Andrew Cohen: Eckhart, what is your life like? I've heard that you're a bit
of a recluse and that you spend a lot of time in solitude. Is that true?
Eckhart Tolle: That was true in the past, before my book The Power of Now
came out. For many years I was a recluse. But since the publication of the
book, my life has changed dramatically. I'm now very much involved in
teaching and traveling. And people who knew me before say, "This is
amazing. You used to be a hermit and now you are out in the world." Yet I
still feel that inside nothing has changed. I still feel exactly the same
as before. There is still a continuous sense of peace, and I am surrendered
to the fact that on an external level there's been a total change. So it's
actually not true anymore that I am a hermit. Now I'm the opposite of a
hermit. This may well be a cycle. It may well be that at some point this
will come to an end and I will become a hermit again. But at the moment, I
am surrendered to the fact that I'm almost continuously interacting. I do
occasionally take time to be alone. That is necessary in between teaching
engagements.
AC: Why is it that you need to take time to be alone, and what is it that
happens when you take the time to be alone?
ET: When I'm with people, I'm a spiritual teacher. That's the function, but
it's not my identity. The moment I'm alone, my deepest joy is to be nobody,
to relinquish the function of a teacher. It's a temporary function. Let's
say I'm seeing a group of people. The moment they leave me, I'm no longer a
spiritual teacher. There's no longer any sense of external identity. I
simply go into the stillness more deeply. The place that I love most is the
stillness. It's not that the stillness is lost when I talk or when I teach
because the words arise out of the stillness. But when people leave me,
there is only the stillness left. And I love that so much.
AC: Would you say that you prefer it?
ET: Not prefer. There is a balance now in my life, which perhaps wasn't
there before. When the inner transformation happened many years ago, one
could almost say a balance was lost. It was so fulfilling and so blissful
simply to be that I lost all interest in doing or interacting. For quite a
few years, I got lost in Being. I had almost relinquished doing
completely-just enough to keep myself alive and even that was miraculous. I
had totally lost interest in the future. And then gradually a balance
re-established itself. It didn't re-establish itself fully until I started
writing the book. The way I feel now is that there is a balance in my life
between being alone and interacting with people, between Being and doing,
whereas before, the doing was relinquished and there was only Being.
Blissful, profound, beautiful-but from an external viewpoint, many people
thought that I had become unbalanced or had gone mad. Some people thought I
was crazy to have let go of all the worldly things I had "achieved." They
didn't understand that I didn't want or need any of that anymore. So the
balance now is between aloneness and meeting with people. And that's good.
I'm quite attentive to that so that the balance doesn't get lost. There is
now a pull toward increasing doing. People want me to talk here and talk
there-there are constant demands. I know that I need to be attentive now,
so that the balance is not lost, and I don't get lost in doing. I don't
think it would ever happen, but it requires a certain amount of vigilance.
AC: What would it mean to get lost in doing?
ET: Theoretically, it would mean that I would continuously travel, teach,
and interact with people. Perhaps if that happened, at some point the flow,
the stillness, might not be there. I don't know; it may always be there. Or
physical exhaustion may set in. But I feel now that I need to return to the
pure stillness periodically. And then, when the teaching happens, just
allow it to arise out of the stillness. So the teaching and stillness are
very closely connected. The teaching arises out of the stillness. But when
I'm alone, there's only the stillness, and that is my favorite place.
AC: When you're alone, do you spend a lot of time physically being still?
ET: Yes, I can sometimes sit for two hours in a room with almost no
thought. Just complete stillness. Sometimes when I go for walks, there's
also complete stillness; there's no mental labeling of sense perceptions.
There's simply a sense of awe or wonder or openness, and that's beautiful.
AC: In your book The Power of Now you state that "The ultimate purpose of
the world lies not within the world but in transcendence of the world."
Could you please explain what you mean?
