Beyond the Conceptual Mind | Eckhart Tolle Foundation

A moment of stillness is always a good start to anything that you do, any activity. So, it's important to become comfortable with stillness. There are many humans in this world who are made extremely uncomfortable by stillness. They can't stand it.

Mm-hmm.

So we are here at a higher education establishment, which means you've already been through lower education and have arrived at higher education. And higher education, of course, in most fields, it requires you to sharpen and to constantly use the conceptual mind. And that's fine because the conceptual mind is a wonderful tool. Conceptual mind means the ability to think and to apply thought. And so that's a wonderful thing. It's been an incredible evolutionary development, this— the evolution of the ability to think. But As in anything in this world, there's always a downside, and we can clearly see the downside of the conceptual mind because millions of humans, and not just in higher education, millions of humans are not so much using their mind As being at the mercy of their mind, so humans say things like, "I think," and that sounds reasonable. They don't say things like, "I beat my heart." Because the heart, the beating of the heart is something that happens to you. You're not actually doing it. But people think that when they think, they do it. But in most cases, that's not true. It happens the same way that your heart beats. Thought happens to you.

Hmm.

Thought suddenly appears in your mind and there it is. Where did that come from? And so the current state of human consciousness is one in which, with the exception of those humans who are already going through a spiritual awakening, an awakening of consciousness, and I will come— I will talk about what that actually means tonight. In case you have some doubts as to what I'm talking about when I say awakening of consciousness. With the exception of those humans who are already going through the process of a shift in consciousness, there are millions of others who are still totally identified with the conceptual mind, totally identified with thought, This continuous stream of thinking that incessantly arises and that they mistake for who they are. And that's why people say, I think. Of course, especially with certain types of thought, like so-called worry, you can see very clearly that it happens to you. So the mind goes and you cannot stop it. You wake up at 3 in the morning and you start thinking fearful thoughts, bad possible bad outcomes, and it goes on and on and you're trapped. Thought arises in you. So the beginning of spiritual awakening is to see a thought arise, to see a thought and not be completely identified with it, to recognize thought as thought. The awakening of consciousness, then, when we talk about awakening, People might say, well, I'm awake already. We're using awakening in a different sense here. As you probably know, like when we talk about the Buddha, the word Buddha was not anybody's name. It was a title later given to this person. And the meaning of— the root meaning of the word Buddha In Sanskrit, it's buddh, which means awake. So the Buddha is somebody who is awake. And in other, many other spiritual traditions, the term of being awake is an important one. And so what does that actually mean, to be awake? When we think we are awake, are we not awake here and now? In ancient spiritual— in Indian spiritual philosophy, there's a term, a Sanskrit term called turiya. T-U-R-Y-A. Turiya. We're at a— by the way, we're at an institute of higher learning, so I'm just mentioning some Sanskrit terms. Turiya means the 4th. The 4th— they divided human consciousness into 4 stages. One is dreamless sleep, which of course you enter every night. One is the dream state. That's the 2nd state of consciousness. Then there's the normal state of wakefulness. That's the 3rd state of consciousness. And then there is the 4th Turiya, which is the state of— this is a state that is beyond the conceptual mind. It is a state of being disidentified from the stream of thinking and In modern terminology, we may call this awareness or presence. And this state is arising already in many of you, and that's why you are here. So what you experience here tonight may be Perhaps a deepening of that state of awareness that's arising. If you're not aware, if you're not present in your daily life, then you are identified completely with the conceptual mind, and your entire sense of identity is a conceptual one. In other words, you derive your sense of who you are, and this is very important. Your sense of who you are is very important because that determines how you relate to this world. It determines how you react to things, how you interact with people. Your sense of identity is very important. So, in the absence of awareness or presence, Your sense of identity, your sense of who you are, is derived from the conceptual mind, which means you inhabit a conceptual reality, which basically is a narrative in your head that tells you who you are. And it is derived from your past. It's a way in which your mind has been conditioned by your past. And these are stories that you tell yourself, and basically what you— when you think or talk about your life and you say, my life, that is the conceptual mind, that is the narrative in your head that is derived from the past, and it has emotions that go with it. And that's fine, there's no doubt that there is a certain reality to that dimension in you. You remember your past, you remember things that have happened to you, things, your failures or your successes, things that people did to you, what you did to others. You identify with things, you incorporate things into that conceptual sense of self, you incorporate possessions, you incorporate what other people think of you, you take that on board, you incorporate those concepts into your sense of self. This is in spiritual terms the egoic sense of self or the ego, spiritually speaking. The ego is a sense of self that arises when the mind is completely unobserved. The unobserved mind brings about the ego. In fact, the unobserved mind is the ego. These are mental structures. which are energy formations, because every thought is an energy formation, energy formations in your head that you— that say, that's me, that's me and my life. And there are certain characteristics to this egoic state. One characteristic is that it exists in a state of frequent dissatisfaction, discontent, and there's an underlying, an undercurrent of something vital is missing in my life. I have not arrived yet. There are some people, or many people, who feel they haven't started to live yet. They're waiting for that moment when it's really going to take off. When— sometimes they have certain expressions that say, One day I'm going to make it. We don't know what they're going to make, but they're going to— I'm going to get the big breakthrough, or whatever it is. And whatever that may be varies from person to person. It could be to achieve financial success or recognition, or better, both the two together.

