Eckhart Tolle Article From Ode Magazine (by Tijn Touber)He
arrived at a place where most people rarely go: the here and now. And
Eckhart Tolle definitely plans to stay there. Because in the here and
now there are no problems; they belong to the future or the past. Tijn
Touber spoke with the man who is living proof of his words. “Every
action that originates from the here and now, will be exactly right.”
The man in bed is panicked by fear. For the umpteenth time he has awoken
in the middle of the night with the same recurring thought: “I can’t
live with myself any longer.” For years he’s been flung back and forth
between unbearable stress and suicidal thoughts. He’s not yet thirty,
but to him the world is a cold, dangerous place that he wants to escape.
What he’d really like to do is dissolve, disappear forever. On this
particular night the pain is worse than usual. The words pound in his
head: “I can’t live with myself any longer, I can’t live with myself any
more”. Then something strange happens. Suddenly another thought emerges:
if I can’t live with myself any longer, there must be two of ‘me’. The
‘me’ and the ‘self’ I can no longer tolerate. “Maybe”, he thinks, “only
one of them is real.”
This thought makes such a deep impression that for a few moments he
can’t think anymore at all. For the first time in his life, his mind
goes completely still. But just as he is about to breathe a sigh of
relief, the silence changes into a whirlpool that threatens to suck him
in. The fear he feels now is even greater than what he experienced a few
minutes before. He is afraid to lose himself and, as his body begins
shaking uncontrollably, he desperately latches on to who he thinks he
is: Eckhart Tolle, scientist at Cambridge University, German, man, human
being, … But it’s too late. The whirlpool is pulling him into
unfathomable depths and the only thing he can do is let himself fall.
Eckhart Tolle no longer remembers what happened after that, but when he
came back to consciousness, he was a changed man. The world around him
appeared to have changed. The sunlight shining through the curtains was
so beautiful that he cried. The rest of the day he walked around the
city in a state of absolute amazement – deeply impressed by the beauty
of life. As if he was born again.
“It was only later that I understood what had happened,” Tolle
remembers. “The intense pressure of the pain of that night had become so
great that my consciousness was forced to separate itself from
identifying with the unhappy and fearful self. This separation must have
been so complete, that the false, suffering self fell apart all at
once.”
In one night, Tolle left behind all identification with his role and
identity. His past appeared to have been erased and the future rendered
unimportant. The only thing that mattered was the present, where
everything was all right. He had landed in a place where most of us
rarely go: the here and now. In this new state of consciousness, Tolle
spent two years mostly sitting on London’s park benches. He gradually
left more and more things behind: house, job, relationships, status,
possessions. He realized he didn’t need anything to be happy. He no
longer needed to go anywhere or do anything. He had achieved his goal
and was exactly where he needed to be, every moment of the day. The
energy he radiated drew interest from many people. They sometimes
approached him in the park to ask: “I want what you have. Can you give
that to me or show me how I can achieve it?” To which he responded,
again and again: “You’ve already got it. You just don’t feel it because
your mind is making too much noise.”
In 1998, he turned these question and answer sessions resulted into a
slim book The Power of Now (New World Library). At first it was
completely ignored, until actress Meg Ryan read it and was so deeply
moved she tipped off Oprah Winfrey, who designated it “one of my
favourite books”. From one day to the next – this was December 2002 –
the book shot up to first place on The New York Times’ best seller list.
Now the book is available in 30 languages and has sold copies worldwide.
Meeting Tolle at his hotel overlooking an Amsterdam canal, I notice his
friendly light blue eyes, little beard, reddish hair and somewhat
slumping shoulders. He exudes the sense of peace you might expect from
someone dedicated to living in the present. “The power of now begins
with attention,” he tells me. “ By completely embracing that which
presents itself. Ask yourself: ‘what is the problem now?’ And now means
now, not: ‘I don’t know how I’ll be able to pay the rent at the end of
the month’. What is the problem now? Sometimes you need to ask the
question three or four times in order to see that there is no problem
now.
“Every action that originates from the here and now will be right,” he
continues. “You don’t think about that decision – it’s the right
decision in the moment. Every so often you see athletes do it. If
they’ve mastered their game, they are capable of complete presence and
effectiveness in the moment. That is the basis of their success and it
is a joy to watch.
“Most people are separated from that life flow. They fight against
themselves and are no longer open to life, to the fact that now is doing
it’s utter best to work for them. Stop fighting, give in to the now and
see how things manifest all by themselves without effort. If I mentally
project myself into the coming two weeks, I immediately feel stressed –
all the lectures I have to give and what will people think of them? But
past and future don’t really exist. Have you ever experienced the past?
