How to Find Passages into Stillness | Eckhart Tolle Reads "Krishnamurti's Notebook"

So reading this is an invitation really, to join him in that state of consciousness, of that alert stillness or presence. And not only as you read or listen, when I read it to you, it may also help you to, as you go about your life, to pay more attention to the seemingly insignificant little things. You may find this yourself when you, as you become present and you walk around, there's an acknowledgement of that extraordinariness of life, even in its seemingly most insignificant manifestations. In fact, you become more interested in those things than in the big things. Often Krishnamurti would wake up in the night, early hours of the morning or night, like 4 o' clock, 4:30, and suddenly he would go into intense presence and he would perceive whatever was there to be perceived in the intense alertness. And he could be here for an hour without any thought, just totally still. Here's a description of what happens when he's woken up by the cry of a bird in the middle of the night. It was long before dawn when the sharp cry of a bird woke up the night for an instant. And the light of that cry faded away. The light of that cry. Oh, by the way, he never uses the word I once in the whole notebook. He sometimes says one instead of I, one felt hot. Or sometimes he says you. You felt hot, when he means I. It was long before dawn when the sharp cry of a bird woke up the night for an instant, and the light of that cry faded away. And the trees remained dark, motionless, melting into the air. It was a soft, quiet night, endlessly alive. It was awake. There was movement. There was a deep stirring with utter silence. Even the village next door, with its many dogs always barking, was quiet. It was a strange stillness, terribly potent, terrible, destructively alive. It was so alive and still that you were afraid to move. So your body froze into immobility, and the brain which had awakened with that sharp cry of the bird had become still with heightened sensitivity. It was a brilliant night with the stars in a cloudless sky. They seemed so close. And the Southern Cross was just over the trees, sparkling in the warm air. That was obviously in India somewhere. So reading this is an invitation really, to join him in that state of consciousness, of that alert stillness or presence. And not only as you read or listen, when I read it to you, it may also help you to, as you go about your life, to pay more attention to the seemingly insignificant, the little things, the miracle that's hiding in everything. A brief description here of the inner state that is the prerequisite for perceiving things in that always fresh, new way. What was necessary was a very sensitive, alert brain. He calls it brain. He could say mind, you could say consciousness. What was necessary was a very sensitive, alert brain which had stopped entirely, willingly and easily. Its chatter, it had become very quiet. The brain, the mind, it had become very quiet. Seeing and listening without interpreting, without classifying. It was quiet. And there was no entity or necessity to make it quiet. The brain was very still and very alive. That immensity filled the night, and there was bliss. And sometimes he perceived not. It only describes his state of consciousness. It is as if his state of consciousness, he also experienced it as being outside. And then he uses the term when he suddenly says the room suddenly was filled with. Or the entire landscape suddenly became filled with. And he sometimes calls it the immensity, or he calls it the otherness, or he calls it the sacred. This brief description here is probably in Switzerland in the morning, walking in the woods above the stream, with the sun on every tree. Again, it was there, that immensity so unexpected, so still, that one walked through it, marveling. A single leaf was dancing rhythmically, and the rest of the abundant leaves were still. It was there, that love that's not within the scope of man's longing and measure. It was there, and thought could blow it away and a feeling could push it away. It was there never to be conquered, never to be caught. And then he has second thoughts. He talks about the word to feel. The word to feel is misleading. It's more than emotion. It's more than a sentiment, than an experience, than touch or smell. Though that word is apt to be misleading. It must be used to communicate, and especially so when we are talking of essence. So he is struggling to find the right words to communicate that experience. And the word comes to him to feel and then says, well, it's not quite right, but we have to use it. And so. And now here, in this. Suddenly, the word essence comes to him, which he doesn't pick up again. It's here a couple of times, and then never uses it again. But I love that, and I use that myself. Occasionally he talks of the feel of essence is not through the brain, nor through some fancy. It's not experienceable as a shock. Above all, it's not the word. You cannot experience it. To experience, there must be an experiencer. The observer experiencing without the experiencer is quite another matter. It is in this state in which there is no experiencer, no observer, that there is that feeling. Quotation marks. It is not intuition which the observer interprets or follows blindly or with reason. It is not the desire, longing transformed into intuition or the voice of God evoked by politicians and religious social reformers. To feel demands the austerity of clarity in which there is no confusion and conflict. The feeling of essence is the negation of thought.