Fame. Fame.

meeting the ideal partner that is going to complete me and my story, because right now there's not enough of me. I need somebody to complete me. And then you start looking for— and sometimes you find, it seems that you found that person that the egoic sense of self was so longing for, and now there he or she is. And you're ecstatically happy, and for a little while the ego feels, ah, I have arrived, the same way that would happen if you're offered a great job or you've just won the lottery or you get some kind of recognition in this world. Not that there's anything wrong with recognition, but it's a wonderful thing. To achieve things is wonderful. To endeavor to achieve things is wonderful. But to look to these things and hope to find a more complete sense of self through it, to hope to find that complete sense of fulfillment and a lasting sense of fulfillment, that doesn't seem to work, because I haven't met anybody for whom that has worked, except for brief periods. That these periods are brief. You may, even though many of you are young, you may already have experienced that the initial stage of meeting the ideal person does not last very long, and at some point you realize that you met the wrong person, and it was all a big mistake. And at the latest, when you start living with somebody, you realize that the person that you first met and that you— that was so wonderful when you were having dinners together or going for a walk on the beach or wherever, that person was looking at you like this. And then you start living together and suddenly that person no longer looks at you like this. So there's something— the ego longs for something to add to. The ego is always in a sense of insufficiency. And remember, the ego is a concept, ultimately a narrative in your mind, a conceptual reality that can never fulfill you no matter how much you add to it, which does not mean you should not do it. No, no, no. Strive to do things in this world, but do not expect this world to make you happy, because happiness does not ultimately derive from this world. This world is not designed to make you happy, it is designed to challenge you. And if you believe that this world is designed to make you happy, then you're going to get very angry because— As the years pass in your life, you realize, why isn't my life working? Why is this reality seems to be always throwing obstacles in my path? The moment I say, oh, it's okay now, this problem has been solved, another one pops up from behind you. And so you have these areas of your life, the main areas being Your physical health, your financial situation, your living situation, your professional situation, your relationship situation. And one of these areas usually develops problems. So you solve a problem in your financial area, and then pops up a relationship problem. You solve the relationship problem, suddenly you have a health problem. It's interesting that you're constantly being challenged, and you might have noticed one of the greatest sources of challenges are human beings, because humans are incredibly challenging. And although humans look to other humans often for some ultimate fulfillment through other humans, more often what they find through other humans is that other humans turn out to be a source of suffering. And that is because you are stuck in the egoic mind, and you have— the egoic mind has certain expectations of the world, which includes whatever you experience in this world, has certain expectations that the world cannot meet. But if you believe that the world should, then that is a delusional reality that you will be continuously unhappy. The world continues to challenge you, but you believe the world is here to make you happy. That's a terrible dilemma. So it means your entire— all your expectations are illusory, but you don't know it. And that creates an enormous amount of suffering, because then every challenge that you encounter in this world, and they come, One after another, every challenge that you encounter in this world, you then, because of that underlying expectation that something is wrong when you're being challenged, every challenge is then turned into unhappiness. There's a big difference between a challenge and unhappiness. So when you have delusory expectations of the world, then— The world will make you unhappy and not happy, but you continue to believe that something has gone fundamentally wrong in your life because life does not leave you alone. You want some peace, you want some, ah, you want the sense of, I've arrived, this is it. And occasionally it comes, but it never lasts for very long. So that's the dilemma. The underlying state of ignorance, not knowing that the function of this world is to challenge you, because only by challenging you does it provide the necessary incentive to awaken you. And it is that you notice after a while that as you gradually begin to awaken out of the unconsciousness, which is the complete identification with the conceptual egoic mind, you begin to realize that, oh, a lot of the unhappiness that you experience— and unhappiness is a generic term that could be many, many things. Even a state of irritation is already unhappiness. Sadness is unhappiness. Anger is unhappy. Any state that doesn't feel good is unhappiness. Any state of unhappiness, you begin to realize that the greater part of it is not derived from the situations in your life. And when you realize that, that's the beginning of an awakening. Let's say 90% of the unhappiness that you encounter is actually produced by your mind.

Mm-hmm.

