In this monologue Eckhart Tolle explains that the person we identify with—the egoic, body‑based ‘I’—is only a surface layer of an invisible, multidimensional consciousness. He argues that the psychological self (thoughts, memories, personality) does not reside in the physical brain; a surgeon looking at the brain would find only neurons, not the ‘person.’ Consciousness, according to Tolle, is not a by‑product of brain chemistry but a dimension that uses the body as a conduit. He distinguishes the “surface I” (body + personality) from a deeper, invisible self that is connected to what many call God. This deeper self is what he calls true awakening. Most humans remain in an “unconscious” spiritual state—meaning they are fully identified with the surface I, driven by conditioning, opinions, and reactivity. This unconsciousness creates personal suffering (dukkha) and, by extension, causes suffering in others. Tolle uses analogies (radio‑music, cloud‑storage) to illustrate the non‑physical nature of consciousness and urges listeners to recognize their invisible essence as the first step toward awakening.
Chapters
You, in essence, except for the physical body, you, the person of you, already exists in the invisible realm with a relationship with the physical, yes, but that's not the essence of who or what you are. So, and that's, you are essentially invisible. So there is on the one hand what I call— one could say there are two 'I's, not these eyes, the 'I.' There's a surface 'I,' which is the ego. The surface 'I' is the body and the mental image of 'I,' and the body becomes part of that because it's a body image. So you have a psychological entity, the person. Body image is part of that. There is a psychological entity, the person or the personality, with its particular form of conditioning according to the surroundings, the past, and perhaps even past lifetimes if you want to go there, but we don't need to go into that. So there is that, there's an image, psychological image. Now, before we go deeper, important fact to realize is, and it's so obvious, but most humans don't realize that the physical body, that is the part that you can touch and has a physical presence, the psychological you, Actually, yes, it has an association with the functioning of your brain and the neurons of your brain and so on, but it is not just that. Your psychological self is in essence invisible. Now, is that true? You, the psychological entity, the person, yes, as a body you are visible, But the person, where is the person? Can you find the person in the physical realm? Let's say you become unconscious or something happens, or due to some weird reason in a hospital, a surgeon— let's hope this is a weird example, but let's just use it— surgeon opens up your skull looking for you. Let's say you can't speak, you're not conscious, but the surgeon is looking. Where is— you have a name, you have a story, you have a whole life story, and then the surgeon looks for you in the brain. Is the surgeon going to find you? No, he finds neurons, all kinds of things that are undoubtedly associated to some extent with you as a person, in the same way perhaps that a radio that plays music, there is an association between the music and the radio that plays the music, but can you find the music in the radio? No, there is an association that is necessary for the music to play, but if something happens to the radio and let's say something goes wrong with the radio, It just means the music can no longer be transmitted. The radio is no longer a conduit into this dimension for the music. And I may suggest it the same way, just you might consider the possibility, a few scientists already going there, but not many yet, that there is more to consciousness than just the physical realm. Consciousness is not just a, a byproduct of the chemistry of the brain, or if you go deeper, the molecular structure and the atomic structure of the brain. There's a relationship, yes, but does your brain produce consciousness, or is your brain here in order to facilitate consciousness coming into this dimension? Let's go back to something very practical. You as a person are essentially invisible. You do not exist as a person in the physical realm because the surgeon will not find you when he opens up your skull. You find certain things there, or if you have— if there's a mental illness, you might find something, but you are not there. All your memories, where do they live? Do you think a surgeon would find the memory of your grandmother when you were 5 years old? You were sitting with your grandmother and your grandmother can suddenly come back into your mind. I'm only giving one example of hundreds of thousands or millions that you could come up with. The surgeon would never be able to find your grandmother in your brain because it's not— your grandmother does not exist in the physical realm. And this is very interesting to realize that you, in essence, except for the physical body, you, the person of you, already exists in the invisible realm with a relationship with the physical, yes, but that's not the essence of who or what you are. So, and that's, you are essentially invisible, and that's still talking about the person, which is still— these are still the surface layers of who you really are in the depths of your being, where you're connected with something vast that is traditionally called God. I don't know if we'll go there. I have to be careful with using these words because of misunderstandings. So, but that's a very interesting realization that I am in essence invisible, and all my memories, where do they live? All the things in my mind, what do they— where are they? The computers, when you store computer stuff, you say it's in the cloud. I don't know whether it's not— it's not— I don't think there is an actual cloud. It's somewhere, but it's not in the computer. You can download it into the computer, but if the computer breaks, it's still there somewhere in the cloud. Maybe that's not the best analogy, but it's a— so, but all this, the person, even though the person already exists in the— by the way, that means you as a person is already this invisible realm is actually already another dimension that is not part of this physical dimension. So you as a person, you already inhabit something that is not part of this physical dimension, but it comes into this dimension. So when you speak, it becomes words, sounds in this dimension. But they originate from the consciousness that comes, is invisible. So you are a multi-dimensional being, even as a personality, which is still a relatively superficial part of who you are. You're already invisible, and that's, that's amazing. So this entity that is the physical body and the psychological entity, I call that the The surface 'I'— 'I' meaning 'I', 'you', 'he', pronoun 'I'— the surface 'I' is the body and the personality. They come together to form a unity. That is your surface 'I'. And that is when that is all you know of yourself, that is the egoic state. And that is the state, spiritually speaking, it is the state of unconsciousness. Unconscious has a different meaning when we use it talking about the spiritual dimension. We all know what the conventional meaning of unconscious obviously means. That's— so when I say to a human, when we, with reference to a human being, and we say, he or she is very unconscious. It doesn't mean that they are— no, they look very much awake, but they are totally in the grip of their conditioning, and they're acting out in the same way that an actor acts out the script that he or she has learned. The unconscious person is totally in the grip of their mental-emotional conditioning, reactivity, opinions, viewpoints, all these things, totally dominated by that, totally in the grip of that. And therefore, we use the term unconscious to describe a human, spiritually speaking, not actually unconscious in conventional terms, but in spiritual terms, many, many humans on this planet are still really unconscious, which means They have not awakened to the deeper dimension, or higher if you prefer that word. They have not awakened to the deeper dimension of who they are beyond the person. So there is the surface I. If that's all you know in your life, then your life is going to be very unsatisfactory, unsatisfying ultimately. And probably you encounter a lot of unhappiness and ultimately misery, which the Buddha called dukkha, usually translated as suffering. So when that is all you know, in other words, when you are an unawakened human, the unawakened human creates suffering. The unawakened human creates suffering for themselves And by extension, whoever comes into contact with you is going to suffer also. In other words, you create a lot of trouble, but because you're unconscious— I'm not talking to you, just in general terms— because you're unconscious, you do not even know that you create a lot of trouble. You don't know that you create— that the unhappiness that you experience is to a large extent self-created. You always blame others. Situations, people, events, whatever it may be. That's doing it. He's doing it. They're doing it.
