Tolle and Ram Dass: Mastery of Life

"The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley,
An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e'e.
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!"

-- Robert Burns --
("To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with a Plough")

"Mastery of life is not a question of control," observes spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, "but of finding a balance between human and Being."

Our humanity would have us incessantly casting our inner eye backwards and forwards in order to control and tame life, so that our fears and worries are averted and all remorse and bitterness over the past is overcome. Yet, in continual recurrence to this netherworld of past and future ( "I backward cast my e'e. On prospects drear! An' forward, tho' I canna see, I guess an' fear!") we rob ourselves and others of the larger dimension of our Being. It is for this reason, perhaps, that Robert Burns seems wistful, even envious, of the mouse whose nest he has overturned with the plough. The mouse who lives in the Eternal Present knows a dimension of Being unknown to the ploughman who is merely stuck, held prisoner in his unconscious humanity, somewhere between his past and future.

"To do whatever is required of you in any situation without it becoming a role that you identify with is an essential lesson in the art of living that each of us is here to learn," Tolle points out. "You become most powerful in whatever you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather than as a means to protect, enhance, or conform to your role identity."

[Tolle, "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose," pp. 104, 106-107.] 

As Ram Dass observed in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita: "Whatever karma it is that brought you to this point, it's now your dharma to work with it." To be present to that dharma is to move beyond time-limited humanity and towards eternal Being. It is to be as present as the mouse and not to be enslaved, like the ploughman, to the woeful past and and a fearful future.

[Ram Dass, "Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita," p. 52.]

The Tao: Beyond Preconceptions and Thought Structures

"In order to recognize the reality of (the) experience of Greater Being, " writes modern mystic philosopher, Karlfried Graf Von Durckheim, "we need nothing more that the 'sacred sobriety' of common sense. This, in fact, is that transcendental realism which is neither clouded nor inhibited by preconceived concepts and rational thought structures."

Steeped in Eastern spiritual traditions, yet grounded in his own Christian faith, Durckheim (a one-time consular diplomat in Japan) was well aware that preconceptions and strictly rational thought structures more often than not obscure the 'realities' they try to illuminate.

In the Tao Te Ching, we read:

When the superior man hears the Way.

      he is scarcely able to put it into practice.

When the middling man hears the Way,

      he appears now to preserve it, now to lose it.

When the inferior man hears the Way,

      he laughs at it loudly.

If he did not laugh,

      it would not be fit to be the Way.

For this reason,

There is a set of epigrmas that says:
      "The bright Way seems dim.

      The forward Way seems backward.

      The level Way seems bumpy.

      Superior integrity seems like a valley.

      The greatest whiteness seems grimy.

      Ample integrity seems insufficient.

      Robust integrity seems apathetic.

      Plain truth seems sullied.

      The great square has no corners.

      The great vessel is never completed.

      The great note sounds muted.

      The great image has no form.

      The Way is concealed and has no name."

 This "sense of reality" that is uninhibited by preconceptions and rational thought structures "permits the unique, unclassifiable quality of the experience to be as it is," notes Durckheim. "(It) accepts and savours it, and because of its very incomprehensibility, is intuitively convinced of its truth."

"We need practice in order to acquire the possibility of recognizing the quality of this reality," Durckheim points out. "By remaining alert and constantly prepared, we can learn to hear and feel the call of Divine Being in everything that happens to us. For this," he observes, "we need to work diligently in order to become vessels capable of receiving all that is poured into them."

[Karlfreid Graf Von Durckheim, "The Way of Transformation," p. 31.]

The Tao of Beauty

My favourite film, American Beauty, is one in which the paradoxes of our so-called conventional society are shown in their true light. The orthodox beauty of the world is critically examined and the beautiful people leading successful lives are exposed as their underlying ugly, fearful selves. Even the conventional beauty of the cultivated roses from which the film takes its name are exposed as ugly in comparison to a wind-blown grocery bag (in the poignant scene attached below).

Nothing is as it seems on the surface, we are told, and so-called "beauty" turns out to be a thin veneer. Underlying beauty is a corroding ugliness, and it is in the unorthodox and the supposedly ugly where real beauty and true value may be found. Life artists and sages know this.

