Eckhart Tolle: Freedom from the Ego

Eckhart Tolle

". . . (T)hinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence."

-- Eckhart Tolle --

Being free of the smaller self, free of ego, is the transformational goal of all the world's great wisdom traditions. In self-forgetting we awaken to the divinity within each of us, indeed, to the divinity that infuses, pervades and supports all we see. We become whole and realize that we are part of the Whole, rather than isolated individuals.

How is such a transformation of the psyche to be achieved, however? Best-selling author, Eckhart Tolle, a spiritual teacher of no small repute, emphasizes that the key to overcoming the limitations of the ego lies in our present moment awareness.

"All that is required to become free of the ego," he notes, "is to be aware of it, since awareness and ego are incompatible. Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. This is why we may also call it Presence. The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into this world. And this is also why becoming free of the ego cannot be made into a goal to be attained at some point in the future. Only Presence can free you of the ego, and you can only be present Now, not yesterday or tomorrow. Only Presence can undo the past in you and thus transform your state of consciousness."

With Oprah, co-hosts of "A New Earth"
web seminar. (Available here.)

"Spiritual realization," he continues, "is to see clearly what I perceive, experience, think, or feel is ultimately not who I am, that I cannot find myself in all those things that continuously pass away. The Buddha," he points out, "was probably the first human being to see this clearly, and so anata (no self) became one of the central points of his teaching. And when Jesus said, "Deny thyself," what he meant was: Negate (and thus undo) the illusion of self. If the self - ego - were truly who I am, it would be absurd to deny it."

[Tolle, "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose," pp. 78-79.]

Theodore Nottingham: On the Kindgdom of Heaven

“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain
of mustard seed that a man took and
sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all
seeds,but when it has grown it is larger
than all the garden plants and becomes
a tree, so that the birds of the air come
and make nests in its branches.”

(Matthew 13:31-32)

The Kingdom of Heaven is not above, but is both within us and spread out upon the face of the earth. In a powerfully insightful sermon on the parables of Jesus, author and pastor, Rev. Theodore Nottingham, illustrates how a mustard seed of spiritual insight nourished by spiritual practice can blossom into a true flowering of the higher consciousness that is innate within each of us. It is this "Kingdom of Heaven" within us (Luke 17:21) that Nottingham rightly asserts is at the heart of all of Christ's teachings.

"I suggest to you," says Nottingham, "that the Kingdom of Heaven is nothing less than God's living presence known to you when you can enter that state of awareness, that state of consciousness, when you are not asleep to it. And so all of (Jesus') teachings are processes to get us there."

It will not be said, 'Look, here!'
or 'Look, there!' Rather, the
Father's kingdom is spread out
upon the earth, and people
don't see it." (Thomas, 113.)

"There is a method to this madness of spiritituality," Nottingham asserts. "Just that little bit of (spiritual) remembrance (and) application is so powerful that its ripple effect can change others and affect others, who (then) affect others, and (thus) have a powerful impact on your world today. . . . It is the power of God in action through you."

"He is," Nottingham points out, "giving us the clues (and) telling us in timeless imagery how to make these gifts of God manifest in your life, how to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and become one with that love which then pours out to the world, how to forget 'self' and let something more profound come forth."

"When that yearning to help another takes you beyond your 'self' and causes you to do good in the world," says Nottingham, "the Kingdom of God is at hand because you have taken that seed seriously, you have cared for it and you have let it come through in such a way that transformation occurs. Then you unite with something greater than yourself (and) you become a conduit for the love of God in this world."

Within the Kingdom of God & the Kingdom of God Within

"In the Kingdom of Heaven all is in all, all is one, and all is ours."

-- Meister Eckhart --

"The world inhabited by ordinary, nice, unregenerate people," observes Aldous Huxley, "is mainly dull (so dull that they have to distract their minds from being aware of it by all sorts of artificial "amusements"), some times briefly and intensely pleasurable, occasionally or quite often disagreeable and even agonizing." However, Huxley notes, "(F)or those who have deserved the world by making themselves fit to see God within it as well as within their own souls, it wears a very different aspect."