And that's an amazing realization. There remain 10% unhappiness. You might be very— somebody, a loved one dies close to you. Of course, you experience, you weep. That is, of course, normal. But if you observe the various forms of unhappiness in your life, from the very mildest forms of unhappiness to the more extreme forms of unhappiness, let's say, I'm just 2 brief examples. A mild, very small, a little bit of unhappiness arises many times when things happen in daily life and you can't immediately get what you want. You're on the phone trying to talk to your bank, but of course there's no human being there. And even that is a minor form of unhappiness, but it is You get very irritated and you don't— you think, well, this is caused by this dreadful bank that has no longer human beings that you can speak to. Or you're lining up— airports are a great place to observe small forms of unhappiness because often so many things go wrong and you're lining up and it's Lineup is not moving, and of course, these people are just so inefficient, I'm never going to fly with them again. And so on, and you feel more and more. And in any of these situations, if you observe, okay, unhappiness is arising, is it really coming from the situation, or is it coming from the way in which I speak to myself about the situation? Does it derive from the mental commentary about the situation, or is it the situation? And in most cases, you actually find— and I suggest you start with little, small forms of unhappiness— you will find that the unhappiness is derived from the narrative, is derived from your self-talk in the head. And because the self-talk just happens to you, you're not doing it, it's like the heartbeat, it happens, the thinking, the reactive thinking, happens to you, and you mistake it for who you are, and then you become an unhappy human being. And an amazing sense, the possibility of freedom arises when you become observant, but this means a little bit of awareness, this, the 4th state of consciousness, a little bit of awareness needs to arise to be there so that you can become aware of what's happening On the level of thinking, on the level of your mind. You suddenly— another dimension arises in you, and from that dimension you can observe the way in which your mind operates. And before, you were completely identified with it, but now you are no longer the thinking mind, you are the intelligence behind the thinking mind. That intelligence itself is not a conceptual intelligence, it's higher, or we could say deeper, than conceptual intelligence. That, by the way, is not an intelligence that is encouraged in our civilization. It is not an— the non-conceptual intelligence is not something that is given much attention to in higher education or lower education. So, that's, unfortunately, our civilization still As a whole, knows very little about this. You very rarely hear about it, but it is of enormous importance, of course, to get in touch and to not only develop your conceptual intelligence, but to develop the awareness behind the conceptual intelligence, and that's another form of intelligence. And that's very similar to— you can know things conceptually, and you can know things non-conceptually. If you only know the world through concepts, then you are trapped in the conceptual mind. An example that's often traditionally given, just to exemplify, to illustrate it, an example that is often given is honey. You can have knowledge about what is honey. Honey, you can write a PhD about honey, Without ever having tasted honey. And then, from a conceptual point of view, you would say, I know honey very well. I can talk about it for 3 hours, about the molecular structure of honey, where it comes from, and all the—

all—

you have enormous knowledge about honey, but you've never tasted it. And then there's somebody else who tastes honey, and then this person knows honey, Non-conceptually. And in a way, as a human being functioning in this world, you need both. You can't have just the non-conceptual because then you go, uh, uh. But if you only have the conceptual knowledge, then you are trapped in— this is only a small segment of reality. And so it is vital for you to have both, to be able to move and have both the conceptual and non-conceptual intelligence operating in your life. Now, the conceptual, you already have, you're developing this. You've been encouraged since childhood to develop conceptual intelligence. That's what entire lower and higher education is for. before, but you have not really probably been encouraged. I mean, most humans don't even know that it exists, or it's confined to some strange realm of mysticism or whatever they call it.

Esotericism.

Esotericism or mysticism. But it's something very vital, and it's something that exists in every human being as a potential, It is latent in every human being. The 4th state of consciousness, Turiya, is a latent possibility in every human being. It is not something that you need to ultimately work hard to achieve in some future moment because—

It's there.

Future is another concept. It's a concept in your head. Future is also— time itself is a mental concept. How do we know that? Is that true? Yes, it's true, because you have never actually encountered the future except as a thought in your head. Is that true?

Yeah.

And the strange thing is, people think so much about the future, but the moment they experience it, it's the present moment, because that's all there ever is. But because if you are trapped in the conceptual mind, then future and past become more important than the present. So, But then when you realize that, coming back to the arising unhappiness, that a great— the greater part of unhappiness is ultimately not produced by situations you find yourself in, but by ways in which you talk to yourself about the situations that you find. That creates an enormous amount of unhappiness. And you would be surprised Or maybe not— how many humans live in this world who live with a very, very unhappy conceptual self. They, they, oh, my life is just, just awful. And then they can talk to you about it. And if they have nobody to talk to about, they would talk to themselves about it. My life is just— what's happened in my life is this has gone wrong and that, and then I did, I made those terrible mistakes, and then what he did to me and she did to me. Of course, people do bad things to other people, and of course, there are people here who have, maybe everybody, you have experienced bad things in childhood. I certainly did not have a happy childhood. It was, It was— I mean, there are childhoods that are far worse than mine, but I would not want to go through that again. Oh my God. But do you then— do you think back about it and say, oh, that's what they— why did I have such unconscious parents? In my generation, all parents were unconscious. So it's nothing special. But there are humans in the present generation who have relatively conscious parents, so there has been a shift. There are children alive now whose parents are, if not totally enlightened, they are at least awakening. So when you notice then little things, like you notice irritation or anger arising, then you say, where does it come from? Is it the situation? And then a moment of freedom arises, the possibility of freedom arises, and that is, you can say, what would this situation be like if I did not add those thoughts to it that I'm just adding to it, that this moment is terrible, standing in this lineup is just so awful, and I can't stand it anymore? And waiting at the front, I just can't stand this anymore, and my life is horrible anyway. And if you let go, how would you experience this very same moment if you did not add what is ultimately unnecessary thought to it? If you could just take this moment for what it is, this moment is as it is, and I'm not adding any unnecessary baggage to it, I'm just Then an amazing realization comes, and that is you begin to separate what you perceive externally and the way in which you interpret what you perceive externally. When you are unconscious, spiritually speaking, your interpretation of something that happens in your life and the event are experienced as a single phenomenon. And that's, for example, you open the curtains in the morning, you look out and it's raining, and say, oh my God, not another awful day. And then you believe that you are experiencing an awful day. You have not separated the perception and the interpretation of the perception. And as you become more conscious, You separate the perception and the mental interpretation of the perception, and then you say, okay, if I take out the interpretation and just look at this, there's the sky, there's the rainwater coming down, and this moment, there's nothing bad about it. It's not good or bad. It is as it is. Or you could say it's all good because the trees are happy, they're getting water. You could say that. But without adding any thought, there's just a very peaceful, clear moment. There is no unhappiness in it. So if— and it's incredibly important. Later, of course, you encounter more complex situations in human relationships, but there too, if you are alert, Mm-hmm. You need that alertness, which is awareness, is required so that you can catch your mind when it wants to— it tells you something about reality. And it takes an event and interprets it and says, that's the event. No, it's the interpretation of the event. So if you can— this is a wonderful beginning of freedom, inner freedom when you separate the interpretation from the actual thing. It could be a person, it could be an event, or just a simple sense perception. And suddenly you experience the very same thing that before was an unpleasant experience as actually not bad at all. Let's go back to the simple— you're standing in a lineup, in the supermarket and it's just not moving and you get very irritated and think all the things that you should be doing and you shouldn't have come at this time and why are these people so inefficient, can't they— and suddenly you're just standing there and you're breathing and you're looking around. Is that so bad?

