Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual teacher that has had enormous success in latest years, much because of the recognition he has gotten from Oprah. His fame has made him a rich man, and an owner of an expensive garage.
There is nothing very special with the man Eckart Tolle. He is just an ordinary person, German born, who has read a lot of wise books and taken out what he considers to be (here I suspect some would somewhat disagree) their essence.
I have to admit I am somewhat disturbed of a certain degree of “passiveness” in his teachings. Maybe even “passive aggressiveness”. I think there lies a danger for barriers between people when some mind sets are described as “right” while others are “wrong”. At least in the way it is presented here.
That said I have found his teachings valuable: especially his emphasis on the present moment, the “Now” – and that we have to start to live there. Here are some extracts from his book A New Earth.
Two fundaments in religions.
According to Tolle most religions rest on two fundaments.
1. The Dysfuncion of the “normal” state of human mind. Tolle calls this “the ego”.
This is called Maya in Hinduism. Often described as the veil (skynke, slöja) of delusion.
In Buddhism thinking leads to Dukkha, which can be translated as suffering, unsatisfactoriness, or just plain misery.
2. The possibility of a radical transformation of human consciousness.
In Hinduism: enlightenment.
In the teachings of Jesus: Salvation.
In Buddhism: the end of suffering.
Liberation and awakening are other terms used to describe this transformation. Buddha means “the awakened one.”
The Ego.
The ego always wants something from other people or situations. There is always a hidden agenda. It uses people and situations to get what it wants.
The Ego thrives on reactivity from other people (appreciation, love, hate or whatever other people show you – or in Tolle’s words: show the Ego).
The Ego isn’t who you are.
You cannot fight against the ego and win. Consciousness is all that is necessary.
No ego can last for long without the need for more. Therefore, wanting keeps the ego alive much more than having.
Once you realize and accept that all structures (forms) are unstable, even the seemingly solid material ones, peace arises within you.
When I know myself as that, whatever happens in my life is no longer of absolute but only of relative importance. I honor it, but it loses its absolute seriousness, its heaviness. The only thing that ultimately matters is this: Can I sense my essential Beingness, the I Am, in the background of my life at all times?
Why does the ego play roles? Because of one unexamined assumption, one fundamental error, one unconscious thought. That thought is: I am not enough.
Nothing can satisfy the ego for long. As long as it runs your life, there are two ways of
being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.
The dissolution of the ego.
Give up defining yourself – to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life.
Whenever a habitual no to life turns into a yes, whenever you allow this moment to be as it is, you dissolve time as well as ego. For the ego to survive, it must make time – past and future –more important than the present moment. The ego cannot tolerate becoming friendly with the present moment except briefly just after it got what it wanted.
Egoic patterns, even longstanding ones, sometimes dissolve almost miraculously when you don’t oppose them internally. Opposition only gives them renewed strength.
The true you. Consciousness.
Jean Paul Sartre looked at Descartes’s statement “I think, therefore I am” very deeply and suddenly realized, in his own words, “The consciousness that says ‘I am’ is not the consciousness that thinks.” What did he mean by that? When you are aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of consciousness. And it is that awareness that says “I am.” If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking.
You realize your true identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness had identified with. The ultimate truth of who you are is not in I am this or I am that, but I Am.
You are never more essentially, more deeply, yourself, than when you are still.
Your sense of who you are determines what you perceive as your needs and what matters to you in life.
But nothing you can find out about yourself is you. Nothing you can know about you is you.
When you fully accept that you don’t know how you are, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be.
Acceptance of life.
Yielding [ge efter] means inner acceptance of what is. You are open to life. When you yield internally, when you surrender, a new dimension of consciousness opens up. Circumstances and people then become helpful, cooperative. Coincidences happen. If no action is possible, you rest in the peace and inner stillness that come with surrender.
Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.
Nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe. Through it, consciousness (spirit) is freed from its imprisonment in form.
Tolle tell us about the secret of a great philosopher:
At one of his talks in the later part of his life J. Krishnamurti, a Indian philosopher, surprised his audience by asking, “Do you want to know my secret?”
Everyone became very alert. Many people in the audience had been coming
to listen to him for twenty or thirty years and still failed to grasp the essence
of his teaching. “This is my secret,” he said. “I don’t mind what happens.”
* * *
When I don’t mind what happens, what does that imply? It implies that internally I am in alignment with what happens. “What happens” refers to the suchness of this moment, which always already is as it is.
Here comes another story: “Is that so?”
The Zen Master Hakuin lived in a town in Japan. He was held in high regard and many people came to him for spiritual teaching. Then it happened that the teenage daughter of his nextdoor neighbor became pregnant. When being questioned by her angry and scolding parents as to the identity of the father, she finally told them that he was Hakuin, the Zen Master. In great anger the parents rushed over to Hakuin and told him with much shouting and accusing that their daughter had confessed that he was the father. All he replied was, “Is that so?”
News of the scandal spread throughout the town and beyond. The Master lost his reputation. This did not trouble him. Nobody came to see him anymore. He remained unmoved. When the child was born, the parents brought the baby to Hakuin. “You are the father, so you look after him.” The Master took loving care of the child. A year later, the mother remorsefully confessed to her parents that the real father of the child was the young man who worked at the butcher shop. In great distress they went to see Hakuin to apologize and ask for forgiveness. “We are really sorry. We have come to take the baby back. Our daughter confessed that you are not the father.” “Is that so?” is all he would say as he handed the baby over to them.
To him there is only this moment, and this moment is as it is. Events are not personalized. He is nobody’s victim. He is so completely at one with what happens that what happens has no power over him anymore. Only if you resist what happens are you at the mercy of what happens, and the world will determine your happiness and unhappiness.
The present moment.
There are three ways in which the ego will treat the present moment: as a means to and end, as an obstacle, or as an enemy.
The decision to make the present moment into your friend is the end of the ego. Time is what the ego lives on, with past and future.
The world will tell you that success is achieving what you set out to do. What the world doesn’t tell you – because it doesn’t know – is that you cannot become successful. You can only be successful.
Your inner purpose.
Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary. Inner and outer, however, are so intertwined that is almost impossible to speak of one without referring to the other.
Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that.
Your outer purpose.
The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all – from the most simple task to the most complex.
Freedom.
If you are able to enjoy simple things like listening to the sound of the rain or the wind; if you can see the beauty of clouds moving across the sky or be alone at times without feeling lonely or needing the mental stimulus of entertainment; if you find yourself treating a complete stranger with heartfelt kindness without wanting anything from him or her… it means that a space has opened up, no matter how briefly, in the otherwise incessant stream of thinking that is the human mind. When this happens there is a sense of wellbeing, of alive peace, even though it may be subtle. The intensity will vary from a perhaps barely noticeable background sense of contentment to what the ancient sages ofIndiacalled ananda – the bliss of Being.
Many poets and sages throughout the ages have observed that true happiness – I call it the joy of Being – is found in simple, seemingly unremarkable things. Most people, in their restless search for something significant to happen to them, continuously miss the insignificant, which may not be insignificant at all. The philosopher Nietzsche, in a rare moment of deep stillness, rote, “For happiness, how little suffices for happiness!…. the least ting precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a wisk, an eye glance – little make up the best happiness. Be still.”
There may be a period of insecurity and uncertainty. What should I do? As the ego is no longer running your life, the psychological need for external security, which is illusory anyway, lessens. You are able to live with uncertainty, even enjoy it. When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life. It means fear is no longer a dominant factor in what you do and no longer prevents you from taking action to initiate change. If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.