[Aldous Huxley, "The Perennial Philosophy," p. 75.]

In one of the most significant passages in the New Testament, Jesus, who had been perpetually persecuted for his views by the Pharisees, and thus spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven exclusively in parables, speaks unambiguously to his persecutors. When asked by the Pharisees where the Kingdom of Heaven might be found, he replies directly, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17: 20-21.) Then, in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, when asked by his disciples when the Kingdom of God would come, he replies: "It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Rather, the Father's kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it." (Gospel of Thomas, Verse 113.)

Thus, it may be seen, as Huxley observed (above), that our being and our environment take on very different aspects depending upon whether we have a mundane or supermundane understanding of their nature. Alluding to these two very different ways of seeing the world, Jesus (again, from the Gospel of Thomas, at Verse 77) tells his disciples: "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."

"It is in the Indian and Far Eastern formulations of the Perennial Philosophy," notes Huxley, "that this subject is most systematically treated.What is prescribed is a process of conscious discrimination between the personal self and the Self that is identical with Brahman, between the individual ego and the Buddha-womb or Universal Mind."

"The result of this discrimination," Huxley points out, "is a more or less sudden and complete "revulsion" of consciousness, and the realization of a state of "no-mind," which may be described as the freeedom from perceptual and individual attachment to the ego-principle. This state of "no-mind" exists, as it were, on a knife-edge between the carelessness of the average sensual man and the strained overeagerness of the zealot for salvation. To achieve it one must walk delicately and, to maintain it, must learn to combine the most intense alertness with a tranquil and self-denying passivity, the most indomitable determination with a perfect submission to the leadings of the spirit."

"When no-mind is sought after by a mind," says Huang Po, "that is making it a particular object of thought. There is only testimony of silence; it goes beyond thinking."

 "In other words," says Huxley, "we, as separate individuals, must not try to think it, but rather permit ourselves to be thought by it."

[Aldous Huxley, "The Perennial Philosophy," pp. 72-73.]

Eric Butterworth: 'Discover the Power Within You'

If I were asked what my religious bearing was years ago, I would have declared myself an atheist. After all I had grown up in the West, and though my mother was a Christian Scientist, it was a decidedly scientific household. Not having much religious instruction myself, I had formulated a typical quasi-anthropomorphic view of a God "out there." And while I was told that God was "omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent" such words had little or no meaning to me, and I rejected (as I suppose many others have) the notion of some Old Testament-like patriarch who was invisible, and presumably, external to the universe. I had no knowledge that, as Jesus succinctly put it, "the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21). In actual fact, then, I was agnostic, i.e., one who does not know or have first-hand experience of the divine.

If I were asked today what my religious bearing is, I would say that I am a Transcendental Realist, having experienced glimpses of a higher state of consciousness where the universe is atemporal and a unitive whole beyond the ordinary egoic state of self-consciousness.

In writing of such inner, religious experiences (phenomena discussed at length in William James' great work, "The Varieties of Religious Experience") Carl Jung observed: "The only right and legitimate way to such an experience is that it happens to you in reality, and it can only happen to you when you walk on a path which leads you to higher understanding. You might be led to that goal," Jung notes, "by an act of grace or through a personal and honest contact with friends, or through a higher education of the mind beyond mere rationalism."

As a decided scientific rationalist at the time of my first such glimpses, I was fortunate in coming to understand the nature of these experiences to have not only two older friends who were experienced and self-realized spiritual seekers to direct me on a voyage of self-discovery, but also to have a psychoanalyst who could attest to the veracity of such experiences and could contextualize them into what I already knew of consciousness from a scientific perspective. Were it not for their assistance, it would have been all too easy to dismiss these incidents as madness - divine madness, perhaps, but madness nonetheless.

As a voracious reader, I had dismissively read a modest amount about Christianity and portions of the Bible, just enough to try and debunk what committed religionists were talking about. Thus, I was fortunate, indeed, in having one of my more experienced friends lend me a book that discussed the religion of Jesus, rather than the religion about Jesus, as he tried to show me the significance of what I had experienced. And although today I am not a Christian (or, more accurately, although I am not exclusively Christian), I still find this book to be an invaluable aid in understanding myself and my fellow man.

