Journey of Self-Knowledge: Beyond the Ego | Eckhart Tolle

The hardest knowledge, obviously is self knowledge. That's why the ancient Greeks like Plato, Socrates, Socrates, the main one, said, his main dictum is know thyself. No, that's the most important thing in life. Socrates said, by the way, he lived about the same time as the Buddha. He said, the most important thing is know thyself. And that was inscribed at the temple of Delphi in ancient Greece. Know thyself. Another strange inscription. And that takes us now to where we are going on. The same temple inscribed was another was saying that for a long time people couldn't interpret. They thought something was missing. The other words on the temple was. So on the other side of the temple, you are in Greek, you are. And so the archaeologists looked into there's something missing here, you are. And they tried, is there another word that you are? But there was no other word, you are, know thyself, you are. Then at some point, somebody understood what it probably meant. It was pointing to a deeper dimension of who you are. But the real knowing yourself is not just knowing the personality. That's only one level. It's not the deepest level of knowing yourself. It's important too, to know all the stuff that runs you, that operates in you as a conditioning of your mind, this kind of thing. People go to a psychoanalyst for they want to know thyself. What the psychoanalyst or psychiatrist, no, psychiatrist, I don't know, psychoanalyst can do for you is. Can show you all kinds of things from your past. And if you go to a psychoanalyst, you can go for many years. Some people go for 20 years, 20, 30 years to a psychoanalyst once or twice a week, okay. And the story goes on and on and discover more and more intricate things about your childhood. And then what happened and how did you feel about them. And then what did your mother say when you. And then up to a point it's helpful, but then it goes on and on and you get trapped in that level and it becomes more and more complex. One level of knowing yourself is knowing how your ego operates, being able to witness it. For example, as I mentioned in an argument, you become emotional and you witness it. Oh, so another faculty is there behind the conditioned mind that can observe what you're doing and say, oh, you're becoming very angry about nothing. So you maybe are shouting, but in the back there's something. It's an awareness. You're shouting about nothing. You're witnessing what the ego is doing. This means that the beginning of the end of the ego, the witnessing Faculty is the awareness you are. So if you translate it into you, you'd have to say I am. Okay, I am. And what am I? So let's investigate now this level of deeper identity. I call it the deep I as opposed to the surface I. The a deep eye to find that which is underneath the person. And in order to find that the stream of thinking that sustains that personal sense of self needs momentarily come to a cessation. And that's why I started this evening with observing your breath. Because that can bring about a brief sensation in the stream of thinking. And in that moment, awareness remains, consciousness remains, but it doesn't become thought. And this is a very strange thing to realize from the egoic point of view. So what says the ego? It doesn't realize that. That is of extraordinary importance. To find that, to discover that dimension that is deeper than the egoic self, that is a dimension of consciousness prior to before it becomes thought. So the most vital realization for you is to realize that there are spaces in your mind that you just need to discover really ultimately only one space. You discover that there is a space in you where you can be conscious without needing to think. But you're very alert. You're completely here. Another word for it. Some words can be helpful as pointers. Another word for it is stillness. You discover a dimension of stillness within you. Stillness means consciousness without the movement of thought. Wow. And you can still perceive everything. In fact, you perceive it more acutely, more deeply when you are not labeling mentally thought when you are not labeling mentally what you're perceiving. You can look around, flower room, sky, everything is there. You know what you're looking at without calling it anything, without concept. And you haven't gone to sleep because normally humans becoming free of thinking. The only way they can do that when they haven't awakened, they have to go to sleep or they have to take some kind of drug that slows down your mind. There may be a place for structure. Certain cases, the sacral sacred surroundings don't need to go there, which takes too long, but the. The discovery that that stillness which is unconditioned consciousness, which is deeper than the person, is always there, but it's covered up by the noise of the mind. And you are completely identified with the surface movement. So you can't find the deeper self where there is enormous peace and a deep sense of aliveness that could. That gives you everything that you had been looking for as a surface egoic entity in this realm, of this physical realm, or this even psychological realm. You were looking for that, never finding this ultimate sense of being home, having arrived, you feeling at home in the universe rather than being alienated. Alienation is a very common mental illness for millions of humans, especially modern day humans. So the most important discovery for you is discover there's something deeper in you than the you, the person. They are not separate in the same way that the ripple on the surface of the ocean is not separate from the ocean. The ripple is a surface phenomenon. It's something that the ocean does and you are something that consciousness universal, the one universal consciousness that pervades the entire universe, that is transcendent to this universe. It is something that consciousness does. It creates the image of a person like the ocean, produces a ripple or a wave on the surface and there goes a little ripple. And it has a name. Whatever name you have for the you as the rebel, that's me. And the rebel is uneasy because it's surrounded by many, many other rebels. And you never know what they want. Some rebels may be dangerous. They don't want. You may defend yourself and others. You think, oh, if I incorporate this rebel into myself, I become a bigger ripple. I need you. In other words, you fall in love. I'm not talking about real love. I'm talking about falling in love, which is come, I need you. Don't you dare leave me though. So. So the ripple would lead to a very uneasy existence because it doesn't know that it is part of the ocean. You know by now that I'm talking about you as the human. Every, every human is a ripple on the surface of being. The vastness of being, of consciousness. Sa Sam.