Do You Have Mental Viruses? | Eckhart Tolle

Then you can have mental viruses of a personal nature. You have a certain various thoughts that repeat themselves again and again and then become so deeply lodged in your mind that like a parasite that gets its teeth into you and won't let go and they infect other thoughts around them. Identifying with a political movement or a religion can be also something that you add to the self image and you have self assertion. These days, as we know, there's a talk a lot of extremism, extremism, religious extremism, especially young men, they say they become radicalized and then they do totally evil and crazy things. Those are extreme forms of ego. But the mechanism behind it is the same. Or to a more extreme manifestation, the mechanism behind it is the same as normal egos which are not as extreme. What is the mechanism behind it? It's a search for a sense of identity. And many humans have identity or something huge missing. So they're looking for deep identity through strengthening their ego. They don't know it, they're seeking more self assertion. And if there's a young man living in the west, perhaps even was born in the west, parents came from maybe a Muslim country, and this man doesn't like the society he lives in, maybe he can even see the emptiness of the society, or he doesn't participate fully, he's not given his due ego. The ego seeks something to identify with. It wants to assert itself. And then it uses religion as an ideology and that becomes, you adopt certain belief system which are bundles of thoughts, and completely identify with that. It gives you your sense of self and you have an enormously strong sense. You can now be so special that the entire society you live in, except those who share your particular belief system, is regarded as evil. So you are trapped. And this is not uncommon. It's not only in that area. Entire nations are sometimes go through a wave of deep collective unconsciousness when almost every human being in that nation is infected by a mental virus that takes possession of your entire mind. It happened for example, in, well, certain countries, like National Socialism in Germany, Soviet Communism, Mao Zedong, the Cultural Revolution. It's like every human being is possessed by the same mental virus, which is thought structures that spread in your mind and take possession of almost 100% of all your mental content. Very much like a virus on a physical level. I mean, you've all experienced not being able to get a certain tune out of your head, a musical tune, which is a very minor variation of a mental virus that won't go away. And some of you may also have but of course, after a while it does go away. And that's a harmless thing. But then you can have mental viruses of a personal nature. You have a certain various thoughts that repeat themselves again and again and then become so deeply locked in your mind that like a parasite that gets its teeth into you and it won't let go and they infect other thoughts around them. And so some people go through life with preconceived ideas of what the world is like and what people are like. And these are very, very structured belief systems. And they interpret reality through the screen of their structured belief system, which may still be a normal thing. You might just have very strong political views or very strong religious views. Not religion, the spiritual dimension of religion. Religion without the spirit dimension is an ideology. So that can be still considered normal. And then you go take it a little bit further and then you can see that it's actually a form of insanity. And so it's, for example, normal to have. I have a relative who I've known since my teenage, early teenage years. And this relative was always very critical of people and very highly critical. And always, even when I was a teenager, I always thought there was always some hidden intention that he or she I want to define, was looking for. After going to, visiting somebody's house, he said this. What did he mean by that? What was his intention? He had some evil intention. And then it's always looking for people wanting something from you, wanting something to do to you, wanting to. And that was strange. And this person later developed this, grew and grew this mental virus and later had to go to a mental home with paranoid schizophrenia, which is basically an extreme mental virus that infects your mind that says that the world is full of people whose main function is to destroy you, or to follow you, or to do something to you. And you see these enemies everywhere. And it is also a way of unconscious self assertion because you are so important that all these people are after you. So you make yourself really very special. But it's an unconscious process. So many normal egoic traits, when you take them to amplify them a little, then you can actually see it's a form of mental illness. So thought can be very much seen as little entities. Thoughts are energetic entities. Every thought is an energetic entity. And some thoughts are short lived. Other thoughts get lodged in your mind and to take up their abode in your mind and you can't get rid of them and they become who you think you are. That's living through thought. And that's why what we are what the spiritual path is about is to not, one by one, take these thoughts out or figure out where they came from, but just pay attention to that which is beyond thought, first as little gaps, and then as being aware that there is a dimension of stillness in you. And that's the only place where true sanity arises. And it's the only place where then once you have that connectedness, then the mind is no longer insane. Then the mind can be a wonderful and helpful tool. And then you no longer seek yourself in the mind. You no longer have an identity that's based on a narrative in your mind or a mental image. And then you can use Facebook without becoming more unconscious through it. And you can actually present a true version of yourself on Facebook. It doesn't have to be the happy selfies necessarily anymore. Although when you are happy, that's fine. Now self, from self assertion to self transcendence, that is the way humans go. Self transcendence is the awakening of consciousness. And self transcendence is why we are here. We could, depending on how you use language, you could say we are transcending the self. This would be Buddhist terminology, transcending yourself. And the Buddha says, there is no self. Well, that's only one way of putting it. You could say that the formless is the essence of who you are, consciousness is the essence of who you are. So that is the self. But it's probably Buddha was very wise not to make it into a mental concept. His teaching mainly was through stating things in negative terms. Not negative in a conventional sense, but denying. So the Buddha never talked about God because he didn't want you to believe in a mental concept of God. He didn't say there is no God, and he didn't say there is a God. When he was asked about God, he kept noble silence. And that was the answer, of course. But not many people got it. Is there a God? So they were. And then one or two people got it. In the traditional stories, it says he got it. And at that moment, when the Buddha kept noble silence, he became enlightened. This listener and the others didn't get it. And then I imagine, and I'm sure it happened after a few minutes, another monk said, excuse me, did you hear my question? This is a very profound answer to keep noble silence. When you ask, does God exist? Which is very similar to the wonderful meditation that we're going to do now, it will only take a few minutes. It's very similar to the meditation, who am I? Because that also, when you ask yourself, who am I? Consciousness awakening. At first it's painful and then it says, what am I doing here? Not another incarnation. When you ask yourself, who am I? The important thing is to realize that you won't be able to answer that question. So anything the mind comes up with is wrong, no matter what you say. And even if you say, who am I? And even if you say, ah, I've got it, I'm consciousness. Wrong, because it's a concept. Who you are is not believing in a concept. It's just a concept. So who am I? This was recommended by Ramana, Maharshi and other spiritual sages as a profound meditation. Who am I? That question, you can ask it yourself with eyes open or eyes closed and then wait for the answer, which is not going to come as an actual answer that you could identify. It's not going to come as a thought or a word or anything you can talk about or think. The answer is the space after the question who am I?