Nothing to Attain: A Meditation with Eckhart Tolle

Just to remind you, especially people who are meditators or have been meditating for some time, few years or many years. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to true meditation is the idea that you are doing a meditation. And as part of that idea, the belief or assumption that you're trying to get somewhere or achieve something through the meditation. And soul meditation becomes like the rest of your life. What you do is a means to an end. And the end is considered more important than the present moment. So you're doing in order to achieve or get or attain something. And that underlies most people's meditation, that unconscious assumption. And that's a great obstacle, because true meditation is about something much more immediate. It's getting in touch with, we could say, being, which is prior to all doing. Now, being has been talked about in philosophy. There are big books written about being. Jean Paul Sartre wrote Being and Nothingness. Heidegger wrote Being and Time, two very big books. They're interesting. Well, in some respects. But they are still trying to reach being through doing. In their case, it's through thinking and conceptualization. To reach what they correctly assume to be something absolutely fundamental that underlies all of existence. They try to reach it through conceptualization and thinking, which is another way of doing. Of course, thinking is a kind of doing also. And they didn't quite realize, of course, they were professional philosophers, so they couldn't stop thinking. Philosophy, being, the activity of thinking, at least in modern times, in very ancient times, there was something else there that went beyond thinking. So true meditation is getting in touch with something deeper than any kind of doing, where you no longer try to achieve or attain anything, any point in the future, add anything to yourself as some kind of additional achievement or even realization. In fact, the belief that what you need is some kind of realization is the great obstacle to true realization. So being the substratum, to use a geological term as a kind of analogy, being is a substratum of all existence and all life, that which underlies it all. And that can be known directly within you, but not in the sense in which things in this world are known, not even in the sense in which anything is known. That becomes an object in your consciousness. It's a direct knowing where subject, the subject that knows and the object that is known merge into one. Now, being or to be. Sometimes people overlook that when you say I am, that is the first person singular of the verb to be. So being can be sensed directly. Again, I have to mention it not as an object, but as object and subject in one can be sensed Directly, if you realize the I am that underlies all of which arises in your life. All sense perceptions, all thinking, all emotions, feelings, that which makes it possible for sense perceptions to be there, thoughts to be there, emotions to be there, what is it that makes it possible for these things to arise and then to become your so called life? Because your life consists of sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions. I think that's about it. There's nothing else, is there? It's just a different combination of sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions or feelings that make up individual people's lives. So a different combination of sense perception. This is what constitutes individuality, as we call it. But if you look closely at what individuality or individual existence means, it is a mixture, a particular mixture of sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions or feelings. So then we can then the common denominator in all individuality, so called, is all different kinds of mixture. And there are billions of people on this planet with each one slightly different or sometimes fundamentally different mixture of sense perceptions, thoughts, emotions. Okay, we have that. And yet what makes it possible for these sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions to arise and to become a person? What is that? What is the light in which these are known? What or who is the knower of all these sense perceptions, thoughts, emotions? And that is the substratum, I.e. the being or the knowing, the eternal subject of all knowing. And essentially you are that. But it's infinitely more fundamental than anything that arises in your life. That's to do with experiences. When we say experiences, really it's sense perceptions and thoughts and emotions coming together, experiences that make up your life. So we are getting at now as an. As an experience, an experiential realization here and now is who or what you are beyond sense perceptions and experiences. Experiences includes those things, sense perceptions, thoughts, emotions, feelings. Is there a more fundamental dimension than the temporary coming together of your experiences, which of course come and go fairly quickly and then evaporate completely and then the person is gone. So the question is, who are you beyond those things? But don't look for an answer on any kind of conceptual level, but as a direct realization here and now, sensing in yourself that which makes all those things possible, your life experience. And that is the being that underlies it all. We could say also the unconditioned consciousness that underlies it all. So you can access here the silent spaces in our meditation. Become aware of those, the silent spaces. This is why we still call it a meditation, although it's not a doing. Become aware of the silent spaces here, like now and now and now and realize that when you become aware of the silent space, there is no thinking anymore. There is a cessation of thinking. It arises naturally. And what remains of you when there is this cessation of thinking, and with that the cessation of doing all you know, then what is left is there is a presence there, but it has no form or attributes. What remains is a silent presence in the background. And you can sense that silent presence, not just with your head, one could almost say with your entire being, with your whole so called body. You can sense the silent presence in the background. And the background temporarily actually becomes the foreground. And you sense it not as something, but as yourself. That is why I say subject and object merge into one. The perceiving, it's not perception. The knowing subject and that which is known are one. And that's the realization of being. And you don't need to read 500 pages or whatever of Sartre's being in nothingness or Heidegger's being in time. Oh, that's a relief. Perhaps the mind comes in and says, can it be that simple? Of course, it is the most immediate and the most natural thing to know that in yourself. But somehow humans at some point lost it. Perhaps that's what's called the fall. And humans are now regaining it here and now. And when you regain something that had been lost, you know it more deeply. So what was before a natural connectedness with being, perhaps many thousands of years ago? Natural, by the way, means you don't even know it's there. You just connect it with being. And there's that rootedness in being. There now becomes a conscious rootedness in being. And that's the next step in the evolution. Could also be called the awakening. Your challenge is in daily life to stay connected with that dimension, realize that dimension as the essential I am the self realization. So that remains then in the background as this silent presence or spaciousness, it remains in the background while in the foreground. You deal with your daily life and you think again, you do things, you respond, you feel, you have emotions. But now there's a fundamental difference. When that dimension is present consciously in your life, that which happens in the foreground of your life, which is thinking and doing and experiencing, never absorbs you totally anymore. You give it its due, yes, but it does not take up the totality of your attention or your consciousness. Or in other words, you don't lose yourself completely anymore when you start to think and to do and to react, which is the normal state. Lost, lost in doing and thinking. So you become a grounded in the true sense of the word, in the deepest sense of the word, a grounded human being rooted in being, and then able to deal with things in a different way. Also, because it does change when that dimension is present in the background of your life. You can sense the beingness in the background. It's not difficult. Then the way in which you do, the way in which you think and experience undergoes a change. You don't need to change it yourself, it just happens. And everything you're thinking and you're doing becomes imbued with quite a peaceful energy. It.