No.

It's no longer bad because your mind isn't telling you that it is bad. It is as it is. Now, you might say, that's very little, but what happens if something really bad happens? What happens if you come home and suddenly see the house that you live in has gone up in flames? What happens if you suddenly lose your home? And you sit on a park bench. What then? It still applies. The same still applies. Are you adding a narrative to it, or are you taking this moment? Oh, there's the house. It burned down. Now, this is of course an advanced, more advanced lesson, but you have to master this little simpler lessons first. And then you get to the more advanced lessons, because you will experience— everybody does— big loss at some point in your life, of whatever kind, whether it's loss of a relationship, loss of a loved one, financial loss, loss of your job, loss of reputation. Who knows? It's easy with the internet these days to lose your reputation. One wrong tweet, you can destroy your whole life. So you could experience all that, and you will. All these things will happen. As you remember, life is not meant to make— the world is not meant to make you happy. It's meant to make you conscious by challenging you. And by challenging you, at first, the challenges become unhappiness. Then you begin to realize that most of the unhappiness is derived from unconscious thought processes. And then suddenly, gradually, you awaken. And then the mind, the world continues to challenge you, but now the challenges actually help you and they intensify the awakening. They no longer bring unhappiness. Occasionally, you might still fall back into unhappy reactions, but you're no longer— drawn into continuous unhappy reactivity. The world is here not to make you happy, and that's— oh my God, that's so good to know, because if I hadn't taught you that, maybe you would have gone through the next 40 years thinking the world was here to make you happy and it didn't happen. Very frustrating. The world is here to— the world challenges every life form continuously. Its life is precarious and challenging, even for a blade of grass that grows. It's challenging for a tree, it's challenging for an animal, it's challenging for the cat, for the deer, for every life form is continuously being challenged. So it needs— but what that It does, for example, to a bird, it brings about an alertness in that life form. The challenge brings about an alertness. Have you observed how alert a bird is? A bird goes— there's an incredible alertness there. Why is a bird so alert? Because he needs to be alert, because otherwise a thing could suddenly pop up and eat it. Enormous, enormous alertness. And this is how gradually consciousness grows through being challenged. And the more you suffer, 90% will be coming from your mind, Then gradually you are being forced into awakening because you can't stand yourself anymore. You can't stand living with this unhappy self anymore. And suddenly, and then you realize what the Buddha was talking about when the Buddha said, the self is the illusion. The self is the— ultimately, it's an illusory entity. And the Buddha said, there is no self, it's just an illusion. And as long as you live, as long as this self, what in Buddhism is called self, which is the conceptual self, the mind-made self, as long as you derive your identity from that, life, to again quote the Buddha, life is suffering. All life is suffering. So the basic teaching, for example, of the Buddha is life is suffering. But the second part of the teaching of the Buddha is the possibility of the end of suffering. That's the whole of Buddhism is there in that. So the Buddha said, I teach suffering and the end of suffering. Which means, I show you how suffering arises, and I show you how suffering can end. And when he talks about suffering, he was not talking about challenges. He was talking about what I've just described as unhappiness. I use the term unhappiness arising from from your mind. So you practice with situations, and then with small ones, and you will encounter incredible liberation when little things that before irritated you or made you angry or whatever they did, you no longer confuse the interpretation with the actual thing. You remove the mental interpretation from it, and you are just—

You are just there.

present with it, and that is, you grow in consciousness, awareness grows, and you feel situations don't make you unhappy anymore, less, or gradually it happens that you can then be okay with situations that before created unhappiness. That's already a wonderful relief. And it also means you're no longer at the mercy of what happens or does not happen around you. Your inner state is no longer at the mercy of either something happening— I need this to happen— or something not happening. And that's an enormous liberation. Let's say you booked a vacation and you arrive at the airport and suddenly the whole thing is canceled, and you were looking forward to it so much. I really needed a vacation. I've been working so hard throughout the year. Haven't had a moment's rest. Now this has been taken away from me too. Why has this happened to me? And you go, oh, it's— you're not adding thought to it. And there you are, just present, and you're actually fine. This is a little bit more advanced. And the other— The other one is— When something really drastic happens, you lose your home, it could happen, you lose a loved one, you lose a relationship, somebody leaves you, or you could be involved in some collective disaster, who knows what's to come. Life is challenging. And then you too can practice, well, like—

What?

