A Deeper Way of Knowing Yourself with Eckhart Tolle

So you can know a very old illustration or example to explain it. I believe it comes from India, is they use. They could. You could use anything, but they use honey. So you can know honey by examining the structure of honey and where it comes from and how it's produced by the bees and the molecular structure and the chemical composition. And you can write several PhDs about honey, and you can know everything there is to know. Well, perhaps that's even impossible because there's always more to know. But you can know a lot about honey. So there you are, a doctor of honey after you have successfully defended your thesis. And one day somebody asked, have you actually ever tasted honey? No, that's not part of my PhD. If you taste honey, you would know nothing about it necessarily. You just. But there's a different knowing there that is more immediate, direct, nothing to do with concepts. But you know honey on a level that is deeper in a way than this person who only knows honey through concepts. And now we can apply that first to yourself, and also, of course, we can apply it to other people. How do you know somebody else? But you have to start with yourself. So in addition to knowing yourself as this historical person, which really is knowing about yourself, you know all kinds of things about yourself. And you can talk about it for a long time. You can write your autobiography, and perhaps some people will be interested in it or not. Everybody has their own autobiography in their head, and it consists of things that you can talk about. So an autobiography consists of stories. This is what happened to me, or this is what I did. Let me tell you the story. And this is what I experienced. That's what I suffered. But do I know myself at a deeper level? Am I able to let go, to relinquish, when I choose to. To relinquish all conceptual knowledge about myself, all narratives and stories, and not live through the narratives and stories, although I'm able to remember them when I need to. But am I able to know a deeper essence that enables the narratives to exist? To be. You need to be conscious to have a narrative, a story, you need to be conscious too. Perceive things with your senses. You need to be conscious to have an emotion. All these arise. They are objects that arise in. Let's temporarily call it your consciousness, but it's not yours. They are all objects that arise in consciousness. So your life consists on the. Except on the deepest level, your life, what I call your life situation is. The term I choose to use, consists of the arising of objects in the space of consciousness or the light of consciousness. Perception, it's an object that arises in consciousness. There it is, and then it disappears. And then another perception replaces it. A thought arises, a stream of thoughts. They can take over your consciousness almost completely. They gobble up, they suck up. If thoughts can be so overpowering in the absence of awareness, a stream of thoughts can take a whole consciousness and manufacture thoughts out of it. And so you're completely unaware of yourself as consciousness. You're just completely identified with the thought. It takes up all your consciousness and makes it into thought and emotions, continuously manufacturing more thoughts. Cook, I need more. And you can see it when people talk to each other sometimes how they are taken over by a stream of thought and confuse it with who they are. And then they have to defend that stream of thought. Whatever that stream of thought is saying, whatever position it's, whatever perspective it has. People become mortal enemies because your stream of thought does not agree with my stream of thought. And groups do it because there are collectives that are dominated by certain commonly held, jointly held beliefs. There are some collectives that are held together by belief systems, ideologies, and everybody takes it on board. And then there are other collective, conflicting ideologies. And they become your mortal enemy. And really all this happens because you don't know who you are. You only know yourself as an object in consciousness. So the deepest meaning of knowing yourself is knowing yourself beyond concepts, not through concepts, not knowing yourself as an object in consciousness, but but as the eternal subject which is consciousness itself. And so the mind subsides and a sense of still alert presence remains. I am. And now you don't need to add anything to it. You just know that you are the being is of you. And if that can be sustained in the background, so to speak, then you could have a discussion with somebody. And you can put forward your point of view, which are thoughts, without making that person into an enemy. Because he or she holds opposite or conflicting points of view. And you can have a conversation, and while you're having a conversation, you remain spacious inside, but you can still clearly state your point of view without having a self identification with your point of view. This is how I see it. But you don't derive your sense of identity from that mental position. But you can still. You don't have to give up all mental positions. You just recognize them as thoughts you happen to. This is how I see reality. This is how I see that.