ET: Transcending the world does not mean to withdraw from the world, to no
longer take action, or to stop interacting with people. Transcendence of
the world is to act and to interact without any self-seeking. In other
words, it means to act without seeking to enhance one's sense of self
through one's actions or one's interactions with people. Ultimately, it
means not needing the future anymore for one's fulfillment or for one's
sense of self or being. There is no seeking through doing, seeking an
enhanced, more fulfilled, or greater sense of self in the world. When that
seeking isn't there anymore, then you can be in the world but not be of the
world. You are no longer seeking for anything to identify with out there.
AC: Do you mean that one has given up an egotistical, materialistic
relationship to the world?
ET: Yes, it means no longer seeking to gain a sense of self, a deeper or
enhanced sense of self. Because in the normal state of consciousness, what
people are looking for through their activity is to be more completely
themselves. The bank robber is looking for that in some way. The person who
is striving for enlightenment is also looking for it because he or she is
seeking to attain a state of perfection, a state of completion, a state of
fullness at some point in the future. There is a seeking to gain something
through one's activities. They are seeking happiness, but ultimately they
are seeking themselves or you could say God; it comes down to the same
thing. They are seeking themselves, and they are seeking where it can never
be found, in the normal, unenlightened state of consciousness, because the
unenlightened state of consciousness is always in the seeking mode. That
means they are of the world-in the world and of the world.
AC: You mean that they are looking forward in time?
ET: Yes, the world and time are intrinsically connected. When all
self-seeking in time ceases, then you can be in the world without being of
the world.
AC: What exactly do you mean when you say that the purpose of the world
lies in the transcendence of it?
ET: The world promises fulfillment somewhere in time, and there is a
continuous striving toward that fulfillment in time. Many times people
feel, "Yes, now I have arrived," and then they realize that, no, they
haven't arrived, and then the striving continues. It is expressed
beautifully in A Course in Miracles, where it says that the dictum of the
ego is "Seek but do not find." People look to the future for salvation, but
the future never arrives. So ultimately, suffering arises through not
finding. And that is the beginning of an awakening-when the realization
dawns that "Perhaps this is not the way. Perhaps I will never get to where
I am striving to reach; perhaps it's not in the future at all." After
having been lost in the world, suddenly, through the pressure of suffering,
the realization comes that the answers may not be found out there in
worldly attainment and in the future. That's an important point for many
people to reach. That sense of deep crisis-when the world as they have
known it, and the sense of self that they have known that is identified
with the world, become meaningless. That happened to me. I was just that
close to suicide and then something else happened-a death of the sense of
self that lived through identifications, identifications with my story,
things around me, the world. Something arose at that moment that was a
sense of deep and intense stillness and aliveness, beingness. I later
called it "presence." I realized that beyond words, that is who I am. But
this realization wasn't a mental process. I realized that that vibrantly
alive, deep stillness is who I am. Years later, I called that stillness
"pure consciousness," whereas everything else is the conditioned
consciousness. The human mind is the conditioned consciousness that has
taken form as thought. The conditioned consciousness is the whole world
that is created by the conditioned mind. Everything is our conditioned
consciousness; even objects are. Conditioned consciousness has taken birth
as form and then that becomes the world. So to be lost in the conditioned
seems to be necessary for humans. It seems to be part of their path to be
lost in the world, to be lost in the mind, which is the conditioned
consciousness. Then, due to the suffering that arises out of being lost,
one finds the unconditioned as oneself. And that is why we need the world
to transcend the world. So I'm infinitely grateful for having been lost.
The purpose of the world is for you to be lost in it, ultimately. The
purpose of the world is for you to suffer, to create the suffering that
seems to be what is needed for the awakening to happen. And then once the
awakening happens, with it comes the realization that suffering is
unnecessary now. You have reached the end of suffering because you have
transcended the world. It is the place that is free of suffering. This
seems to be everybody's path. Perhaps it is not everybody's path in this
lifetime, but it seems to be a universal path. Even without a spiritual
teaching or a spiritual teacher, I believe that everybody would get there
eventually. But that could take time.
AC: A long time.