No, because everything you experience is always the present.”
Tolle, who is 56, speaks slowly and softly, with a trace of a German
accent that makes his English sound singsong. His hands remain calmly on
his lap. No macho talk and firm reprimands. He doesn’t even try to
convince you. He is simply sharing his experience.
“Nearly everyone derives his identity from mental concepts of who he or
she thinks they are. Nearly everyone identifies with his or her
thoughts. If you ask people who they are, you get their life story. But
that’s not who they are. The story only describes a number of events in
their lives. You can’t get to know yourself by thinking about it. You
can only get to know yourself by silencing your mind and listening – by
truly being present for what is presenting itself in the moment.
“You cannot solve your problems on the thinking level, because that’s
where they were created. Solutions come when you rise above your
thoughts. I call that ‘beyond thought’, which is different than
ignorance. Nor does it mean that you never think again, but it means
that you are no longer a prisoner of your own mind.”
According to Eckhart Tolle, giving in to the now is the only path that
leads to actual free will. “Most people live in the delusion that they
make decisions out of free will. In reality their actions are completely
determined by their past. How you think, what you want and what you
consider important are all determined by your upbringing, your culture,
your religion – in short, by your concepts. As long as you still think
you are your mind, you have no free will. Spiritually you are
unconscious. You may think you know what you want, but you don’t. It is
only the conditioning of your mind that says: “This is what you need to
have”. That’s not a choice, it’s mechanical. Some people escape from
this. Then it is suddenly as if there is more consciousness, which means
that for the first time they truly experience free will. Only then can
you take responsibility.”
It sounds very easy, so why do most people continuing to suffer? I ask
Tolle if suffering is necessary as a path to insight, as happened to
him? “You need to suffer until you see that you don’t need to suffer.
That appears to be a paradox. Suffering was necessary for most people
who have gone through a deep inner transformation. There are exceptions.
But nowadays not everyone has to go through the ‘dark night of the
soul’. Many have already suffered enough. Humanity has already suffered
so much that you could almost say that all the necessary human suffering
is behind us. It’s already taken place. It is therefore now possible for
many individuals to make the transition. When you understand that you’re
suffering as a result of collective conditioning, then you’ve already
got one foot out the door.
“The moment you realise you’re crazy,” Tolle adds. “is the moment you
start to heal.”
He regularly falls silent, as if he is listening something outside
himself. By making contact with what he calls “the field of presence”,
Tolle – who admits himself that he has no charisma – makes a tremendous
impression. The lecture he gives to 800 people a few days after our
discussion is a good example of this. Tolle did nothing more than sit in
a chair and listen and then talk about what occurs to him. He said he
hardly prepares for lectures so as to be open to what presents itself.
But the power of these ideas could clearly be read on the faces of those
who attended his Amsterdam lecture.
This metamorphosis of a “fearful, depressive and oversensitive young
man” to a celebrated spiritual teacher will prove a major test for
Tolle’s ego. “It is a challenge to be seen by others as ‘special’, while
I know that the truth is quiet the opposite,” he says. “The lessons come
from a state of presence. And that state can only be, because the person
has become so unimportant. It is precisely the absence of the person
that makes that happen. If I forget that, I fall back into the
egotistical illusion. This has happened to various teachers, after years
of being bombarded with projections of ‘being special’. They started
believing it themselves. The essence is that I continually remain aware
that I am actually doing nothing. I realise I am no one.” He falls
silent. And then, with a burst of laughter: “That’s not exactly
something to be proud of, is it?”
Tolle’s very power lies in that modesty. His message is the same as that
of the enlightened masters throughout the ages. But for many, Tolle’s
own experience brings that message closer. An Indian guru is far removed
from most of us today, but practically everyone can identify with
Eckhart Tolle, an ordinary man who struggled survive in the midst of
modern society. And his message is very powerful: enlightenment can be
achieved now. We don’t need to travel a long road of meditation,
discipline and abstinence to get there. Enlightenment is not a lengthy
path; it primarily involves a decision to be present in the here and
now.
With an apologetic tone, Tolle tells me, “For some people striving
towards enlightenment is the last thing they need to let go of. You see,
even if you faithfully meditate every day to achieve enlightenment,
you’re still in the same mind frame as someone who really wants a new
BMW. It’s the same conditioning: ‘In the future…’. But there is no
future. Surrender means the realisation that there is no state to be
achieved. You give up your pursuit of a particular state and absorb
yourself in what there already is. And that’s more than enough. You are
already completely yourself. There is nothing in the future that can
make you more yourself.”
Source:
Ode Magazine