In the Tao Te Ching we read:

"The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful,

yet this is only the ugly; the whole world recognizes the

good as the good, yet this is only the bad.

     Thus Something and Nothing produce each other;

     The difficult and the easy complement each other;

     The high and the low incline towards each other;

     Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking

no action and practices the teaching that uses no words.

     The myriad creatures rise from it yet it claims no authority;

     It gives them life yet claims no possession;

     It accomplishes its task yet lays claim to no merit.

It is because it lays claim to no merit

     That its merit never deserts it. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Our Thinking Makes It So

"Nothing is either good or bad, but our thinking makes it so."

-- Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2 -- 

"Thinking acts like a veil," observes the late spiritual teacher, William Samuel. "Look at a flower. We see it now. We behold its form now. We are aware of the flower, right here, right now; but suppose we think about something else while looking at the flower. Think about that big bill that is past due and worry a little. What seems to happen to the awareness of the flower? We are not as aware of it as before, are we? We are looking at it with eyes that hardly see. It seems fuzzy, hardly noticed, but the same rose is there; the same beauty, the same form the same grace and magnificent delicacy is right before us to be beheld and enjoyed, but we hardly see it. We are too busy worrying about the bill. We are too busy thinking."

"The bill is not now," Samuel points out. "All that is now is the awareness of the rose. The rose in all its loveliness is now. The bill is nothing more than a memory that is not in this now-awareness unless we choose to put it there."

"We see that thinking is like a film spread over the eyes; like a mist that covers the whole face of the land, like a veil; like looking at the flower - and everything - through a mirror darkly."

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

That it is our thinking that colours our life, that it is our thinking which makes things appear to be "good or bad" is a universal truth, much older than Shakespeare. It is one of the central truths of the ancient Ashtavakra Gita, and it is the central message of modern spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle. "Thinking without awareness, is the main dilemma of human existence" Tolle observed in his best-selling book, "A New Earth."

If one thinks of oneself as free, one is free, and if one thinks of oneself as bound, one is bound. Here this saying is true, "Thinking makes it so."

[Ashtavakra Gita, 1.11]

In the video, below, Tolle talks about our collective addiction to the excessive thinking that robs us of all peace and beauty.

Vivikenanda: On Instinct, Reason and Inspiration

"Unity in variety is the plan of the universe. As a man you are separate from an animal, but as living beings man, woman, animal and plant are all one; and as existence you are one with the whole universe. That universal essence is God, the ultimate Unity in the universe. In him we are all one. At the same time, in manifestation these differences must always remain."

-- Swami Vivikenanda --

"We find in all beings three sorts of instruments of knowledge," Vivikenanda writes. "The first is instinct which you find most highly developed in animals; this is the lowest instrument of knowledge. What is the second instrument of knowledge? Reasoning. You find that most highly developed in man."

"Now in the first place," Vivikenanda observes, "instinct is an inadequate instrument; to animals the sphere of action is very limited, and within that limit instinct acts. When you come to man, you see it is largely developed into reason. The sphere of action also has bere become enlarged. Yet even reason is still insufficient. Reason can go only a little way and then it stops, it cannot go any farther; and if you try to push it the result is helpess confusion; reason becomes unreasonable."

"Logic becomes argument in a circle," he notes. "Take for instance the very basis of our perception - matter and force. What is matter? That which is acted upon by force. And force? That which acts upon matter. You see the complication, what the logicians call a seesaw, one idea depending on the other, and this again depending on that."

"You find a mighty barrier before reason, beyond which reasoning cannot go," he points out. "Yet it always feels impatient to get into the region of the Infinite beyond. This world, this universe which our senses feel or our mind thinks, is but one atom, so to say, of the Infinite, projected on to the plane of consciousness. Within that narrow limit defined by the network of consciousness works our reason, and not beyond. Therefore there must be some other instrument to take us beyond, and that instrument is called inspiration."

"So instinct, reason, and inspiration are the three main instruments of knowledge," says Vivikenanda. "Instinct belongs to animals, reason to man, and inspiration to God-men. But in all human beings are to be found in more or less developed conditions the germs of all these three instruments of knowledge. To have these mental instruments evolved, the germs must be there. And this must also be remembered, that one instrument is a development of another and therefore does not contradict it."

