This is a YouTube video titled "Going Within To Find The Answers, with Eckhart Tolle" containing a spiritual talk or lecture delivered by Eckhart Tolle. The content explores deep philosophical and spiritual concepts such as the nature of God, non-conceptual knowledge (gnosis), self-awareness, and the distinction between the surface self and the deeper self. The talk encourages introspection and understanding of the deeper aspects of being beyond personality and past experiences.
There's a word or topic that I have mostly tried to avoid in previous years. A word, let's say there's a word that I haven't used much and actually for many years tried to avoid. It's a three letter word, God. But it may be helpful to address that, not falling into the belief that you could possibly understand what that word means or what it points to. Because a conceptual understanding of God would be impossible, absurd to even try. And yet you can approach it a little bit, you can perhaps use analogies. It's a bit like that, A bit like that. There can be a deeper knowing, not comprehending, but a deeper attunement to that which the word points to that is possible, a deeper knowing. But it's non conceptual. There's an ancient word, gnosis, G N O S I S that was used in 2000 years ago, very early Christian sects, they're called the Gnostics who were interested in. Gnosis is a Greek word and it means knowledge, but it is not conceptual knowledge. So perhaps a better translation of gnosis would be knowing, a non conceptual way of knowing. And gnosis used in a spiritual sense then refers to the deeper realization of the reality. Not just the reality of life itself, but the deeper reality of who or what you are. That is the deep knowing that is non conceptual. That was is referred to in the ancient. And again here we go back to ancient Greece, the famous dictum of ancient Greek philosophy that is inscribed at the Oracle at Delphi. The famous Oracle ancient building, the inscription on it, the sacred place was one of the most important dictums of Greek philosophy, which in ancient Greek is knotti SEO ton. I apologize for my deficient ancient Greek. I haven't spoken ancient Greek in 2500 years. Gnoti Seoton gnoti G N O T H I so that's the word from gnosis and that word are related same. It's the knowing Gnosis. Theodon means know thyself. That is the primary dictum, if you wanted to summarize the deepest statements of Greek philosophy is the dictum know thyself. And that was inscribed the temple, the Oracle at Delphi. And again also misunderstood to a large extent misunderstood. It does not point to knowing your the makeup of your personality, although there's nothing wrong with that because that is the realm of psychoanalysis and psycho investigating all the makeup, the hidden facets of your personality and so on. It's interesting, it's fine, there may be a place for that, but that's not what know Thyself refers to know thyself refers to a deeper knowing, not the surface self that I just mentioned. The surface self that is the all the thinking and the emotional field. There is a deeper self. I call it the deep I as opposed to the surface I. The surface I is the personality, the person. The person has a history, the person has a past. The kind of person that you are is determined by your history, your personal history. Whether you just look at your personal since birth in this lifetime, or if you like, you can include in your personal history all your incarnations. If you believe in incarnation. I don't want to convince anybody of anything. You are free to believe that you did not start when this physical form came into this dimension. But no matter what you believe, the fact remains that who or what you are as a person is determined by the past, by what happened to you in the past or what you did in the past. So it's a conditioned entity conditioned by the past. So you are a historical person and everybody is a different person because you have had different things happening to you and you did different things in this lifetime and perhaps many other lifetimes before. And so all that constitutes the person. And knowing thyself does not refer to, although some people believe that it does, does not refer to knowing all your past lifetimes either. That certainly would be interesting. I mean you could, let's say maybe you've had 100 lifetimes, 200, who knows, 500, 1000. Well, if you go far enough back, you started as a mineral and then you became a fish. And then you try to crawl on land. Well, that was terrible trauma. Are you still carrying that trauma in your energy field? That was horrible. It was such hard work. It's not fair that I had to do that. And then gradually you started to live on. Or maybe before you were a fish. No, you had plant, simple plant life, ferns. So for a few million years you were a fern and so on. And then you became a human. And that was what really got difficult. Now if you start, if you think knowing yourself means trying to explore perhaps by through hypnosis or other ways of regression, then of course that will keep you busy for a long long time exploring past lifetimes. And you could easily lose yourself in that. It's like reading a. It's like reading a novella from soap opera or the quite soap operas. I don't know if they still exist. They're still popular in Latin America. You have the typical soap operas where you have certain characters, set characters, the evil rich woman and the good Poor maid and the good looking son. And then he's seduced by this. And that is basically always the same. So it doesn't. Knowing that yourself does not refer to the surface I. Because even your past incarnation would be part of the surface. I know thyself means know thyself deeply know who you are or what you are in the depths of your being. So there's a deeper knowing that can you refer to yourself. That's the most important knowing. And the only way you can know God in a non conceptual way is going deep enough within. You cannot know God by exploring the out there. Traditionally, people have always looked up when they talked of God. Oh God, he must be there. But then we began to realize that there is no up. It's a limited way of perceiving things because you're on this planet, you're held down by gravity and then what's up to you? Up is there. But the person in Australia says no, up is there, there's up. And the moment you go into outer space, up and down disappear completely. There is no up and down anymore. And so a Russian astronaut, one of the first who went into outer space, returned. And of course at that time the Soviet Union was an atheist state. The official position of the state was there is no God, the party is God. Well, they didn't say that, but that was the implication. So he returned from outer space and said, I didn't find any God there. And that was proof. That was then printed in Pravda, the newspaper that Pravda means truth and there is no God. He didn't see any God out up there. Sa.
