This is a YouTube video titled "Discovering the Transcendent Dimension | A Guided Meditation by Eckhart Tolle" created in November 2023. The content is a guided meditation or spiritual talk by Eckhart Tolle focusing on the concept of presence, transcendence beyond the ego, and discovering the deeper dimension of consciousness beyond the personal self. The speaker elaborates on the nature of presence, the ego, and how to experience life beyond mental judgments for a more peaceful existence.
I sometimes speak of bringing the transcendent dimension into your life. Without which your life, no matter what you achieve, is very limited. The transcendent dimension is not an achievement. It's more like a discovery. Because it's already here. So it's not something you need to get, which would imply future. But the discovery of something that's already here. It's not something, but we have to use words. And this is about the most important thing. No matter who you are or what your function is in this world. This is about the most important thing there is. So we are here right now so that you can deepen your access to it. Or for some of you, discover for yourself what it is. Discover it directly. So here today, see if you can experience yourself as presence rather than as a person. When you experience yourself as presence, we could also say the presence within you, the presence that you are. That is the transcendence of the person. And the transcendence of the person. And the discovery of yourself as presence is here and now. When you become so alert, so awake. To discover that alertness, that wakefulness in you, that there's no thinking. There are spaces in between thinking of simple, alert presence and the opening up of those spaces. Or that one space is the transcendence of the person. Because as that space opens up, you suddenly realize there's a depth to you that you didn't know before. But you have to have enough courage to go there. Because you have to give up everything that you thought you knew. All the thoughts that you identified with. So you step into the unknown. In which one could almost say you become as nothing. And I like that English word. You don't have that in other languages. The English word nothing consists of no thing. Thing meaning form. Something that has a particular form. And you realize the presence of that which has no form. And as you experience yourself as presence in which there is no thought, just an alert consciousness. You don't know who you are anymore. And that may require some courage to go there. Some people go there without any spiritual teaching. Because they just cannot stand who they are anymore. The person and the life that that person creates for them. Can't take any more of that suffering, the unhappiness, the conflict, the agony, the negativity that they generate. I can't take anymore. That's a good point to reach, too. At that moment, you have a choice. You can commit suicide. Or preferably step into the unknown. And discover that presence that's deeper than the person. And then live in and through. Predominantly in and through that presence. So when you look at something, the presence is looking, not the person. How do you know whether the presence is looking at something or the person when you don't interpret mentally what you're looking at? That's presence. But you're very alert. Or you listen to something, but you don't interpret it. There's just the listening and the presence, without which there could be no listening. And then in little situations in your life, you discover that it's much more pleasant to be there as the presence rather than as the person. You do perhaps simple routine activities as the presence and a large space without calling things that happen good or bad anymore. Because when you call things good or bad, it's the person, the conceptual self, the mind made self that includes other people. You don't call other people good or bad anymore. Places, situations, whenever you fall into good and bad, you are again a person. You lose transcendence. Transcendence is lost, covered up, no longer realized. It's never really lost, but it seems to be completely lost. And then you're trying to get rid of what you called bad. But that doesn't really work. So as long as you call certain people bad, you will continue to meet. Even if you run away or eliminate those people, you'll meet more bad people. And what you focus on mentally grows. And situations also. So if you can encounter people, situations, places as a simple presence, without taking a position towards them, allow everything to be in this moment as it is now. That's. The ego doesn't like that. The ego is the mind made self that lives on judgment. If you relinquish judgment, the ego disappears. Of course it doesn't want to disappear. But you realize that life becomes a much more pleasant experience without that person continuously judging everything and everybody. It.