"It is reason that develops into inspiration," Vivikenanda concludes, "and therefore inspiration does not contradict reason, but fulfills it. Things which reason cannot get at are brought to light by inspiration, and they do not contradict reason. The old man does not contradict the child, but fufills the child."

A Unitive, Inclusive View of God and Man

God, Allah, Ahura Mazda - the Ground of Being, whatever its name - knows no differences. It is only those who profess their singular and exclusive view of religion that separate themselves off from the eternal. Those who are consciously possessed of this Divine Ground within and without themselves make no such distinctions and place no restrictions on their vision of God, as they know it is distinction itself that separates them from Wholeness.

Thus, "the Shakespeare of Mystics," Rumi can say:

"Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the oceans or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or the next,
did not descend from Adam and Ever or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.

"The biographies of the saints," writes Aldous Huxley, "testify unequivocally to the fact that spiritual training leads to a transcendence of personality, not merely in the special circumstances of battle, but in all circumstances and in relation to all creatures, so that the saint "loves his enemies' or, if he is a Buddhist, does not even recognized the existence of enemies, but treats all sentient beings, sub-human as well as human, with the same compassion and disinterested good."

"Those who win through to the unitive knowledge of God set out upon their course from the most diverse starting points," Huxley notes. "One is a man, another a woman; one a born active, another a born comtemplative. No two of them inherit the same temperament and physical constitution, and their lives are passed in material, moral and intellectual environments that are profoundly dissimilar."

"Nevertheless," he observes, "as far as they are saints, insofar as they possess the unitive knowledge that makes them "perfect as their Father which is in heaven is perfect," they are all astonishingly alike. Their actions are uniformly selfless and they are constantly recollected, so that at every moment they know who they are and what is their true relation to the universe and its spiritual ground."

Saints, mystics and sages, it seems, regardless of their formal path (or lack of a path), have an acceptive, unitive and inclusive view of God and man, for they have realized in the very essence of their Being that they are inseparably a part of the Ground of Being that encompasses all. It is the unsaintly, non-mystical, unsagacious common man who makes distinctions based on his or her God. And, in doing so, he or she falls short of realizing the essence of their Being.

Emptiness and Dependent Origination: "Truth That Sets You Free"

"Emptiness," "insubstantiality" and "co-dependent origination" are fundamental concepts in Mahayana Buddhism, yet these concepts are also recognized realities in Daoist teachings, the teachings of many Indian philosophical and yoga schools, and - though not specifically referenced - most of the world's great wisdom traditions.

What we know of the origination and vast emptiness of the universe, as well as the mechanics and profound emptiness of the atom, makes these ancient philosophical realizations particularly relevant to all of us, although the Western worldview, to a large extent, still clings to its traditional materialist view of man, mind, the world and the cosmos.

In Chapter II of the Dao De Jing, we read:

"The thirty spokes converge at one hub,
But the utility of the cart is a function of the nothingness inside the hub.
We throw clay to shape a pot,
But the utility of the clay pot is a function of the nothingness inside it.
We bore out doors and windows to make a dwelling,
But the utility of the dwelling is a function of the nothingness inside it.
Thus, it might be something that provides the value,
But it is nothing that provides the utility."

[Ames and Hall, "Dao De Jin: A Philosophical Translation, page 91.]

"There is nothing," said Tzu-ch'i, "that is not a 'that' and nothing that is not a 'this.' One does not see from the standpoint of another knowing by oneself is knowing something. Therefore it is said: ''That' comes from 'this,' and 'this' is based on 'that.' This explains how 'that' and 'this' arise simultaneously."

"But when there is arising," he continued, "there is passing away; and when there is passing away, there is arising. When there is right, there is wrong; when there is wrong, there is right. By affirming we deny; by denying we affirm."

"Therefore," he notes, "sages do not go this way but perceive it in the context of nature. This is also based on an affirmation."