Am I unhappy in this situation? Sitting on a park bench, not knowing what you're going to live on the next day? Or can you be totally, just totally, just be here and watch? There's the sky, you're breathing, the birds, people walking. And this moment is actually fine. This is why I often ask people, people who think their life is burdened with problems, and of course every life is problematic, everybody in your life situation, of course you have sets of— you have problems, everybody has, whether they be physical, financial, relationship, professional, you have problems. If you don't, I mean, just wait a few days. So they will come. So if they become, you could become a refugee. That's a. And what then? Because what I'm saying now applies in every situation, but the more drastic the loss or the situation, the more intense your presence needs to be. And if you, let's say, you have lost everything, and it has happened to people who not only lost one thing, they lost everything. It has happened. This can either mean terrible, terrible unhappiness, up to suicide, including the possibility of suicide, or it could mean that the entire structure of the conceptual sense of self that had lived on identification with this and this and this and this Collapses. The entire structure of the ego in certain extreme situations, or as they sometimes in existentialist philosophy call limit situations, the entire structure of your conceptual sense of self in a limit situation when everything has been taken away collapses. And now what's left? The entire self collapses. And then it's been reported by people, either they committed suicide, so they didn't report it. They committed suicide or just spent the rest of their life in bitter, bitter unhappiness, resentful at everything in the world and everything. Or the structure of the egoic self dissolved, and what was left was just presence. Suddenly you experience yourself no longer as a conceptual entity, but you experience yourself as just a pure sense of presence. Now, The wonderful thing is you don't need a disaster. Now, that's a secret that not many people know yet. You don't need a disaster for that. It's when you become present and the presence arises, the awareness arises, then the conceptual sense of self, which is the ego, Is no longer— I'm sorry, let's say loses its density. The conceptual sense of self is no longer as dense, the conceptual self being the personality, the person, the conditioned person, conditioned by the past. And in people who are completely unconscious, which means completely identified with that, the personality of the person is very heavy. I can sometimes observe people and I can see how they carry this burden of their own personality around with them and they don't even know it. And so they are— and often it's a— there are many negative, more negative than positive elements to that heavy personality. And some of them may be successful in this world. They might be chairman of the board or the managing, the CEO of this company, and yet there's just Just totally identified with the conceptual structures, or maybe even professors at— Could be. Not necessarily. And there could be CEOs who are Relatively awakened too, is it not? So, who am I is the ultimate question. The question of identity is fundamental. Where does your sense of who you are come from? Does it come from the story of me in the head that you call my life? Or does it come from a deeper place? And that deeper place you can access at any moment. But for you to access that deeper place where you are just a conscious presence rather than a person, for that— to access that for a moment, you need to enter this moment of— Stillness. Cessation of thinking. For example, now—it's just a tiny moment. It's just fine. Doesn't need long for the time being. This is just a tiny moment of in this moment, this moment, you don't remember your problems. You don't remember your. Past. You don't remember your name. You don't remember your email address. And you don't remember your latest Facebook post. In this moment and now, what does that mean when you don't remember your name in your mind, your past, your problems, and all those other things? Does that mean you disappear, or does it mean something very fundamental is still present, but it is not conceptual and has no particular form? There is a formless presence that underlies the personal sense of— that is deeper than your personal sense of self. And if you can Sense that formless presence in the present moment, the only place where you can sense it. It's inseparable from the present moment. It is the present moment, ultimately. If you can sense this formless presence, then that's— at first, it's very— there seems to be nothing there. And in a way, you could say it is nothing because it is formless.

Okay.

Just a glimpse of that is enough to see, whoa, I haven't disappeared. When you start thinking again, you haven't disappeared, and you know there is a knowing in this moment of just pure awareness. There is a knowing, but it's not conceptual. And you can, in that state, you can look at a tree, you can look at a flower, or even a man-made thing, a human-made thing. You can look at that and perceive it fully without imposing an interpretation on it. You can look at a flower and observe it, and in the background, there's a stillness, an alert stillness. You can practice that. You can meditate— meditation helps, of course, but it is more important in daily life to bring in these brief moments. And you may be surprised, they actually sometimes arise in your life spontaneously, but you don't even know it. They arise in your life sometimes when you look at something very beautiful in nature, for example, or you look into the eyes of a baby and the baby looks back at you. 1-year-old baby looks back at you, and the way the baby looks, there's no thought yet in the baby. There's a consciousness, but conceptual thinking hasn't arisen yet. So the baby looks at you like that. And for a moment you look into the eyes of the baby, and for a few seconds the baby frees you from your conceptual mind, and you experience that as a moment of deep love and aliveness, and you say, oh! Why? And what you don't realize is you experience this moment because of cessation of thought. And something deeper has come up from— that has been underneath the noise of thinking in you, this potential, this latent potential of awareness has come up, and you experience as a moment of— and then you might remember it as, oh, that was so beautiful. Or you might witness a sunset, and for a brief moment you go, oh, that's beautiful. Wow. And in this wow, there's no thought. So you perceive it without thought, but you're fully conscious, of course, very conscious. You perceive it without thought, and then you remember it and say, oh, when I climbed this mountain— that was another reason why you were not thinking anymore, because you had to concentrate so much on the present moment, with one step after another, and then you're climbing You're climbing up this mountain wall and finally you arrive at the peak and it happens to be the moment of sunset. And then your mind has already become quite still because you had to focus on climbing up this dangerous mountain. It forced you to be present in every moment. So you forgot your problems, you forgot your personality, you forgot your person, and there was only presence. And then you stand on top of the mountain and you go, ah! And there's the vastness of the sky and the sun is going down. And you go, wow! And then for many years later you say, well, that was so great, I did this. But you don't realize the magnificence of this moment. What really happened there was the cessation of thinking and the arising of awareness, complete, just complete presence. You as a person were not there in that moment. You as a person had subsided, and what was there instead was an intense conscious presence. And that conscious presence is who you are essentially. That conscious presence is who every human being is essentially. That conscious presence is not ultimately yours. It is the presence of universal consciousness that pervades the entire universe. and manifests temporarily as a fleeting human being. Human being, the way I interpret this term is, for a long time I thought, isn't it sad that the English language doesn't have a word that means both man and woman? As, for example, in German you have Mensch, which means human being, but it's one word. But here in English you have to say human being. But now I'm very happy that in English you have to use human being, because I chose the two dimensions of who you are. The human is you as the physical body and the person or the personality. The being is who you are essentially underneath that, as you are consciousness. And you are consciousness, the consciousness of the universe experiencing itself briefly, because human life is brief. brief, experiences itself briefly as Mr. and Mrs. or whoever, so-and-so, whatever you experience. So the freedom to realize who you are beyond the person, and you can still operate as the person because you need that kind of thing to operate in this world, because when they ask you What's your name and what are your qualifications? It's not enough to say, my name is illusory. Don't ask me about it. I am conscious presence. And if I had to fill in a job application, If I fill in an application form for a job, I don't have many things, qualifications, so I don't— if it asks, what is your main qualification? I would have to say, I'm able to not think. Which is true, it's my main qualification. But it wouldn't get me a job probably unless it's I'm not here as a meditation teacher. So you need to be able to operate in this world but not be trapped on that level so that you have access to the other. And so life continues to challenge you, and that will only accelerate your awakening. Let's ask some questions now. In case the conceptual mind still is a little bit active. I think we have a few— people have already sent in a few questions. This is really— what we're talking about is the essence of all spirituality, and when you can look at Christian, true Christian spirituality or mysticism, you can look at Sufism, you can look at Buddhism, you can look at Hinduism, all of them point to this.

