Eckhart Tolle on the Next Stage of Evolution

So thinking happens to them, and then the next evolutionary step for humanity is the transcendence of thinking. It's an incredible shift in consciousness that will of course manifest when a sufficient number of humans have gone through this incredible shift in consciousness. The world that they create, of course, will look very different from the world that is created by humans who are completely identified with thinking. In other words, the world that is created by the egoic mind in its personal and collective aspect. Needless to say, the collective aspect of the egoic mind is even more insane than the personal aspect of the collective mind. So that's the world we create. Can't help it. Sometimes good intentions arise, and that's fine in humans who are still obsessed with their thought, possessed by their thought, egoically dominated. But they start, they can see, oh, we want to do something good. But they haven't overlooked the basic dysfunction in the human psyche, which is involuntary and compulsive and conditioned thinking. There's been no transcendence of thought. And then if you say, I want to change the world, you can see what's wrong with the world, but you cannot see the deep causes of why these things that are wrong with the world. You see the surface manifestations of what's wrong with the world and want to change things on the surface surface manifestations. For example, in early 20th century and late 19th century, there was the arising of people became very much aware of the terrible injustices. And of course, there was the arriving of industrial revolution started in England, and there was terrible. The lower working classes were in terrible condition. And so they can see, yes, there's something wrong here. And so certain theories arose that looked very good on the surface. We need to have a fairer society. These people are being exploited, and those are the ones who exploit communism. The ideas started growing. It sounds wonderful on the surface. We have, we're going to change the world. But there's a very wise proverb, of course, that you're all familiar with, about the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And then finally, when the theory was put into practice, Russia, China, it didn't turn out so well. The intentions were good initially, I suppose, to a large extent, perhaps not 100% good, but they were good. And yet they created hell for millions. They created also again, huge inequality between the people on top and all the others. And millions of people died because in order to bring about a better world, according to your theory, you had to kill a few million first. So if you overlook that there's a fundamental dysfunction in the human psyche Whatever plan you have to implement changes. I'm not saying don't do anything until you're totally enlightened. You're already relatively conscious so you can participate, take conscious action. That's fine. Always knowing that the fundamental change is in human consciousness and you need to embody that change while you take action. The transcendence of thinking means the transcendence of the egoic mind. It means that you are able to spend part of your time relatively free of compulsive thinking, certainly free of self serving thinking and destructive thinking that continuously creates unhappiness for yourself and the people around you. How many people live the compulsive narrative in your mind that for many people is very negative, constantly critical, constantly complaining, never at ease with what is. There's always something wrong. Fault finding. Because the ego grows through constant opposition, constant antagonism. Never at ease, always looking for the next thing to complain about. And it strengthens the egoic self the more you complain. Oh, offended is a new version these days. It's very popular on the Internet. I'm very, very offended. Outrageous. How dare you. There are thousands or hundreds of thousands that you go on every day. They look on their screen waiting for the next scene to be offended by. And the ego loves it. And for many of them it's the only way they can inflate their ego by sitting on the screen and sending out tweets. The transcendent of thinking is not any kind of regressive movement. We are not regressing to the state of somebody who is. Whose mind is relatively undeveloped and who does not have a problem with egoic thinking because there's very little going on in their minds. What used to be called, before it became politically incorrect, idiot or fool. The fool was. There were always, you could see happy fools. They there's not enough thinking to make them unhappy, so they are below egoic thinking. In medieval times, every village had at least one village idiot or fool. And norm was accepted, essential part of the community. And even the royal courts had a fool very important figure. Although that figure probably was just pretending to be a fool. And that was one of the most, sometimes very influential position in the royal court. But also one of the most dangerous jobs you could have because you could lose your head at any moment. But only the fool was able to tell the king or queen what was wrong by making it into a funny story. But the fool is more deeply connected, as we know from mythology. The fool is more deeply connected with the source. Still hasn't gone as far out As a normally developed human, he's more simple. He, the fool, for example, relatively speaking, is a simpleton. It's like the hobbit in Lord of the Rings. The hobbit is a simple guy, doesn't think in complex terms, loves the simple things of life, loves eating and enjoyment. But why the fool has to go on this important mission that nobody else can carry out. That's a mythological motive. That's often the case because the fool has a connectedness still with source that the more developed humans don't have. Similar motive. In Forrest Gump the movie the fool does great things. This guy Forrest Gump. But he's. Because he's. And life always supports him. If you watch that movie again, he always. He. He saves people in the war, he does heroic things. But he doesn't claim credit because he doesn't have much of an ego yet. And all his life gives him the next thing and the next thing supports him. But we don't want to go there. When I say cessation of thinking, I'm not talking about regressing to the stage. It is the pre thinking stage of humanity. I'm thinking about rising above, pointing to the possibility of rising above thinking. So you stop thinking, which is normally associated with diminishment of consciousness. And transcendence of thinking is an intensification of consciousness turning up the light. This is why the term attention and alertness. Those terms are extremely important. They're also used in Zen very frequently. The Zen teachings could be described. If you wanted to summarize Zen, you can just say simple things like pay attention. There was one Zen teacher who would. Whenever they asked him a question to explain Zen, he became quite famous. He would always raise his finger. Please explain Zen to us. What is Zen? I haven't quite understood yet. He was calling people to attention. Now.