ET: Much longer. A spiritual teaching is there to save time. The basic
message of the teaching is that you don't need any more time, you don't
need any more suffering. I tell this to people who come to me: "You are
ready to hear this because you are listening to it. There are still
millions of people out there who are not listening to it. They still need
time. But I am not talking to them. You are hearing that you don't need
time anymore and you don't need to suffer anymore. You've been seeking in
time and you've been seeking further suffering." And to suddenly hear that
"You don't need that anymore-for some, that can be the moment of
transformation. So the beauty of the spiritual teaching is that it saves
lifetimes of-
AC: Unnecessary suffering.
ET: Yes, so it's good that people are lost in the world. I enjoy traveling
to New York and Los Angeles, where it seems that people are totally
involved. I was looking out of the window in New York. We were next to the
Empire State Building, doing a group. And everybody was rushing around,
almost running. Everybody seemed to be in a state of intense nervous
tension, anxiety. It's suffering, really, but it's not recognized as
suffering. And I thought, where are they all running to? And of course,
they are all running to the future. They are needing to get somewhere,
which is not here. It is a point in time: not now-then. They are running to
a then. They are suffering, but they don't even know it. But to me, even
watching that was joyful. I didn't feel, "Oh, they should know better."
They are on their spiritual path. At the moment, that is their spiritual
path, and it works beautifully.
AC: Often the word enlightenment is interpreted to mean the end of division
within the self and the simultaneous discovery of a perspective or way of
seeing that is whole, complete, or free from duality. Some who have
experienced this perspective claim that the ultimate realization is that
there is no difference between the world and God or the Absolute, between
samsara and nirvana, between the manifest and the unmanifest. But there are
others who claim that, in fact, the ultimate realization is that the world
doesn't actually exist at all-the world is only an illusion, completely
empty of meaning, significance, or reality. So in your own experience, is
the world real? Is the world unreal? Both?
ET: Even when I'm interacting with people or walking in a city, doing
ordinary things, the way I perceive the world is like ripples on the
surface of being. Underneath the world of sense perceptions and the world
of mind activity, there is the vastness of being. There's a vast
spaciousness. There's a vast stillness and there's a little ripple activity
on the surface, which isn't separate, just like the ripples are not
separate from the ocean. So there is no separation in the way I perceive
it. There is no separation between being and the manifested world, between
the manifested and the unmanifested. But the unmanifested is so much
vaster, deeper, and greater than what happens in the manifested. Every
phenomenon in the manifested is so short-lived and so fleeting that, yes,
one could almost say that from the perspective of the unmanifested, which
is the timeless beingness or presence, all that happens in the manifested
realm really seems like a play of shadows. It seems like vapor or mist with
continuously new forms arising and disappearing, arising and disappearing.
So to the one who is deeply rooted in the unmanifested, the manifested
could very easily be called unreal. I don't call it unreal because I see it
as not separate from anything.
AC: So it is real?
ET: All that is real is beingness itself. Consciousness is all there is,
pure consciousness.
AC: You're saying that the definition of "real" would be that which is free
from birth and death?
ET: That's right.
AC: So only that which was never born and cannot die would be real. And
since the manifest world is ultimately not separate from the unmanifest,
according to what you are saying, in the end, one would have to say it's real.
ET: Yes, and even within every form that is subject to birth and death,
there is the deathless. The essence of every form is the deathless. Even
the essence of a blade of grass is the deathless. And that's why the world
of form is sacred. It's not that the realm of the sacred is exclusively
being or the unmanifested. Even the world of form I see as sacred.
AC: If someone simply asks you, "Is the world real or unreal?" would you
say it was real or would you have to qualify the statement?
ET: I would probably qualify the statement.
AC: Saying what?
ET: It's a temporary manifestation of the real.
AC: So if the world is a temporary manifestation of the real, what is the
enlightened relationship to the world?
ET: To the unenlightened, the world is all there is. There is nothing else.
This time-bound mode of consciousness clings to the past for its identity
and desperately needs the world for its happiness and fulfillment.
