This is a YouTube video titled "Eckhart Tolle on the Meaning of Awakening" containing a monologue by Eckhart Tolle recorded in 2025. The content is a spiritual talk focusing on the nature of pure awareness, presence, and the process of awakening consciousness both individually and collectively. Eckhart Tolle explores concepts such as the mind's activity, the state of presence beyond thought, and the evolutionary impulse toward consciousness in humanity.
Pure awareness. In your pure awareness, conceptually, of course, you don't know anything when your mind stops. For example, now if I stop speaking now and use. And you can, you're still here too. We can do it together. I stop speaking for a few seconds. And as I stop speaking, do you need to fill that space between me stopping to speak and starting to speak again? Do you need to fill that space with thought? Or are you able to simply be present in that space? In other words, are you able to just simply be? Don't suppress thought. That doesn't work. You can't hold your breath and say, I must not think. That might work, but then thinking will come up even more strongly once you start breathing again. So it's not that you can't hold down thought. It's a pure shift into a more alert state of consciousness. Alert. Alert means okay, now acting out alertness. Now I'm not just acting it out. When I look at you in this weird way, I'm not thinking. And when you look at me looking at you in this weird way, you also could experiment with that and see whether, as I stop Speaking now for 10 seconds, you can just be in that space of pure awareness where you take in sense perceptions against the background of awareness. And you might notice that in that space you don't know anything. You don't even know your name, because your name is a thought. You don't know anything in that space, and yet you are there, conscious, present, without any movement in the mind. That's presence. That was Socrates state when he said, I know that I don't know anything, because in that state you know that you don't know anything and there are no words in it. Now don't confuse that which is a state of rising above thinking, don't confuse that with falling below thinking, which can be nice too. If you are tortured on a daily and nightly basis by your mind, to fall below thinking can be a relief. But that's not why we are here. Otherwise I would be offering you all kinds of substances to help you fall below thinking. You can drink and smoke and go, ah, feels so good. Don't have to think anymore. A bit more of that and a bit more of that. Ah, so that's where eventually that takes you. That's a relief. You can experience the same relief when you get tired at night. There's a moment when you're still conscious, but when you're too tired to think about your problems, so you're not being tortured by your mind, as it turns out, usually Tortures you for most of the day. You are not tortured by your mind and the approach of sleep feels delicious. And you are not thinking, I wish I could stay here. It's the last thought that you have. And then you go off. And then you wake up in the morning and your eyes open and for a few seconds you go 10 seconds, maybe 20, and then the machinery of the mind starts creaking. What time is it? What's my first appointment today? Oh no, now I have to deal with that. Oh God. And then I have to meet that obnoxious person at 11. And there you are gone. There was a moment of presence and perhaps in that moment when you woke up, you had risen above thought. When you went to sleep, you were falling below thought. When you woke up, perhaps for 10 seconds you were on a level above thought. And that is a level where you look at the world with bright eyes and pure innocent perception. And everything is alive. You can sense the aliveness in everything. And the world is good at this moment and you have no problems. And then that's present moment awareness is present moment awareness. It's always implied when we use the term awareness. Present moment is implied because you can only be aware in the present moment. Awareness is presence. And then you lose the present moment, you lose awareness because your consciousness is being absorbed by thinking. It sucks up all your consciousness like some parasitical parasite, psychic parasite living inside you that tucks up or I need more, I need to think more. And then you have this monstrous thing in your head and you think it's you. And it talks all the time, not necessarily out aloud, it talks in here. And you can have discussions in here too. And you identified with it. The unconscious state, lack of awareness, complete absence. You are not there. So the revolutionary incredible thing that is the essence of the new consciousness that arises a new evolutionary stage for humanity, which either is, well, is already. We are on the way towards it. Even if just to come back to what I said earlier, I might have lost the thread. Even if we have to go through another episode of intense self created suffering on a huge scale, which is not impossible. Even if humanity has to go through that, the awakening consciousness is not lost. It will. Then when humanity regenerates, it will quickly arise again, the same consciousness that's arising in you now and bring about the collective awakening which are we going to experience? Another dark age? Maybe. But what's a thousand years? Not much. Even 2,000 years, not that much. So I'm very optimistic. Consciousness will prevail because conscience is the purpose of the universe. The universe is. There's an impulse, an evolutionary impulse towards consciousness in the universe. So all is well. And now it's up to you. Now we come to the really what really matters to change the world we've already seen it cannot be done unless there is that shift in consciousness in the individual human. And that begins with you. And it takes place every moment of your life. And you use every opportunity and whatever arises in your life as part of that. And sometimes you forget, that's fine. Sometimes you get taken over again by the mind completely. The ego arises again, that's fine. And then you wake up again. So for many of you, it's you, you wake up and you fall to sleep periodically. It's the new you're present and then the old you're absent and then you wake up again. And that's fine. That's part of the. For most people, that is part of the awakening process. And gradually the periods of time when you're awake, present lengthens, you're awake for longer than before and the ability of challenges and other unconscious humans to pull you into unconsciousness decreases. Revolutionary stage for humanity, which either is, well, is already we are on the way towards it. Even if just to come back to what I said earlier, I might have lost the thread. Even if we have to go through another episode of intense self created suffering on a huge scale, which is not impossible, even if humanity has to go through that, the awakening consciousness is not lost. It will then when humanity regenerates, it will quickly arise again, the same consciousness that's arising in you now and bring about the collective awakening which are we going to experience? Another dark age? Maybe. But what's a thousand years? Not much. Even 2000 years? Not that much. So I'm very optimistic.
