
JM: Speaking of weapons of mass destruction: what
do we do about that? What do we do about countries that wish our
country great harm? What's an alternative if the other side is bent
on suicide, as the men of 9/11 were? If you have a vast army at
your disposal, what do you do?
ET: I don't know what I would do, because I can
only know what is right in an actual situation which demands a response.
It's very hard when you look at hypotheticals. What we can do is
look at the dysfunction in its collective aspects that we're witnessing
now. We can see, for example, what's happening in the Middle East
with the eternal insane conflict between Israel and Palestine. We
can see how each faction is totally convinced that their mental
position is the correct one. Each faction sees itself as the victim
of the other. There was a writer I read last year who said each
side cannot recognize any narrative other than their own; that's
also true. Narrative means the story through which you interpret
reality. People have collective stories which are mental perspectives
and mental positions. Of course, when they explain it to you, it
sounds absolutely right. Then you go to the other story, and they
explain it to you, and that sounds absolutely right. Both are so
entrenched in their narrative, their mental positions and their
identifications with mental positions that they cannot see anything
else. That really symbolizes the very thing that lies at the core
of human dysfunction. There you see it expressed collectively. An
inability to hold truth in your consciousness. To rise above polarities,
and say, Here's this perspective which is ours, and I can also see
the other perspective which is yours. If both could do that - even
if one party could do that - there would be an end to the madness.
It only gets perpetuated by two. You can see the same in personal
relationships; you can see the same in marriages that exist in a
state of warfare. Both are entrenched. There is this ongoing need
to be right. What that really ultimately means is they are identified
with the thinking. They have not stepped out of the structure of
thought - their mental position, their thought position. The way
out of the madness is to recognize thought as just thought. To see
your own stream of thinking, to see that no thought can encapsulate
the entire truth in any situation. You have to step out of thought
to see that; to become the awareness outside of thought. Some people
are driven out of thought because of suffering; others can step
out of thought because they see that thought is dysfunctional. A
terrorist who inflicts suffering on innocent people, kills thousands,
blows himself up - how is it that he cannot see what he is doing?
He cannot see because he has reduced other human beings around him
to a mental concept. He puts a mental label on other human beings
or groups of humans or whatever he calls them - infidels, evil.
Once you have conceptualized another human being, covering up their
essential aliveness, you also do it to yourself. You become identified
with your own self-concepts of who you are, because you are right,
you are the believer, you are in possession of the truth. You can
then inflict acts of violence on other humans without feeling anymore
because you've already desensitized yourself; you've deadened your
aliveness. So violence becomes very easy when you only operate from
the level of thought; thought plus very destructive emotion that
accompanies those destructive thought patterns. That's what drives
terrorists. As Jesus put it on the cross, “They know not what
they do.” In spiritual terms, they are completely unconscious.
“Unconscious” means identified totally with thought.
You reduce reality to a conceptual reality. A lot of violence arises
in that way. Terrorists are not the only ones who are unconscious.
The United States manufactures an enormous amount of totally senseless
weaponry, both biological and chemical. They manufacture the most
fiendish weapons - if they ever used them it would be hell on earth.
Why are they working on this? They are intelligent scientists, thousands
of them, the government itself sponsors them. What is the purpose
in creating such weapons if the use of them would create hell on
earth? Haven't they got enough weapons already? So Jesus’s
phrase also applies here: " They know not what they do."
You can see human unconsciousness in so many forms. You can see
it very clearly in the terrorists. Sometimes it's easier to see
the madness in others - but we also have to see it in ourselves.
JM: How does one do that? How do you do it?
ET: Well, primarily it needs to be done on personal
level. For example, for me, I try to see how identified I am with
my own mental position when I'm talking to someone— when I'm
putting forth and idea or opinion and that opinion is questioned
by the other person. They might say, "No, you're wrong---that's
not how it is." If I can then observe the violence with which
I defend my position, I'm actually becoming more conscious, because
by observing it, something else is arising that is not conditioned
thinking, but awareness.
JM: As opposed to saying, "No, you're wrong."
ET: Yes, because when people are engaged in being
right, defending their mental position, an enormous amount of defensiveness
and violence comes already. Why do two people become so agitated,
in some cases even violent, when they're defending a mental position?
Because that's what they derive their sense of self from. Thought
has become invested self. That's the very essence of dysfunction
- that humans derive their sense of self through thought. This is
a delusion, because who they are is so much deeper than thought.
They can only realize that when they detach from their thinking
and observe their thinking. Who or what is it that is able to observe
that you are identified with a mental position? Who or what is it
in you that is able to notice the emotional violence that comes
as you start to defend your own position? You can then ask, "Wow,
what's going on? What am I defending?" You are defending an
illusory sense of self - your sense of self and your mind structure.
That very dysfunction, which looks relatively harmless on a small
scale, is the very same dysfunction that drives the terrorist. So
it's only in yourself that you can detect it. And if you see it,
you see the root of human dysfunction and madness: identification
with thinking. But the moment you see it, you are already one foot
out of it. The seeing of it is not part of the dysfunction. So in
other words, when you see that you are mad, you are no longer mad.
That's the arising of something new in humanity. I sometimes call
it the unconditioned consciousness. But it is also a field of stillness,
where you see the torn roots of the human mind. Once it emerges,
it's a process that cannot be reversed. It emerges more and more
fully, and you become less and less identified with the structure
of thought. And then thought is no longer dysfunctional. It is actually
beautiful. It can be used for helpful purposes. It's wonderful -
you are no longer looking for an identity in the structure of thought
because now you know that who you are is deeper. You are the very
awareness prior to thought. You are the stillness that is deeper
than thought, much vaster than thought. We call it "stillness"
but it's just a word. We've reduced it to something. It's more than
that. It's consciousness itself, unconditioned. Which is the essence
of each human being. It's what occurs when you meet anybody in a
state of open, aware attention, without labeling them mentally or
judging them; then you are already operating as a current or conscious
awareness between human beings. That would dramatically change human
relationships. When awareness of presence operates between human
beings, they are no longer dominated by mind structures. On the
deepest level, that is also love. That is the only dimension from
which love can come into this world.
When it was time to say goodbye, Eckhart spontaneously hugged
me, after which I turned away, smiling. I headed off onto the dirt
path leading down to my car and, after walking about thirty feet,
I turned and saw that Eckhart had been watching me and smiling himself.
Eckhart Tolle's newest book Stillness Speaks is
available in hardcover for $17, published by New World Library.
Available by calling (800) 972-6657 Ext. 52 or online at www.newworldlibrary.com
or www.Amazon.com.
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