Therefore, the world holds enormous promise but poses a great threat at the
same time. That is the dilemma of the unenlightened consciousness: it is
torn between seeking fulfillment in and through the world and being
threatened by it continuously. A person hopes that they will find
themselves in it, and at the same time they fear that the world is going to
kill them, as it will. That is the state of continuous conflict that the
unenlightened consciousness is condemned to-being torn continuously between
desire and fear. It's a dreadful fate. The enlightened consciousness is
rooted in the unmanifested, and ultimately is one with it. It knows itself
to be that. One could almost say it is the unmanifested looking out. Even
with a simple thing like visually perceiving a form-a flower or a tree-if
you are perceiving it in a state of great alertness and deep stillness,
free of past and future, then at that moment already it is the
unmanifested. You are not a person anymore at that moment. The unmanifested
is perceiving itself in form. And there is always a sense of goodness in
that perception. So then all action arises out of that, and has a
completely different quality from action that arises out of the
unenlightened consciousness, which needs something and seeks to protect
itself. That is really where those intangible and precious qualities come
in that we call love, joy, and peace. They are all one with the
unmanifested. They arise out of that. A human being who lives in
connectedness with that and then acts and interacts becomes a blessing on
the planet, whereas the unenlightened human is very heavy on the planet.
There is a heaviness to the unenlightened. And the planet is suffering from
millions of unenlightened humans. The burden on the planet is almost too
much to bear. I can sometimes feel it as the planet saying, "Oh, no more,
please."
AC: You encourage people to meditate, to as you describe it, "rest in the
Presence of the Now" as much as possible. Do you think that spiritual
practice can ever become truly deep and have the power to liberate if one
has not already given up the world and what the world represents, at least
to some degree?
ET: I wouldn't say that the practice itself has the power to liberate. It's
only when there is complete surrender to the now, to what is, that
liberation is possible. I do not believe that a practice will take you into
complete surrender. Complete surrender usually happens through living. Your
very life is the ground where that happens. There may be a partial
surrender and then there may be an opening, and then you may engage in
spiritual practice. But whether the spiritual practice is taken up after a
certain degree of insight or the spiritual practice is just done in and of
itself, the practice alone won't do it.
AC: Something that I've found in my own teaching work is that unless the
world has been seen through to a certain degree, and unless there is a
willingness based on that seeing to let go of it, then spiritual
experience, no matter how powerful it is, is not going to lead to any kind
of liberation.
ET: That's right, and the willingness to let go is surrender. That remains
the key. Without that, no amount of practice or even spiritual experiences
will do it.
AC: Yes, many people say they want to meditate or do spiritual practice,
but their spiritual aspirations are not based on a willingness to let go of
anything substantial.
ET: No, in fact it may be the opposite. Spiritual practice may be a way to
try to find something new to identify with.
AC: Ultimately, would you say that real spiritual practice or real
spiritual experience is meant to lead one to the letting go of the world,
the transcendence of the world, the relinquishment of attachment to the world?
ET: Yes. Sometimes people ask, "How do you get to that? It sounds
wonderful, but how do you get there?" In concrete terms, at its most basic,
it simply means to say "yes" to this moment. That is the state of
surrender-a total "yes" to what is. Not the inner "no" to what is. And the
complete "yes" to what is, is the transcendence of the world. It's as
simple as that-a total openness to whatever arises at this moment. The
usual state of consciousness is to resist, to run away from it, to deny it,
to not look at it.
AC: So when you say a "yes" to what is, do you mean not avoiding anything
and facing everything?
ET: Right. It's welcoming this moment, embracing this moment, and that is
the state of surrender. That is really all that's needed. The only
difference between a Master and a non-Master is that the Master embraces
what is, totally. When there is nonresistance to what is, there comes a
peace. The portal is open; the unmanifested is there. That is the most
powerful way. We can't call it practice because there's no time in it.