"A 'this' is also a 'that,' and a 'that' is also a 'this,' he concludes. "'That' is one judgment, and 'this' is also one judgment. Ultimately, are there in fact 'that' and 'this,' or are there no 'that' or 'this'? Nothing can be opposite to 'that and this' - we call this fact the pivot of the Way. When the pivot is centered in its hub, thereby responding infinitely, then affirmation is one infinity and negation is also one infinity."

[Clearey, "The Essential Tao," page 72.]

Vedantists, and other Indian philosophical and yoga schools, label this concept of "this and that,' or 'neither this nor that,' "sunyata" - a transcendental  state in which neither 'this' nor 'that' exists absolutely. In "The Spiritual Heritage of India," Vedantist scholar, Swami Prabhavananda, suggests that these concepts extend to all the world's great wisdom traditions, including Christianity, and that the transcendental reality in which this is experienced can be attained by all.

"The nirvana of Buddha," writes Prabhavananada, "is . . . not a state of annihilation but the attainment of the unchangeable reality, which can be positively described as the eternal peace. But what this peace really is, no words can define; all definition can be only symbol and can offer only a vague suggestion. Buddha employs negative terms for its description, such as freedom from misery and death, freedom from sensuality, from the ego, from delusion, from ignorance."

"This state of freedom is attainable by the 'noble kind of wisdom' - a phrase already quoted from the Buddhist scripture and signifying what the Vedanta calls transcendental knowledge. The wisdom meant is not a wisdom of the intellect, which implies a knower and an object, but rather a state, sunyata, in which no subject-object relation exists, and in which one transcends both intellect and mind - these two words representing, in Hindu psychology, separate entities."

"Christ refers directly to this transcendental wisdom when he says: 'And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.' It is identical with perfection, the same perfection that Christ has in mind when he says: 'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.' It is, in brief, the direct, immediate knowledge of that which is timeless unconditional existence."

"The 'noble kind of wisdom' is attainable by 'the noble conduct of life' and 'the noble earnestness of meditation.'"

[Swami Prabhavananda, "The Spiritual Heritage of India," page 186.]

Nottingham and Krishnamurti: The Fractured Human Psyche

One of the most insightful and informed ministers active today is the Reverend Theodore (Ted) Nottingham of Indianapolis' Northwood Christian Church. In a video that directly addresses the human condition, Rev. Nottingham examines the duality and multiplicity of the human psyche in view of the world's great wisdom traditions.



"If you've had a bad dream," Nottingham explains, "if a thought goes through your head in the shower, your state changes. We are very fragile in that way. We are fractured. We are multiple. We are legion."

"The whole purpose of true teachings," he notes, "is to reunite us so that we can bring together the core of our true self, rise up out of that brokenness and enter the nobility of truly being creatures of free will, creatures in the image of their Creator. One of the blinders for us," he explains, "is that we have a strange psychological way of not seeing these contradictions."

"This is the condition of the human being," Nottingham observes. "This is everybody. It is a condition that many teachers have called 'asleep,' because we are so unaware, (because) our attention is so diverted and fragmented and there is nobody home to be present to our reality."

"There has to be a step back," he notes. "The mystics call it 'detachment,' a position of conscious presence that is not dragged around by what is going on, that does not have the rug pulled out from under it at any moment, and that is dependable both for God and for ourselves."

The ability to detach from outward phenomena is possible, Nottingham notes, but it "has to be created," through practice in mindfulness. "We don't come with that," he warns, "and life conspires to keep us from that place of centering. All the spiritual disciplines return to this. Meditation, prayer, all of these methods and habits and ways of life offered to us by the teachings lead us into a centeredness within, in a place of inner quiet, an inner sanctuary that is sealed off from the outside."

"In the world," Nottingham notes, "we are in exile. Spiritual beings lost in a world of materialism, disconnected from our source, no longer dependent as we should be on that which is greater than we are, thinking that we are independent, (we are) cut off."

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

Jiddu Krishnamurti
(1895-1986)

Another great spiritual teacher, Jiddu Krishnamurti, made the same observations and voiced the same warnings regarding the many split off 'selves' that can exist within the human psyche.