Hi. Thank you so much for that. We asked some students to send us questions ahead of time via social media, and so I'll just start.

Yeah.

John C. asks, With so much divisiveness and trauma in the world, how can we maintain a sense of peace and also work towards transformation?

Right. Well, the main thing, of course, is not to become part of the divisiveness so that you don't contribute to it. And that requires you to be non-reactive. That requires you to see the divisiveness for what it is. It's produced by human beings who are not evil or dreadful, but the human beings who don't know who they are. So they need the divisiveness because the egoic sense of self thrives on having enemies. It defines its own identity by emphasizing the otherness of others. Whether the other is one single person or whether the other is a group of people, the ego loves to emphasize the fact that these are totally other. It doesn't want— the ego does not love the sense of oneness because it would dissolve in the oneness. It loves to emphasize the otherness. Now, that means it needs enemies. Now, that applies to politics and even religion, when religion is an ideology, because religions are in part ideology, although there is a deeper truth hiding somewhere in every religion. But on the surface, many religions are actually used by the egoic mind to strengthen itself and then to fight the other. As you can see in many religions, they're fighting not only other religions, they're fighting within their own religion, they're fighting the other. If they didn't have the other, their sense of identity would suddenly collapse. They need the other. So the divisiveness is an unconscious ego device that nowadays, unfortunately, because of the way in which technology has given us, has given every human the opportunity to Put out all their mental chaos out into the world. And before, all a human being could be, he or she could stand at a street corner and shout something. But now, you know, they could maybe make photocopies and stick things on trees or whatever they used to do. And you can't reach many people that way. But nowadays, no matter how weird your ideas are, you're on your computer and you tweet out into the world, and then many others will suddenly react. But you feel great because these people are reacting, and so you feel you're suddenly— your sense of identity is growing.

Mm-hmm.

So the divisiveness is created by humans who don't know who they are. And I think, I believe you can see what I mean by that, who have not yet had access to the deeper dimension within themselves. So they are trapped in the realm of the conceptual mind and they create their enemies. Many, even conflict between nations, conflict within nations is ultimately produced by that unconsciousness in humans. So, for you, your responsibility is not to contribute more to it, but you have— it requires a certain alertness because it's very easy to get upset by things that you read on your device, and then you go— And then you wait for that reaction. And then you— and you don't even know that you're talking to a human being because you've never met these people with whom you have a violent argument. You've never even met them. And they— so you can see it's total— operates totally in the realm of concept. This human being, you haven't met. You probably wouldn't, even though you might be unconscious, you wouldn't say this to this human being if you actually were— But, Confronting them. But since the human being has been even more reduced to just a string of letters on a screen, and then you attack the human being that sent out this string of letters, completely insane, the whole thing. So you have to— don't get trapped in that. You have to It requires a certain alertness not to get drawn into that. Make sure that your communications are relatively conscious when you send out communication, whatever you Facebook, tweet. Don't create a pseudo-identity for yourself on Facebook, as many people do. Look how great my life is. That's another, just a conceptual picture that you Sent out into the world, and that's completely wrong, as you probably know, but everybody, many young people and others do it. Here I am eating this wonderful meal. And then, of course, that will strengthen your delusory delusion that the world is here to make me happy, but it's making everybody happy except me. And then you also have to pretend that you're happy.