AC: For most people who are participating in the East-meets-West spiritual
explosion that is occurring with ever-greater speed these days, both
Gautama the Buddha and Ramana Maharshi-one of the most respected Vedantins
of the modern era-stand out as peerless examples of full-blown
enlightenment, and yet, interestingly enough, in regard to this question of
the right relationship to the world for the spiritual aspirant, their
teachings diverge dramatically. The Buddha, the world-renouncer, encouraged
those who were the most sincere to leave the world and follow him in order
to live the holy life, free from the cares and concerns of the householder
life. Yet Ramana Maharshi discouraged his disciples from leaving the
household life in pursuit of greater spiritual focus and intensity. In
fact, he discouraged any outward acts of renunciation and instead
encouraged the aspirant to look within and find the cause of ignorance and
suffering within the self. Indeed, many of his growing number of devotees
today say that the desire to renounce is actually an expression of ego, the
very part of the self that we want to liberate ourselves from if we want to
be free. But of course the Buddha laid great stress on the need for
renunciation, detachment, diligence, and restraint as the very foundation
on which liberating insight can occur. So why do you think the approaches
of these two spiritual luminaries differ so widely? Why do you think that
the Buddha encouraged his disciples to leave the world while Ramana
encouraged them to stay where they were?
ET: There's not one way that that works. Different ages have certain
approaches, which may be more effective for one age and no longer effective
in another age. The world that we live in now has much greater density to
it; it is much more all-pervasive. And when I say "world," I include the
human mind in it. The human mind has grown even since the time of the
Buddha, 2,500 years ago. The human mind is more noisy and more
all-pervasive, and the egos are bigger. There's been an ego growth over
thousands of years; it's growing to a point of madness, with the ultimate
madness having been reached in the twentieth century. One only needs to
read twentieth-century history to see that it has been the climax of human
madness, if it's measured in terms of human violence inflicted on other
humans. So in the present time, we can't escape from the world anymore; we
can't escape from the mind. We need to enter surrender while we are in the
world. That seems to be the path that is effective in the world that we
live in now. It may be that at the time of the Buddha, withdrawing was
much, much easier than it would be now. The human mind was not yet so
overwhelming at that time.
AC: But the reason that the Buddha preached leading the homeless life was
because he felt that the household life was full of worries, cares, and
concerns, and in that context he felt it would be difficult to do what was
needed to live the holy life. So in terms of what you're saying about the
noise and distraction of the world, that is actually precisely what he was
addressing and why in fact he led the homeless life and encouraged other
people to do the same.
ET: Well, he gave his reasons, but ultimately we don't know why the Buddha
put the emphasis on leaving the world rather than saying as Ramana Maharshi
did, "Do it in the world." But it seems to me, from what I have observed,
that the more effective way now is for people to surrender in the world
rather than attempt to remove themselves from the world and create a
structure that makes it easier to surrender. There's a contradiction there
already because you're creating a structure to make it easier to surrender.
Why not surrender now? You don't need to create anything to make surrender
easier because then it's not true surrender anymore. I've stayed in
Buddhist monasteries and I can see how easily it can happen-they have given
up their name and adopted a new name, they've shaved their heads, they wear
their robes-
AC: You're saying that one world has been abandoned for another. One
identification has been given up for another; one role has been dropped and
another has been assumed. Nothing has actually been given up.
ET: That's right. Therefore do it where you are, right here, right now.
There's no need to seek out some other place or some other condition or
situation and then do it there. Do it right here and now. Wherever you are
is the place for surrender. Whatever the situation is that you're in, you
can say "yes" to what is, and that is then the basis for all further action.
AC: There are many teachers and teachings today that say that the very
desire to renounce the world is an expression of ego. How do you see that?
ET: The desire to renounce the world is again the desire to reach a certain
state that you don't have now. There's a mental projection of a desirable
state to reach-the state of renunciation. It's self-seeking through future.
In that sense, it is ego. True renunciation isn't the desire to renounce;
it arises as surrender. You cannot have a desire to surrender because
that's non-surrender. Surrender arises spontaneously sometimes in people
who don't even have a word for it. And I know that openness is there in
many people now. Many people who come to me have a great openness.
Sometimes it only requires a few words and immediately they have a glimpse,
a taste of surrender, which may not yet be lasting, but the opening is there.
AC: What about the spontaneous call from the heart to abandon all that's
false and illusory, all that's based on the ego's materialistic
relationship to life? For example, when the Buddha decided, "I have to
leave my home behind-it would probably be hard to say that was an
egotistical desire, looking at the results. And Jesus saying, "Come follow
me. Let the dead bury their dead."