"We are many and not one," Krishamurti observes. "The one does not come into being till the many cease. The clamorous many are at war with each other day and night, and this war is the pain of life. We destroy one, but another rises in its place; and this seemingly endless process is our life. We try to impose the one on the many but the one soon becomes the many."

"Our problem," he observes, " is not how to hear the one voice but to understand the composition, the make-up, of the many which we are are." Yet, this is exceedingly difficult, he notes (as so many other teachers have), because the parts - each with its myriad of desires - cannot undertand the whole. Thus, like Nottingham, he concludes that it is in understanding desire itself, and detaching from one's desires, that one comes to wholeness.

 "The voice of the many is the voice of the one," Krishnamurti writes, "and the one voice assumes authority; but it is still the chattering of a voice. We are voices of the many, and we try to catch the still voice of the one. The one is the many if the many are silent to hear the voice of the one. . . .

"To be aware of the whole, the conflict of the many, there must be an understanding of desire," he notes. "There is only one activity of desire; though there are varying and conflicting demands and pursuits, they are all the outcome of desire."

"Desire may not be sublimated or suppressed," Krishnamurti cryptically observes, "it must be understood without him who understands. If the entity who understands is there," he warns, "then it is still the entity of desire."

Complete detachment from desire through the experiential realization of one's wholeness, or centeredness, without any fractures, seems to be what is required. To see one's desire with one's very being, devoid of the raucous narrations of the many smaller 'selves' we each possess, is the way that leads us out of the mind trap we have created. For, "(t)o understand without the experiencer is to be free of the one and the many," Krishnamurti notes.

"In the awareness of this whole process," he writes, "there is a silence which is not of the experiencer. In this silence only does understanding come into being."

[Krishnamurti: Commentaries on Living: First Series," pp. 37-38.]

"

"The mystics," Nottingham notes, "tell us that you must be emptied, so that you may be filled . Meaning that it is possible, by eliminating the many false 'selves' of the psyche, for us to become "transparent to the divine," as the great 20th-century Christian mystic Karlfried Graf von Durckneim put it.

Tolle and Adyashanti: What is Enlightenment?

The man or woman seeking meaning in their life is bound at some time to hear of enlightenment. But what is enlightenment, really? And where are we to find it? At the feet of a guru? Perhaps? At the top of a mountain? Maybe. In a corner bar, a bottle of pills, a love affair or a new car?  Highly, highly unlikely.

Andrew Cohen, Editor-in-chief,
of EnlightenNext magazine.

The enlightened spiritual teacher, Andrew Cohen, wrote an entire book called "Enlightenment is a Secret." In it, he remarked:

"Enlightenment is a secret that very few people know about and even fewer understand. Why is it a secret? Because Enlightenment does not exist in time. That why it's a secret and that's why it will always be a secret. Enlightenment is a vision that cannot be held or grasped in any way. Beyond this world it's a mystery that is exploding. A fire that is burning. It's a fire that a person is either going to jump into or run away from. This fire burns beyond the mind. No-time is the place where this secret abides. Realize that and you realize the Self you are when there's no mind and no time. Realize that and cling to that alone as your own Self.

The  great Sufi poet and teacher, Rumi, asked us to judge the moth by the worthiness of the candle it immolates itself in. "Enlightenment is not far away," Cohen insists. "It does not need to take time."

Below, two modern enlightened teachers, best-selling author of "The Power of Now," Eckhart Tolle and the neo-Buddhist teacher and author, Adyashanti, tackle the question of just what enlightenment is.

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

Eckhart Tolle

Enlightenment, or the egoless state, "cannot be achieved in the future, or in time," Eckhart Tolle notes. "It is only by looking through it now, that the egoless state is here, now."

"A state that you want to achieve is a mental concept that is endowed with self," he observes. "And, as such, you can never reach it because it is an abstract concept of 'who I want to be,' not realizing you are it already."

"So the egoless state does not lie in the future. It has nothing to do with the future," he says. "You cannot make it into a goal. You cannot make - whether you call it the egoless state, or whether you call it enlightenment - you cannot make it into a goal. 'Goal' implies future," he observes, and "the very entry point into the egoless state or enlightenment is the present moment."