Written in the 1960s by Eric Butterworth, a Unity minister, "Discover the Power Within You: A Guide to the Unexplored Depths Within" is a precursor to the many spiritual/self-help books that are available today, but one that puts Christianity into a perspective that is still relevant to a person with a deep appreciation of all that science has revealed and continues to reveal today.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Eric Butterworth
(1916-2003)

"Life is growth and unfoldment, and is lived from the inside out," Butterworth observes. "How few people really know this! The average person lives his life from the outside in. He frustrates his potential when he lets his level of consciousness be determined by what people say, what conditions appear to be, what he reads in the newspapers. He becomes little more than a barometer that registers the conditions of his world. Then he is caught up in the dilemma of whether to conform to the world around him or to spend his life resisting it."

"Jesus," he points out, "came declaring, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free" (John 8:32). It really doesn't matter what happens around you or to you. These things are in the world, and you can overcome the world. All that really matters is what happens in you or your thoughts about conditions and people. And you can control your thoughts, for you are the master of your mind - or you can be."

"There is a belief," Butterworth observes, "deeply rooted in the collective consciousness of the human race that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" - you can't change human nature. Reject this for the great lie that it is," he urges.

"When you catch Jesus' concept of the Divinity of Man," Butterworth notes, "you see that you not only can change human nature, but this is whole object of the Christian teaching. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up" (John 3:14). And you are that son of man and you can transcend your basement experiences and come to live in the upper rooms of life."

"Jesus' message of the Kingdom is the message of wholeness," he points out. "We are forever seeing only part of life and concluding that the part is the whole. This is a great problem in formulating religious views. Shelly says that religion is the perception of the relation in which man stands to the universe. But that perception is an individual experience. Someone communicates his perception to another and we are on the way toward the creation of dogma. In time whole bodies of people accept a "perception" that is given to them secondhand. They might even insist that there is no individual perception, or think of such an awareness, or firsthand experience, as a "work of the devil.""

"The word 'religion' means to 'bind together'," Butterworth notes. "It is a relationship, an awareness of man's unity with the great creative force of God."

"The church has a vital place in the life of man," Butterworth concludes, "but not as a supermarket in which to pick up take-out orders of faith and prayer. The church," he declares, "must be a school in which the individual learns the Truth of his unity with God, of his own divine sonship, and of the Kingdom of Heaven within him. Like any place of learning the church must seek to make itself progressively unnecessary, to help people to become self-reliant. In other words, if the church is doing its job sincerely, it will be forever trying to put itself out of business."

[Eric Butterworth, "Discover the Power Within You," pp. 226-227]

Bliss, Peace and the 'Kingdom of God' Within You

"The undisturbed state of being is bliss; the disturbed state is what appears as the world. In non-duality there is bliss; in duality - experience. What comes and goes is experience with the duality of pain and pleasure. Bliss is not to be known. One is always bliss, but never blissful. Bliss is not an attitude."

-- Sri Nisargadatta --

Sri Nisargadatta
(1897-1981)

One cannot "think" blissfully. As the enlightened teacher Sir Nisargadatta observed: "Bliss is not an attitude." It is not a way of thinking. Bliss is the natural state of our being, devoid of ego or the sense of a small "self" as the identity of 'who' and 'what' we are.

When finally confronted directly by the Pharisees who demanded to be shown "where" the "kingdom of God" might be found, Jesus (who always couched his public teachings in parables) replied:

"The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."

[Luke 17:20-21]

The state of enlightenment, thus seems to be an inner state of consciousness and being and not a system, attitude or way of thinking. "Peace," Kahlil Gibran observed, "is an oasis in the heart that can never be reached by the caravan of thinking." It is thus, incumbent upon the true spiritual seeker to go deeply within him or herself if the blissful state of pure Being is to be found. It is, as Nisargadatta observes, beyond the duality of the world which is created by the small "self" of the ego, and its egoic mode of thinking.