ET: That is recognizing the false as false, which is mainly an inner
thing-to recognize false identifications, to recognize the mental noise,
and what had been identification with mental images as a "me" entity, to be
false. That is beautiful, that recognition. And then action may arise out
of the recognition of the false, and perhaps you can see the false
reflected in your life circumstances and you may then leave those behind-or
not. But the recognition and relinquishment of all that is false and
illusory is primarily an inner one.
AC: Those two cases, the Buddha and Jesus, would be examples of powerful
outer manifestations of that inner recognition.
ET: That's right. There's no predicting what is going to happen as a result
of that inner recognition. For the Buddha, of course, it came because he
was already an adult when he suddenly realized that humans die and become
ill and grow old. And that was so powerful that he looked within and said
that everything is meaningless if that's all there is.
AC: But then he was compelled to go off, to abandon his kingdom. From a
certain point of view he could have said, "Well, it's all here right now,
and all I need to do is just surrender unconditionally here and now." Then
I guess the result could have been very different, he could have been an
enlightened king!
ET: But at that point he didn't know that all that was necessary was surrender.
AC: Yet, when Jesus was calling the fishermen to leave their families and
their lives to follow him and, similarly, when the Buddha would walk
through towns and call the men to leave everything behind, their surrender
was demonstrated in the actual leaving, in saying "yes" to Jesus or the
Buddha and letting go of their worldly attachments. And obviously there
would also be their inner attachment to let go of as well. In these cases,
letting go wasn't only a metaphor for inner transcendence; it also meant
literally letting go of everything.
ET: For some people that is part of it. They may leave their habitual
surroundings or activities, but the only question is whether or not they
have already seen the false within. If they haven't, the external letting
go will be a disguised form of self-seeking.
AC: For my last question I'd like to ask you about the relationship between
your understanding of enlightenment, or the experience of nondual
consciousness, and engagement with the world. In Judaism, fully engaging
with the world and human life is seen as the fulfillment of the religious
calling. In fact, they say it is only through wholeheartedly living the
commandments that the spiritual potential of the human race can become
manifest on earth. Jewish scholar David Ariel writes, "We finish the work
of creation . . . God stands in need of us because only we can perfect the
world." Many enlightenment or nondual teachings like your own emphasize the
enlightenment of the individual. Indeed, transcendence of the world seems
to be the whole point. But our Jewish brothers appear to be calling us to
something very different-the spiritualization of the world through devoted
men's and women's wholehearted participation in the world. So is it true
that nondual enlightenment teachings deprive the world of our wholehearted
participation in it? Does the very notion of transcendence rob the world of
the fulfillment of our potential to spiritualize it as God's children?
ET: No, because right action can only flow out of that state of
transcendence of the world. Any other activity is ego-induced, and even
doing good, if it's ego-induced, will have karmic consequences.
"Ego-induced" means there is an ulterior motive. For example, it enhances
your self-image if you become a more spiritual person in your own eyes and
that feels good; or another example would be looking to a future reward in
another lifetime or in heaven. So if there are ulterior motives, it's not
pure. There cannot be true love flowing into your actions if the world has
not been transcended because you're not connected with the realm out of
which love arises.
AC: Do you mean pure action, untainted by ego?
ET: Yes, first things first. What comes first is realization and
liberation, and then let action flow out of that-and that will be pure,
untainted, and there's no karma attached to it whatsoever. Otherwise, no
matter how high our ideals are, we will still strengthen the ego through
our good actions. Unfortunately, you cannot fulfill the commandments unless
you are egoless-and there are very few who are-as all the people who have
tried to practice the teachings of Christ have found out. "Love your
neighbor as yourself" is one of the main teachings of Jesus, and you cannot
fulfill that commandment, no matter how hard you try, if you don't know who
you are at the deepest level. Love your neighbor as yourself means your
neighbor is yourself, and that recognition of oneness is love.
from What Is Enlightenment?,
issue 18 - Fall/Winter 2000 Copyright ©2000 Moksha Press