"If you make (enlightenment) into a goal you want to achieve," says Tolle, "you miss the entry point, because you are looking to the future."

"That is the dilemna of all spiritual seekers," he observes. "Because they listen to a spiritual talk or read a spiritual book and say, 'There is such a thing as the egoless state, or the enlightened state, and perhaps I can achieve it too.' And immediately they make it into a goal (and) project it away. It becomes mind, a mental image of 'who' I want to 'be' (in the) future. And (they do) not realize that their very search to actualize that image prevents them from being it, now. Because the entry point is here, (in) this moment only. The ego can only be transcended through accessing the power of the present moment." There is, he says, "no other way."

"Enlightenment is only in the power of the present moment," Tolle notes, "nowhere else. It is only humans who give up the search who realize it is already here. So you have to, one way or another - either because you are totally frustrated with the spiritual search, or because you suddenly see the truth of it -  give up the  search, as if (enlightenment) is in the future."

Adyashanti

"Enlightenment," says Adyashanti, "is simply not perceiving through ego. It's not seeing life or any thing - self, others, your tennis shoes, your cat, your dog, your livelihood, anything - it's just not seeing the world, not seeing everything through the distortion called the egoic state of consciousness. "

"That is why," he observes, "(enlightenment) is likened to the natural state. Natural, meaning its not an alternative distorting lens, it's just perception without a lens, without a distortion. Ultimately, that is what enlightenment is. It is perception without distortion."

Cautioning his audience that enlightenment is not an unending blissful experience of what Zen Buddhists call satori, Adyashanti observes that, "in the end enlightenment has very little to do with enlightenment experiences. It is simply not perceiving through the lens of ego."

'There is no doubt, he says, "that it is pretty good not perceiving through the lens of ego, it's happiness, it's peace, it's the end of your search. Not that you find anything, except sanity. Not that you attain anything, except seeing things as they actually are. And that's what nirvana is, seeing things as they actually are."

"Enlightenment," says Adyashanti, "is the unaltered state of consciousness. Consciousness needs no alteration to see that everything is one. Since everything is one, you don't need an unaltered state of consciousness to perceive that everything is one. You need an altered state of consciousness to see that everything is not one."

'One-ness,' Non-Duality and Perception

"There's many mystical states of consciousness," says neo-Buddhist spiritual teacher, Adyashanti, "but in terms of spiritual awakening they are relatively irrelevant."

"One-ness," says Adyashanti, a master of non-dualism, "is actually an unaltered state of consciousness. People think its some whacked out state of mystical consciousness." But it's not, he insists. "Everything else is a whacked out state of mystical consciousness. One-ness is just the way things are. Its just the restoration of clear, simple perception."





"Awakening to the truth is a deep realization of what you are as an  experience," Adyashanti writes in his essay, 'Realizing Your True Nature.'

"What is it that is feeling," he asks? "What is it that is thinking or sensing? This is not about coming up with the right name for it, so don't name it for a moment. It's about just noticing, just experiencing.  Feel it. Sense it. Welcome it. Spiritual awakening is realizing what  occupies the space called 'me.' When you listen innocently, you'll see that there really is something more here than a 'me.'"

"Your 'me' might call itself Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Advaitan, atheist, agnostic, believer, or nonbeliever, but no matter what your me is identified with, when you become very open and relaxed, you can suddenly be aware that  something else is occupying your body-mind. Something else is looking out from your eyes, listening from your ears, and feeling your feelings." 

"That something," Adyashanti notes, "has no qualities. Realizing your true nature is  realizing what is present without qualities. We can call it the emptiness of consciousness, the Self, or the No-Self. To directly  experience this emptiness, 'the aliveness of it,' is spiritual awakening. It is to realize yourself as beautiful nothingness, or more accurately, no-thing-ness. If we say it's 'nothing,' we miss the point."

Ego and the Pain-Body: Liberating the Mind

In his ground-breaking work, "The Power of Now," Eckhart Tolle, an enlightened spiritual teacher, takes the reader through the mechanism by which our conditioned thinking patterns and their concomitant emotional states rule our lives.

