Eckhart Tolle argues that personal awakening is the most powerful way to change the world. When you become conscious of your true nature, you stop creating suffering for yourself and others. He warns against being pulled into reactive news cycles and urges people to act from presence instead.
If a brick falls on my head now, I will stop speaking. And yet the consciousness that produced these words is not really affected by it. Just this brain can no longer work as a receiver of consciousness, and so it stops speaking. What really matters is that you awaken, and the world changes when enough humans awaken to who they are. Then the world inevitably is going to change because you no longer create misery for yourself and others. You no longer create suffering for yourself and others, and you will be able to grow and continue to grow through the never-ending challenges that will continue to come. So be careful when you listen to the news or read on the inter— wherever you take news to, so that you have a sense of— while you listen, don't get drawn into the unconsciousness of it all. When you interact on the internet, be careful also with what you put out there. Put out— make sure that what you put out is conscious. Make a conscious contribution so that if you make statements there, make sure they come out of presence rather than the reactive mind. Big challenges are approaching for humanity. And, well, whether they're going to be bigger than the first half of the 20th century, which was— the first half of the 20th century was absolute insanity. Hundreds of millions killed, genocides, world wars, unbelievable insanity on a collective, massive collective scale. So do we have to go through that again? Who knows? But don't underestimate how important you are within the totality, how important your state of consciousness is with reference to the totality. It is extraordinarily important. There was a time in the 19th century when humans were beginning to realize— well, already in the 18th century, they're beginning to realize how small we are in relation to the universe, that we are only— there's a tiny speck which is our planet, and then there are billions and billions of not just billions of other suns, but there are billions of other galaxies, and every galaxy is a huge world to itself. A galaxy is, again, it is billions of suns, inconceivable vastness, and then humans said, "We are so insignificant. Our life means absolutely nothing. We are so insignificant, and all is just chance." the entire evolution, everything is totally meaningless, chance. And that's an interesting, interesting belief, thoughts in your head. And what they fail to realize is that yes, on a physical level, we are very small, but every human represents a spark of the one universal consciousness, without which there wouldn't even be a universe. For even to be a universe, there must be a perceiving consciousness. For the— this room, there wouldn't even be a room if we were not here to perceive it. What, what is this table, the flower, this atoms and molecules floating around vast space? 99.999% empty space and a few atoms and molecules floating around empty space. It's not a room yet. But then we come, or you come, and suddenly you interpret the atoms and molecules. So it's a creative— the perception of the universe is a creative act, and it's the one consciousness acting through you and then experiencing itself as a world. Amazing thing. So you are, as consciousness, you are of infinite importance. You are an expression of the one universal consciousness that underlies the sense-perceived universe. Now, obviously, the mainstream science, will still— well, not that they know very much about the mind yet. Don't let them tell you that they know a lot about the mind. We don't know what a thought is. Nobody knows what a thought is. What is the relationship between the material brain? The big question: what is the relationship between the physical brain and consciousness? Mainstream science will tell you probably that Consciousness— who doesn't even like to use that word, but if it did, it would say it's a byproduct of brain chemistry, whatever that means. A byproduct of brain chemistry. Oh, I don't know what that means. Or you can go deeper and say, well, it's the atoms and molecules in your brain that make up your brain, and they produce consciousness. Hmm. That's the belief in mainstream science, with a few exceptions. Some scientists are beginning to doubt that, that consciousness is a byproduct of matter. We don't even know what thought is. What is a thought? Does a thought have material existence? Nobody knows. Does a thought exist as an atom or molecule in the mind? Nobody knows. I can ask you, do you remember when you were 10 years old, do you remember the living room of the place where you lived, your house or your apartment? Do you remember? Can you mentally go to the living room that when you were 10 years old and explore the room in your mind, and most people can, and I can, although it was a long time ago. I can go there. Where was that living room before I suddenly asked the question? Did that living room exist in my mind as a collection of certain living room atoms or molecules that were just waiting to be rediscovered? And I'm just, this is just one memory. Where did this living room, where does it, where did it survive all these years in my mind? And this, I'm just going, this is just one example of millions of memories that you still have. Do they exist? Do they have a physical existence somewhere? Or is something that is in the, go far beyond anything physical? Is the brain perhaps no more than a transducer, receiver of consciousness, like a radio receives? And so the music comes out of the radio, but the radio does not produce the music, and yet the radio is necessary for you to hear the music. But when you destroy the radio, you haven't destroyed the music, you've just destroyed this particular manifestation of it in the same way that if a brick falls on my head now, I will stop speaking. And yet the consciousness that produced these words is not really affected by it. Just this brain can no longer work as a receiver of consciousness, and so it stops speaking.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
