How to Experience a Deeper State of Consciousness | Eckhart Tolle

Now, at first, this space of pure awareness seems to be nothing. And in a way, it is nothing in the sense that it is not a thing, that it is not an object of consciousness. Because everything else is an object of consciousness. Every sense perception becomes an object of consciousness in your mind. Every thought is an object. In other words, you could say it is a form that consciousness temporarily takes. It incarnates into a form. And that form is a thought, or it could be a sense perception. And so that is the incarnation of consciousness into form. When you come, sometimes Buddhists argue, how many more incarnations do I need before I no longer need to incarnate? You can do it right here and now. Don't incarnate into thoughts. That's the end of incarnation. Which means don't identify with the rising thoughts. Be the awareness behind the thoughts, which is what you are. And so at first, it seems like, let's say, what we call it stillness. By the way, I wrote a little book that some of you might not know. It's called Stillness Speaks, which is a little paradox, of course. Stillness Speaks. It's a book for meditative reading. You just read a few lines and you kind of become still. That's what it's for. But anyway, so the stillness is one way of putting it. That's not just a term, of course. Stillness is the inner equivalent of silence in the outer world. Silence in the outer world is the absence of noise. Stillness in the inner realm is the absence of thought. And so in the absence of thought, what remains is you do not fall asleep. In ordinary existence, when thinking stops, you very quickly fall asleep. So the only way that humans who are not awakened or awakening can experience the cessation of thinking is when they move from the wakeful state into sleep. Then there comes a moment of you cannot remember your problems anymore because you're so tired. Five minutes before, you were thinking about your problems, would be the problems for your identity. And now you get very tired. You can't remember your problems anymore. And thinking comes, but you're not totally asleep yet. And it feels so good. You're moving towards sleep, but it feels so good. And temporarily, briefly, you're free of yourself. And then you move into the unconsciousness of sleep. Now, most humans, without knowing it, are looking for becoming free of themselves, of their selves. And then again, they look in the wrong places. Some humans find temporary relief from themselves by taking certain substances. And again, for some humans, it can be a good thing to have, especially those who are totally mind-possessed, that can give them a glimpse of something that's beyond their mind. It may temporarily stop their mind. But don't become dependent on anything. And I don't recommend it. Now, you don't need it. But if you take such... Humans, they love smoking these dried leaves that were illegal for many years for some reason, but now you can smoke them. I don't know about here, but... So it temporarily calms the mind. I tried it once when we were visiting Amsterdam. And it kind of dulls your mind a bit. But I can see what it does to people whose mind is very active. Temporarily, they become free of themselves, their mind-made self. And they've become happy, so happy. They can't stop laughing. That's how happy I am. I'm free of myself. So the way I put it is, with this, yes, you are becoming free of yourself, but you're falling below thinking. You're going to stay prior to the rising of the ego. You're falling below thinking. Yes, you are free of the mind that tortures you every day. You're falling below thinking. It's not the awakening path, otherwise we would call it the sleepy path or something like that. The awakening path is the ability grows in you to rise above thinking. That's what it is. You are actually conscious without thought. And that is the simplicity of it. And then you find, at first, it's just an absence of thought, in the same way that externally silence is an absence of noise. This is the absence of inner noise. And then at first, okay, and then you stay with it. And it comes back again at the end. Once you get a glimpse of that state of pure awareness, you may want to invite it into your life more often. And because then, from the point of view of time, one could say that it deepens this power that manifests through you, grows stronger. Not that the power itself grows stronger, but it manifests this dimension where there's time. It manifests more fully through you, so to speak. So the power, presence, power, as I sometimes call it, grows in you. That is the power of life itself. That is the pure, pure intelligence, you could call it. Pure consciousness, the very primordial thing that is behind everything. It is, that is sometimes, am I talking about God here? Am I saying that this, the consciousness itself is God? Well, yes and no. The analogy I like to use that is maybe helpful is the sun. The sun emanates light into here. It gives, it's the life on a physical level. The light of the sun is the life-giving thing here that enables life to be. And the sun pours out light continuously, energy. And there's the sun. Now this light, of course, is still connected to the sun. It's not separate from the sun. It emanates from the sun, but it's not the sun. It's, so it is and it isn't the sun. The sun itself is a vast and inconceivable form of energy. This is only an analogy. So what I mean then is, God is the source from which consciousness emanates into this dimension. This is the closest, as far as I'm concerned, it's the closest in words to explain that which cannot really be explained.