Eckhart TolleNYT Bestselling author of the Power of Now

Eckhart Tolle: The Second Awakening

22 Aug 2026 · 2 min

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1:31

In this solo teaching, Eckhart Tolle explains why spiritual traditions use the term “awakening” by drawing a parallel to the everyday experience of waking from sleep. He describes the clear shift in consciousness that occurs when the eyes open and the dream state ends, noting that everyone can relate to this transition. Tolle then introduces the concept of a “second awakening,” a deeper shift that moves a person out of the unconscious state of ordinary wakefulness—characterized by identification with thoughts and emotions—into a spiritual awakening. He emphasizes that this second awakening is a potential inherent in every human being, representing liberation from the mental‑emotional “dream” that most people live in.

Chapters

So the term awakening is used in many traditions. Why? Normally people would say, I'm awake already, what are you talking about? But we use the term awakening because everybody can relate to that in their own experience. Because in normal life, in the morning when you wake up, there's a fundamental, fundamental difference happens between the sleep state And the awakened state, everybody experiences that every morning. And you open your eyes, and maybe you've just been dreaming, and suddenly your eyes open, and there's a huge big shift in consciousness from being in the dream state. And so everybody knows they can relate to the term awakening. That's why this term is used in spiritual traditions. It can be quite helpful. One could say. There is a second awakening as a potential in every human being, and it is not the awakening from sleep into normal wakefulness, because normal wakefulness is the unconscious state. And so there is a potential in every human being for what we could call that a second awakening. And that is the awakening out of the dream of identification with thought plus emotions. And that is spiritual awakening.