That, I think, was the end of the night. That was great. So, one, Justin Y. asks, how do we manage loving a person and feelings of attachment? It feels that it makes it hard to be in the present— it feels like that makes it hard to be in the present moment.

Okay. Well, if you are experiencing the temporary stage of intense attraction that is sometimes called falling in love, there's not much you can do because that's like a drug. And it has you in its grasp and it gets a hold of you and it's like some addictive pull and you can't let go of it and you call it love. But of course it's not love because you know it's not love by the simple fact that it can at the flick of a switch turn into its opposite. Just if the other person says to you, Okay, I've decided to be with someone else. So was that love? If suddenly from one minute to the next you go— no, there was an intense neediness and there was a— all I can recommend during that time period, and it usually doesn't last that long, If you can be a little bit aware, you have this awareness in the background that this is happening to you, have some awareness in the background, there's not much you can do about it. Compulsively, you send out your text messages, did you get my last message? You haven't replied, I've been waiting for 2 minutes already. And if you can have a little bit of awareness in the background, you say, okay, I can feel this compulsion. It's like being possessed, I can feel it. And then you send another text. Have a little bit of awareness in the background, and especially be aware when it comes to an end or something shifts, it's no longer the intense infatuation, It turns into something else, hopefully, or it ends. And so watch yourself if you can, rather than being completely taken over. So what's happening to you is that intense attraction that is almost inevitable, perhaps, when you're young. And less likely to happen when you are my age.

Or mine.

Have a good time.

That's great. Well, speaking of technology, Natalie— Natalia, rather, asks, how do I find a balance with staying connected through technology and not feeling like I'm overdoing it? How do I know if I am online too much?

Right. Well, if you fill every moment when you're not doing something else, like work or study or making— preparing a meal or whatever, if you fill every moment when you're waiting at the elevator, Waiting for the bus, sitting in your room, sitting in a café, waiting to meet a person, sitting on a bench in a park. When you fill every moment with looking at a device, then you're overdoing it. When there's almost never a moment in your life when you're just That not— And you would be surprised how there are many, many people in this world nowadays who no longer experience, neither at home nor outside home, they no longer experience these moments of just being, not even for 30 seconds.

Looking around.

Looking around. It's an incredible loss not being able to just look around, being. No, immediately, automatically, they reach for the device, only hardly aware of their surroundings, and engage in all that is conceptual, It's again, the things I described, the conceptual mind, the devices that we have invented are an amplification of the conceptual mind. They amplify what has already been there for thousands of years, but now you have in the external realm, the technology has enabled you To amplify the stream of thoughts and concepts that constantly go through your mind through the devices. In other words, minds were cluttered before. Minds— the people who can never stop thinking have a cluttered mind. If there's not a moment when you can say, ah, and there's a moment of cessation of thought, but aware presence. Ah. Ah. And when there's no longer a moment of that, that means there's no space in you, there's only clutter. And life becomes unpleasant when there's only— you can feel it energetically that when your mind is cluttered, life is no longer joyous, it's no longer— It's not alive. really enjoyable, it's addictive. I've been saying even before these things were invented, I already said probably the greatest addiction— there are many kinds of addictions in this world, but probably the greatest addiction is the addiction to useless thinking, that you cannot stop thinking and you don't want to stop thinking because you are the thinking. You are the thinker. And the thinker doesn't want to stop thinking because if the thinker stopped thinking, it would be the end of the thinker. And you think you are the thinker, so you don't want to die, so you can't stop thinking. And if you can't stop thinking, your mind is cluttered. And now it's even more cluttered because you're not only thinking your own thoughts and other people's thoughts, You take them on too, because there's a continuous inflow of text messages and Facebook posts and emails and whatever else is there— Instagram, Snapchat. I'm not familiar with Swirlt, but I know of it. There is Tinder. And you go So you clutter your mind with the possibilities of relationships. I don't know what the left or right is, but it's— and there's an addiction behind that. And of course, when you are in a relationship, you have, let's say, you're meeting for the first or second time over dinner, the mind is already going, hmm, maybe that wasn't the right person. Let's get out the device. Pretend that it's a text message. Message, but look at Tinder again while you're— So clutter. So you have to really notice how addictive these things are. I don't know what effect, now that we have a generation that has been growing up with this since early childhood, short attention, very short attention spans. ADHD, attention deficit disorder, so-called. In the past it was just, they called it, oh, he can't concentrate, he can't concentrate. Now it's the attention deficit disorder and we must medicate that, of course. All that arises from Continuous interaction with these devices for children. You cannot tell the child not to interact, I'm sure, but you can reduce the amount of time they spend with these. It's so vital for a child to not, at too early an age, to engage continuously the conceptual mind so that the child remains in touch with the Tactile reality and the sensory reality of the world, especially nature. A child must remain in touch with nature, and they're not in nature if they're continuously on their iPad or whatever it is. So it's vital for the parent to direct the child to nature, to take the child out into nature, encourage the child to interact with nature in some kind of activity. To feel nature, to smell, to sense, all terribly important. And if only even having an animal at home and relating to the animal is a liberating thing, because there's something, there's a living being there rather than the abstract world of the screen. So everybody needs to exercise caution and some restraint. And do you see the qualitative difference between having a moment of not engaging with any of these devices and just coming into presence? Oh, so good. Feel so much more alive. And encounter a moment of stillness, take a conscious breath or 2 or 3. And bring in spaces, inner spaces, or realize that there is space in you. So that the worst thing is to have a totally cluttered mind and nothing else. Just, it's a terrible fate, and you become really unhappy. All people who have a cluttered mind are basically— they may not be aware of it at this very moment, and at this very moment they might even be ecstatically happy because something has just happened, that they've got what they wanted, and then very quickly turns into unhappiness again. And then you see people that are— they're never really there with you. When you can look into their eyes, there's an absence there because all their consciousness is absorbed continuously by conceptual thinking. So they're looking at you, but they're not really looking at you. They're immediately— either they're thinking about something totally different, Or they have certain opinions about you and mistake their opinions about you for who you are. And so that's the continuous judgment of others which egos do. And so they look at you and they go— Or you see them walking along the street and completely absorbed continuously in— every ounce of their consciousness, so to speak, is absorbed by thought. Just enough awareness of sensory perception not to bump into things, and that's all, but otherwise completely unaware of their surroundings, unaware of other— inability to connect with other human beings. Because if you only inhabit the conceptual realm and you try to interact with another human being, then very quickly— You get lost. Conflict arises in the relationship. It's inevitable. And that is how many relationships fail very quickly, because if people don't know who they are, to use that phrase, then relationships cannot thrive. You need to have some access at least to the deeper dimension of you, the the essence of you so that you can relate to the essence of the other. And then you can tolerate their personality a bit more. In some extreme cases, perhaps you can't, and then you just remove yourself. But it is very hard to tolerate the personalities of other people if you have no access to the deeper dimension within yourself, and they can't tolerate yours, of course. So, because all you have is 2 personalities, 2 conceptual selves trying to make it, and usually they don't.

