Eckhart TolleNYT Bestselling author of the Power of Now

Freeing Yourself From the Torture of the Mind | Eckhart Tolle

4 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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In this teaching, Eckhart Tolle explains that most people suffer from a hidden mental torture caused by involuntary, unconscious thinking. This automatic mental activity creates a chronic sense of unhappiness, discontent, irritation, resentment, and anger. Because the level of consciousness drops below the level of thinking, many people seek temporary relief through alcohol or other drugs, which briefly lower the sense of self. However, they remain unaware that the root cause of their suffering is this unconscious thinking, and that true freedom comes from recognizing and transcending it.

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Many humans, they don't realize they are tortured by their own minds. They have an unhappy identity they feel most of the time, if not unhappy. They feel discontent, unease, irritated, resentful, angry. There's always something. It's always when thinking diminishes, you begin to feel a little better. But in most cases, humans are moving below thinking. Their level of consciousness becomes lower than thinking. Alcohol can do it. Too many humans drink alcohol or other drugs to experience these moments of becoming free of themselves, free of the self. This is unhappy person, this entity. But they don't realize that the unhappiness is created and sustained mostly by involuntary and unconscious thinking.