Interestingly, however, when this state of inner Bliss is achieved, it seems to change one's realization of what the world and its outer forms are. Thus, in the Gospel of Thomas (which has been continually used by the Coptic, Syriac and Nestorian, but not the Catholic or Orthodox churches) Jesus' confrontation with the Pharisees is echoed. This time, however, in response to an enquiry from his disciples asking, when the "the kingdom" will come, Jesus answers:

"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'here it is' or 'there it is.' Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."

["The Nag Hammadi Library," Gospel of Thomas, verses 113-114.]

Similarly, at the beginning of the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is reported to have said to Thomas, referred to as Didymos Judas Thomas, in the Nag Hammadi texts (a.k.a., the "Dead Sea scrolls"):

"If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

 It is only by coming to known one's true "Self," rather than the false, smaller "self" of the ego, that one realizes the bliss state of one's pure Being, and one realizes they are an inseparable component of the Ground of Being, or pure Bliss.

"There are no others to help," says Nisagardatta. "A rich man, when he hands over his entire fortune to his family, has not a coin left to give a beggar. So is the wise man (gnani) stripped of all his powers and possessions. Nothing, literally nothing, can be said about him. He cannot help anybody, for he is everybody. He is the poor and also his poverty, the thief and also his thievery. How can he be said to help, when he is not apart? Who thinks of himself as separate from the world, let him help the world."

"The only thing that can help," says Nisargadatta, " is to wake up from the dream."

"The beginningless begins forever," he notes. "In the same way, I give eternally, because I have nothing. To be nothing, to have nothing, to keep nothing for oneself is the greatest gift, the highest generosity."

"The self is all," Nisargadatta points out. "In practice it takes the shape of goodwill, unfailing and universal. You may call it love, all-pervading, all-redeeming. Such love is supremely active - (but) without the sense of doing." Such, it seems, is the state of Bliss.

Krishnamurti on Wealth and Enlightenment

All of the world's great religious or wisdom traditions address the impossibility of reaching higher states of consciousness and spiritual realization while attachments to the people and things that seem so important to our egoic self-consciousness remain.

Perhaps the most famous of these teachings are Jesus' encounter with "the rich young man" ( Matt. 19:16-22), and his saying that it is easier for camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God (Matt 19:23-24; Luke 18:24) - the kingdom of God which he specifically and plainly said was within us all (Luke 17:21).

Buddhist and Vedanta yoga traditions each stress the importance of non-attachment, while Judaism, Christianity and Islam each teach the importance of charity, a specific form of non-attachment. But it is perhaps the modern spiritual teacher, Jiddu Krishnamurti, who best explains why attachment to the things and people of the world are a hindrance to those who are on the path to spiritual enlightenment.

"For the rich as for the poor it is extremely difficult to find reality," Krishnamurti observed, further noting:

"The poor crave to be rich and powerful, and the rich are already caught in the net of their own action; and yet they believe and venture near. They speculate, not only upon the market, but upon the ultimate. They play with both, but are successful only with what is in their hearts. The beliefs and ceremonies, their hopes and fears have nothing to do with reality, for their hearts are empty. The greater the outward show, the greater the inward poverty."

"To renounce the world of wealth, comfort and position is a comparatively simple matter; but to put aside the craving to be, to become, demands great intelligence and understanding. The power that wealth gives is a hindrance to the understanding of reality, as is also the power of gift and capacity. This particular form of confidence is obviously an activity of the self; and though it is difficult to do so, this kind of assurance and power can be put aside. But what is much more subtle and more hidden is the power and the drive that lie in the craving to become."

"Self-expansion in any form, whether through wealth or through virtue, is a process of conflict, causing antagonism and confusion. A mind burdened with becoming can never be tranquil, for tranquility is not a result either of practice or of time. Tranquility is a state of understanding, and becoming denies this understanding. Becoming creates the sense of time, which is really the postpone of understanding. The "I shall be" is an illusion of self-importance."

