In this spoken discourse, Eckhart Tolle explores the paradoxical nature of God as both immanent and transcendent. He explains that immanence means God indwells each individual, while transcendence denotes a reality beyond space, time, and form. Tolle draws on Jesus’ statement, “I am not doing anything; the Father in me does the works,” to illustrate the non‑dual teaching that there is no true doer— the self is an illusion. He links this perspective to Advaita Vedanta and to the Taoist insight that the Tao (or ultimate source) cannot be fully captured in words. Tolle emphasizes that God, as an unknowable source prior to existence, does not manifest as a form, yet emanates consciousness into the world. He uses the sun‑light analogy: just as the sun’s light is an emanation that remains inseparable from the sun, consciousness emanates from the transcendent source while remaining connected to it. Throughout, he stresses that language offers only approximations of this reality, urging listeners to recognize the underlying unity of all life as consciousness arising from the same source.
Chapters
God is immanent and transcendent at the same time. Immanent means indwelling within you as you ultimately, but transcendent means not of this world. So how does that go together? It's The teacher and the taught together produce the teaching. That's a wonderful saying. Jesus said something lovely in that context. He said, "I'm not doing anything, it's the Father in me who does the works." So this is all very much reminiscent of the Advaita non-duality teachings that are very popular these days in the West. Mm-hmm. In which state there is no doer. If you think you are doing it, no, that's an illusion, it's the illusory self. So Jesus said, "I'm not doing it, the Father, it's the Father in me that does the works." The Father, of course, means, he used that term, the greater consciousness, the one universal consciousness or intelligence that pervades the universe, that emanates from the one transcendent source of all life, which we could give a name to it, but we don't have to, because it's completely unknowable, and it doesn't exist. God, by the way, I'm talking about God. God does not exist. In space, in this dimension, in space or time. You can't, otherwise you have to— Maybe in some galaxy God resides.
No.
God is transcendent. There's a lovely saying from ancient Christianity,— that states that God is immanent and transcendent at the same time. Immanent means indwelling within you, as you ultimately, but transcendent means not of this world. So how does that go together?
It's—
As I see it, and I've mentioned it before many times, as I see it, is God, that transcendent unknowable source of all life that does not exist because it is prior to existence. To exist means to stand out, to be manifested as a form. So, God does not manifest as a form. God transcends all that. God has nothing to do with time and space, so it's transcendent and unknowable. The Tao, in Chinese spiritual philosophy, the Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao. That's the beginning of the wonderful book, the Tao Te Ching. I mentioned it the other day. The Tao The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao, and yet he does speak of it, because that's only the beginning of the book. So he attempts to use words as a pointer towards that. Now, if God is transcendent, how can God also be immanent, which means indwelling, within you? as the essence of you. Well, the way I see that is God is transcendent, and from that transcendent dimension, God emanates into this dimension, so to speak. These words are not the absolute truth, they are a distant approximation. No words can do more than that. The transcendent source emanates into this world the essence of all life, which is consciousness, which appears in many different vibrational frequencies, from physical matter to organic matter to mind and spirit. It's all— everything is consciousness having taken a form, so God emanates into this, like, in the same way, the very good analogy is the sun. Not surprisingly, many ancient cultures regarded the sun as divine or God. So in this analogy, in the same way that the sun, which is virtually eternal, not absolutely eternal, but relative to us, the sun could be considered almost eternal because it lives for billions of years,— or millions of years— the sun emanates light into this world. So the light is an emanation of the sun, it's still connected to the sun in itself. You can't say the light is— you can say the light is the sun, it's a question of how you look at it. So the consciousness that is the essence of you emanates from God, the source. It's the same way that the light emanates from the sun.