The "ego" - our individualized and habitual way of problem-creating, thinking and problem-solving, or what the psychologist/philosopher William James identified as the "stream of consciousness" - is, Tolle teaches, always accompanied by what he calls "the pain-body." Thinking begets the pain-body, the pain-body begets yet more thinking, and so on, down the road of suffering.

Yet, like the Buddha some 2500+ years ago, Tolle also identifies a way out of suffering. End the addiction to, and the identification with, the human ego and the suffering of the pain-body will also abate. In his famous statement, "I think therefore I am," DesCartes was wholly wrong, Tolle says. "I think therfore I suffer," being much closer to the seeming truth.

"There is no ego apart from the thoughts," Tolle notes. "The thoughts, (and) identification with thoughts, is ego. But the thoughts that go through your mind, of course, are linked to the collective mind of the culture you live in (and) humanity as a whole. So they are not your thoughts as such, but you pick them up from the collective . . . most of them."

"So you identify with thinking," Tolle observes, "and the identification with thinking becomes ego; which means, simply, that you believe in every thought that arises, and you derive your sense of 'who you are' from what your mind is telling you (about) who you are."

And so our thoughts breed beliefs and motions, which in turn breed further reinforcing thoughts, beliefs and emotions, all in a psychological whirl which can quickly drive one 'mad' at any given point in time.

Stopping such thoughts is seemingly the only way in which we will break this vicious spiral. And, it is in the portal of what Tolle simply calls "Being" that we are afforded the silence that will break through into the raucous noise of the ego, bringing with it the clarity and sanity which fosters an emotional respite of peace, forbearance, compassion and well-being to a world of 'thought addicts' and 'emotional junkies.'




As the great 20th-century enlightened sage Ramana Maharshi taught:

"The mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from restlessness; give it peace; make it free from distractions; train it to look inward, and make all this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind."

Thomas Merton: On Contemplation and the Inner Path

Eckhart Tolle
Author of, "The Power of Now"

The enlightened modern spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, made the observation that Rene DesCartes (the father of the 'empirical rationalism' that drives modern science) got it completely wrong in his most basic statement: "Cognito, ergo summa;"  or, "I think, therefore I am."

Objectively, DesCartes' famous dictum may be true; but subjectively, it is perhaps wholly wrong. As Tolle and so many rishis and sages of all ages and continents before him have pointed out, our "thinking without awareness" is the main dilemna of human existence. It is the root cause of all suffering.

Men and women get themselves confused with, caught up in, and identify themselves with, the restless inner dialogue of the human ego and then act upon it, usually to the detriment of others and always to the ultimate detriment of themselves.

Our usual mode of constant egoic thinking combined with an "outer" rather than "inner" religious worldview, and the sure-fire conviction that our exoteric religious beliefs are the only right and valid views, has been the chief source of man-made violence and death for millenia untold, and it continues to be so, as philosopher Ken Wilber has pointed out.

And yet, the "inner" or "esoteric" spiritual path that is present but largely ignored in most wisdom traditions is one of the few - and may be the only - way out of humanity's individual and collective suffering, as Wilber has concluded.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

As the renowned Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, observed in one of his letters that makes for the substance of the embedded video (below), the inner, contemplative path, rather than mere intellection and the application of reason, is the essence of all wisdom traditions.

To this effect, Merton notes:

"Oh, my Brother! The contemplative is not the man who has fiery visions of the cherubim-carrying God in his chariot, but simply he who has risked his mind in the desert beyond language and beyond ideas where God is encountered in the nakedness of pure trust; that is to say, in the surrender of our poverty and incompleteness, in order no longer to clench our minds in a cramp upon themselves, as if thinking made us exist."

In explaining what 'contemplation' and the 'contemplative life,' are,  Merton notes that contemplation is "a more profound depth of faith; a knowledge too deep to be grasped in images or words, or even in clear concepts." He observes:

"Contemplation is the highest expression of man's intellectual and spiritual  life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant source. 

Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that source. It knows the source, obscurely, inexplicably, but with a certitude that goes beyond both reason and beyond simple faith. For contemplation is a kind of spiritual vision to which both reason and faith aspire by their very nature, because without it they must always remain incomplete."