Silence Is the Best Speech | Eckhart Tolle on Ramana Maharshi’s Present Gaze

But that is the look that also you can practice. It is the look that where you are not a person, you are just a presence. I've been looking at this folder. It has questions in it. People submit lots of questions. So I will answer perhaps a few. And from tomorrow we are open, or I am open to receiving questions from you that arise spontaneously or that you've kept at the back of your mind for a long time wanting to ask, and it still hasn't dissolved. It's beautiful. By the way, if a question dissolves that you've had, which means, well, you could still ask it, but it's no longer of vital importance. Sometime in the 1930s, a British writer went to India, I believe his name was Paul Brunton. He went to India to visit the living masters and interview them and then write a book about them. And he did. And one of the masters he visited was Ramana Maharshi. At the time not known in the west at all and to a limit only to a limited extent in India. And so when he went into see Ramana Maharshi with his list, a long list of questions for his book, and Ramana Maharshi just looked at him. There are some photos around with Ramana Maharshi looking at you, especially one that's very beautiful. And so he just looks. You can feel when he looks, even on that photo, he's not thinking whatso. There's no thought whatsoever in his mind. There's just spaciousness, but it's not a look of a zombie. It's presence. Spacious presence. Well, you can have that now, please. Just. There's nobody there looking. There's just consciousness. Nobody in particular, just consciousness. So it's not a person looking and that's that. The energy transmission also happens in that way. It cannot happen when a person is looking at you because that means the looking happens through the veil of conditioning that is the person. Mental, emotional conditioning. But here the looking is come straight from the depths of consciousness, unconditioned consciousness. So it's just the light looking. So Paul Brunton came to see into Ramana Maharshi's room. And Ramana Maharshi just looked at him. And suddenly Paul Brunton had no longer any desire to ask his questions and they sat in silence together for 20 minutes or 30 minutes, I don't remember. And then Paul Brunton thanked him and left the room. That was the interview. This happened again a few years later. The famous British author Somerset Maughan visited India and he had probably read Paul Brunton's book that in the meantime had been published, where he wrote very favorably about Ramana Maharshi, who was the one teacher that impressed him most. So Somerset Maugham came to experience the presence of this master, probably to write about him. Because whatever Somerset Maugham did, and to whoever he met, he would write about them later. He continuously was collecting notes about. Making notes about people. And just before Ramana Maharshi came into his room, it was so hot there, he fainted. And sorry, not Ramanhashi Somerset Maugham fainted. They carried him into a room to put him on a bed there to regain consciousness. And then they told Ramana Maha, there's a famous British author who came to see you. But he fainted and Ramana Maharshi, okay, I'll go to where he is. And when Somerset Maugham opened his eyes, there was Ramana Maharshi sitting, looking at him. And again, no words were spoken, except, if I remember correctly, they looked at each other. And then Ramana Maharshi said something like, silence is the best speech. And that was about it. That was the meeting of the famous British author with the spiritual master. And of course, yes, he did write a book. And Ramana Maharshi appears as a character in that book. And although he doesn't, of course, under a different name as a master. And if you're interested, the book is called the Razor's Edge, the novel. But that is the look that also you can practice. It is the look that where you're not a person, you're just a presence. And when you look at a tree or the sky or a flower or another person, if that's not too difficult, if you look at them and there's no mind activity, just an underlying presence as the backdrop, so to speak, to your sense perception, then at that moment, you're not a person looking at the world. You are consciousness looking ultimately at itself, its own creations. Because everything is consciousness that has taken a particular form, a temporary form. There's only the one underlying all forms. And in that looking, there's not only the absence of the person, there is also the presence of presence. And that means whatever you are looking at, you sense something that is deeper than the surface appearance of that thing that you are looking at. In the case of a plant or a flower, yes, there is the surface beauty of the flower or the plant, but there is also something that the eye cannot see. There is a beautiful quote that is, I believe, from a book called, Is it the Little Prince? Saint Exupery is That the author and it says, what is essential is invisible to the eye. What is essential is invisible to the eye. This I. It does not only refer to the visual sense, it also refers to all the other senses. So what is essential? The essence of things, of human beings, of yourself, of a tree, of a dog. The essence of the thing is you cannot see or perceive with the senses. So if you only perceive through the conditioned mind as the person, then all you ever see or perceive with the other senses is the surface, never the essence of that life form. So what is essential is invisible to the eye. How can you become aware of that which is beyond the sense perception that the deeper dimension of things, which for many humans alive now does not exist. And the majority of scientists would probably. There are some exceptions, but Einstein was an exception. But the majority of scientists would probably deny that there is such a thing as a deeper dimension to things. But there, eventually they will come around. If not this generation, when this generation is dead, the next one will come around. So then you look at something, a tree, a flower. And that presence of presence through which you are looking recognizes something of itself in that which you are looking at. And that is the dimension of depth. And that is where you feel connected or a better what, where you feel that sense of oneness with that which you are looking at. No longer the separation when you are looking through the conditioned mind as a person, there is always a sense of separateness. Whatever you are looking at is the other. There is always a sense of otherness. And that sense of otherness is the absence of love in the deepest sense. You cannot love the other in that state of consciousness. You can try, or you might convince yourself for a while that it's working, but it won't last. So to sense something deeper that is within that is the essence of that life form. That is. That adds a depth to all your perceptions. It's no longer a surface reality. Everything has a depth to it. And that depth in traditional spirituality is called sacredness. It.