Perhaps this is why it is "the poor in spirit" who are "blessed" for "theirs is the kingdom of heaven," according to Jesus in the 'Be-attitudes' which served as the introduction to his famous "Sermon on the Mount." For it is "the poor in spirit" who are non-attached to the things or people of the world, and are not interested in "becoming" anything; rather they are the ones who are simply 'beings,' and spiritual beings at that. Spiritual beings who truly dwell within their "be-ing"

"The Battle of the Self . . . of the Ego"

"In the Name of Allah,
the Compassionate, the Merciful"

"In every religious tradition there is what you call the outer path and the inner path, or the exoteric path and the esoteric path," says Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, in delivering an ecumenical address on Islam and Sufism for Ted.com's "Charter of Compassion" campaign. "The esoteric path of Islam is more popularly known as Sufism, or tasawwuf in Arabic," he explains, "and these doctors or these masters, these spiritual masters of the Sufi tradition, refer to teachings and examples of our prophet, that teach us where the source of our problems lie."

Combining the teachings of the Qur’an, the stories of Rumi, and the examples of Muhammad and Jesus, to demonstrate that only one obstacle stands between each of us and absolute compassion -- ourselves, Abdul Rauf takes his audience through the realities of every person's life, the esoteric battle between the "ego" and the "divine."

"In one of the battles that the prophet waged," explains Abdul Rauf,  "he told his followers, 'We are returning from the lesser war to the greater war, to the greater battle.' And they said, "Messenger of God, we are battle-weary. How can we go to a greater battle? He said, 'That is the battle of the self, the battle of the ego.'"

"The sources of human problems have to do with egotism," explains Abdul Rauf simply. "with I."

'And, therefore, for us to be human," he continues, "in the greatest sense of what it means to be human, in the most joyful sense of what it means to be human, it means that we too have to be proper stewards of the breath of divinity within us, and to seek to perfect within ourselves the attribute of being, of being alive, of beingness, the attribute of wisdom, of consciousness, of awareness, and the attribute of being compassionate and loving beings."

"This is what I understand from my faith tradition," he says, "and this is what I understand from my studies of other faith traditions, and this is the common platform on which we must all stand; and when we stand on this platform as such, I am convinced that we can make a wonderful world. And I believe, personally, that we're on the verge, and that with the presence and help of people like you here, we can bring about the prophecy of Isiah. For he foretold of a period when people shall transform their swords into plowshares and will not learn war and make war anymore.

"We have reached a stage in human history," Abdul Rauf concludes, "that we have no option. We must, we must lower our egos, control our egos, whether it is individual ego, personal ego, family ego, national ego, and let all be for the glorification of the One."

What Is Required to Become a True Human 'Being'?

"Relieve me of the bondage of self . . ."

What is required of us to 'slip the bondage, of our narrow, egoic self-consciousness, to be come true human 'beings' rather than human 'thinkings'? For most of us, the problem is the continual 'inner dialogue' of our rudimentary "self" consciousness, what the pioneering psychologist, William James, dubbed the "stream of consiousness."

We miss the wonders of life - indeed, the wonder of "life" itself - through our continuous identification with, attachment to, and fixation upon this narrow, self-centered identity and attachment. As Einstein noted:

"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

While Einstein believed that no one may break out of this "prison" completely and permanently, he observed that, "the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security." Many others - from all traditions, places and times - do believe that a complete liberation (in the form of enlightenment, mystic union, moksha, nirvana, or whatever you may call it) is possible, but that it takes great effort. 

"Remember that the most difficult tasks are consummated not by a single explosive burst of energy or effort, but by consistent daily application of the the best you have within you. To change one's life for the better, to resurrect one's body and mind from living death requires many positive steps, one in front of the other, with your sights always on your goal. . . . The means of transportation, and the power to break your intertia must be generated by forces long dormant but still alive within you."
                               (Og Mandino, "The Greatest Miracle in the World")

One of the most renowned spiritual teachers ever put it this way: "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few". (Matt. 9:37) Or, as Don Juan, the Native American nagual who was Carlos Castenada's teacher, observed: "The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."

And there is the consensus of the many different paths to spiritual enlightenment and liberation from Einstein's "optical delusion." One must work on one's spiritual condition and the level of one's consciousness continuously, unrelentingly, and with great effort in order to attain liberation from the ego.

For as Sri Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: "(O)ut of thousands of people only one will seek Me, and out of thousands who seek Me only one will perceive Me as I Am."