Sadly, that's true. So, we'll end with this question, since we're running out of time, sadly. So, Mitali asks, what inspired you to choose this path? Did someone inspire you, or did an event lead you to this path? Since this isn't a traditional career that one dreams of while growing up, necessarily, what made you choose this line of work, and what advice would you give to somebody who wants to be a global spiritual leader? I thought that was cute.

Good career choice. The world needs you. But— Well, I remember what— when they asked the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, what does a person How does a person become a good psychoanalyst? And he said, well, the person needs to have analyzed their own dreams. Really, this is something that you need to live. It cannot be something external to you. It is not— you cannot become a spiritual teacher by acquiring knowledge. Knowledge may be Helpful at some point, reading books and going to workshops. Knowledge can be helpful, techniques can be helpful, but ultimately you have to have realized who you are so that you are no longer trapped in the egoic sense of self. And that is the main qualification for being a spiritual teacher. Know yourself. Know who you are. And when you're no longer trapped in the egoic sense of self, you are connected with that. Then then you you will realize that you as the person can never be a spiritual teacher. You as a person would never be ready and would not be. I mean, there are people who do spiritual teaching, but They're just conveying techniques, and then they may do some good also. But a true, a real spiritual teacher realizes that you— it is not you as the person who can become a spiritual teacher, but if you, the person, gets out of the way. And how you get out of the way depends— do you get out of the way by going to a Zen monastery for 10 years and practice meditation for 6 hours a day, maybe. Or you get out of the way because life has given you so many extreme challenges that you couldn't stand it anymore, and your entire egoic structure dissolved. And that way you got out of the way. So life just did it to you. That's, that's probably the best. Uh, And so it's not you. You cannot be a spiritual teacher, but if you get out of the way, then spiritual teaching can happen through you. So it's— if I had been told when I was in my 20s, you will become, in the eyes of the world, a great spiritual teacher, I would have said, wow, that's great! I'm going to make it. I will make it. So if a psychic had told me that, I would have probably reacted in that way. But if the psychic had been a good psychic, he or she would have added, but you have to die first. And that would have been a blow to my ego. What? Die not physically, but die to a false sense of self. Die to a false sense of self. That needs to die first. Then it's almost inevitable that you become a spiritual teacher. And even if you don't become a formal spiritual teacher, whatever situation you are in, you change people around you just by interacting with them. So the It's a wonderful career, but it's not something that the ego would ever be able to enjoy because it won't be there anymore. Now, by the way, some people may wonder, could one operate without ego? I need to just remind you again what I mean when I say ego. Ego is— I have these 2 expressions. You exist, as you may remember, you exist as a human being. The human is your form identity. Form means physical form and psychological form, who you are in the conditioned mind, the emotions, and your physical form. That's the human, that's your form identity. And then there's your essence identity. Your essence identity is consciousness. Your essence identity is who you are on the deeper level. I sometimes call that the deep I, as opposed to the surface I, I, pronoun I. When you say I, usually you refer to your personality, your story, your so-called life. But there's a deeper I, and that deeper I, the deep I, is who you are as essence. And that is what— when that emerges, and then it can use your mind and operate through it, and then that's the spiritual teaching that happens. So it really is— you cannot make it happen. If you ask the universe, please— the universe, when I say universe, I mean the one universal intelligence that pervades the entire universe, that is an emanation of the One, which is totally beyond anything we could talk about. There's the one and there's that which emanates from the one. And if you ask that universal intelligence, which traditionally you would call God, please give me the experiences I need for me to become a spiritual teacher and to change this world for the better and make the lives of humans— diminish the suffering in this world. Please give me the experiences I need in order to become that. Ask the universe that. And then don't complain when you get them. Thank you.

Thank you so much for being with us here tonight.

Thank you.

We appreciate it.