Special Teaching with Eckhart Tolle (Binaural Audio) Deepening the Dimension of Stillness

Welcome to our meditation. We start with the surface of now, which is whatever we perceive at this moment. Whatever you perceive? Whatever I perceive, really, it's the I. So you perceive this person talking, you hear the voice, there's the totality of the room, there's the ever present noises, the ceiling and the walls, all part of the totality of your visual perception. So there's a totality of sensory perception that's the actually call it the surface of the now, or you can call it the outside of now. And then you're also aware of yourself breathing. And you may be aware of the energy inside the body. So we are gradually moving from the outside to the inside. And if you allow the outside to be as it is, although there's nothing special here in this room, it is quite nice, it has its own beauty. Sounds are quite nice if you allow them. Imagine it's the om sound. And now comes the really important part. You are aware of yourself as the perceiver of all these things. You are not aware of yourself right now of the personal self. Because at this moment, let's use this word, I hope that you are not thinking about your personal history right now, or the problems you have had in the future, in the past, or might have in the future. So when I say you're aware of yourself, it's not you're aware of yourself in the usual way. Because when you usually say you're aware of yourself, you're aware of the story of yourself, you and your life, you and your position in the world, you and other people and so on. No more simple now in our meditation, you are aware of yourself not as a person with a history, but a deeper level of self. And begin by calling it the perceiver of whatever it is that arises in your perception. Auditory, visual, feeling, sensing. So but who is it that is perceiving this? Not the person, because the person is a story, the story is not perceiving this. So for a moment let's not call it anything, but be aware of the simple fact that you are perceiving this. But you don't know what that is that I that is perceiving. But there is no doubt that is there. And even if what you are perceiving is a dream, perhaps it is. It certainly has a lot in common with a dream, because a dream evaporates very quickly, it doesn't last. Many philosophers have discussed whether human existence is a dream. We don't need to go there can say it might be, but even if it is, if it's all not Real, as some people say, there is something in which the dream appears. The dream is being experienced. One could say there is a light in which the forms appear. And you are that. And there's no doubt that if it's a dream, it's happening. If it's all unreal, at least that unreality is happening in that light of awareness. Because without that awareness, there would be no sense perception. There would be no room. There would be no voice or somebody listening to the voice. So that's the one thing that cannot be doubted. Everything else you can doubt whether it's actually real. And that awareness is formless. It doesn't have a history. Because your entire history appears in it. When you remember it in that awareness. And when things happened that once happened, they happened in the present moment in the light of awareness. And you can only remember it as the awareness now. So I'm now asking you, although you continue to be aware of sense perceptions. To simply acknowledge the fact that you are aware. And even that is not, perhaps putting it rightly, to acknowledge the fact that there is awareness. In other words, you are aware that you are aware. You are conscious of being conscious. It sounds a little strange, but it's an amazing thing. It also sounds. If there were a duality here. I am conscious of being conscious. The subject, I. But that only appears in language, in fact, when you are conscious of being conscious. And that's a. It's a strange thing, just. And you can't. You can't say much about it. It just has no form and no shape. It's totally elusive and yet all pervasive. Can you feel the fact that you are conscious, or rather, that you are consciousness? And that's to sense yourself as that and still be able to perceive all this? And you have long since left compulsive labeling behind. When you are aware of yourself as consciousness and then perceive as consciousness. Labeling things mentally doesn't come in anymore. There's just consciousness and forms arising and subsiding in consciousness. Arising. Some forms stay for a while. This room stays as long as you sit here. This room arises in consciousness, and then you leave and it subsides. But the voice, the words arise in consciousness and subside. Arise, subside. We could call consciousness the. The eternal gap behind everything, the gap in between everything, the space behind everything, whatever you want to call it. These are just pointers. And there is an intense frequency that arises in you when you become aware of consciousness. It makes the personal self fade out. It burns up the karmic accumulations in you old stuff from the past, pain, body, old mind patterns. And your entire being is vibrating at a higher frequency. That's the only way I can put it. The words may not be absolutely right, but that's how I sense it in you. And that is inherently joyful and energizing to sense this essence in yourself. We are learning here not to have it as a very short lived glimpse, but to be able to stay there. And every moment you stay in that, the old gets burned up in you. And you connect with intelligence. Not the IQ intelligence that you measure in IQ tests. That's it. Very limited form of intelligence, creative intelligence I talk about. This does not mean that you or I, this moment will come up with the solution to the problem that Einstein couldn't solve, the unified field theory or whatever it was. Nor does it mean that suddenly I can paint a masterpiece or compose an exquisite piece of music, because I have. These are not vehicles that have been prepared in this body for this, by this body. But this intelligence can flow into something. If there is a vehicle in your life, it can flow into that, transform it and make it absolutely creative. And even that is no more than a bonus for some people. It may be enough to walk around the planners for the rest of their life in this form as peaceful, intensely alive beings that are astonished at the beauty of all things and bring that vibration of peace that comes with the awareness of pure consciousness. Whoever they meet gets a little whiff of that. And for some humans that's enough and they fulfill their purpose here. Others may create some more elaborate forms, but empowered by not the ego, but by the greater intelligence it creates. It can flow into the human mind and body and create through the human form. Let's come back to the simple secret. Be conscious that you are conscious. Feel the awareness as your essence and you will notice it's very still. The awareness is still. I compare it sometimes to space. I call it inner space or space consciousness. It has no extension. It is vast, but not like the outer space that you see. You don't see it, but that is there when you look at the sky at night. The vastness of space is only a reflection in the external of who you are, in the essence of your being. And that's the awe inspiring thing when you look at this starry sky at night. The absolutely awe inspiring thing that if you are really looking will really shut up your mind immediately because it's so astonishing. That was my first meditation as in my teens. I had no idea it was meditation lying on the deck of our we lived on the top floor. There was a little terrace. It was in the south of Spain, where there were beautiful skies at night, totally clear and there was no thought. I had no idea that was going on then. I just. It was too deeply enjoyable. The awe inspiring thing is not the countless, countless suns that you see, which are stars, but the vastness of it, the nothingness that makes it all possible. The vastness of space, unimaginable infinity. And there too, that can put you in touch with the vastness within you. Just looking at that. And space again is very similar. The outer space is very similar to inner space because both of them don't really exist. Because as I mentioned earlier, existence means to stand out. But space is. You can't say, oh, here's space. All you can ever be aware of is things in space and again in yourself. You can't say, here is the essence of who I am. You cannot be aware of it as an object. All objects are things, forms that arise in them. Space. Why can't you be aware of space? Because you are it. You cannot separate from it and look at it as an object. It is the formless I, the I am that I am. The most profound statement in the entire Bible, which is of course a mixed bag of all kinds of writings, but there are some deep insights. You know how to find them. When God is asked, what's your name? God says, I am that I am. That's my name. It's the I am that immediately there is space in you. When you become conscious of being conscious, that is space in any situation, you find yourself in a quick access to inner space. Spaciousness, essence is to become conscious that you are conscious. That's presence. Then, yes, you are still a person. You can function as a person, but you are not trapped in the person. That's the hybrid I talked about. You function as the person. We are not trapped in the person. And now for a little while, we just see if we can stay there in that consciousness of consciousness. Sam.