The 4 Types of Spiritual Seekers | Eckhart Tolle Reads The Bhagavad Gita

Because if you try and try and try to get enlightened and then it just, you get so frustrated, it's just not happening. So you join the suffering group and then you're much more likely to find it. Now here's an interesting little paragraph on the Bhagavad Gita. What kind of people become spiritual seekers? And it divides into. There are four types of persons according to here, and this still applies very much nowadays, and this was two or three thousand years ago. There are four different types of persons who seek spirituality or God. Krishna talks again as the personification of the one. Four types of people seek a connection with me. One, the world weary people who worship God for the alleviation of physical or mental agony ought to be released from fears and adversity. There's many people of course, who come to a spiritual teacher or teaching or spiritual book, come for that reason. And it is a good reason to want to be free of suffering. Of course the whole Buddha's teaching is about freedom from suffering. So that's one type. Two are the seekers of happiness. They are seeking happiness through worldly things. People who pray to God to obtain wealth, family, power, prestige and so forth. So maybe those are people also who do go into manifesting things through positive thinking and affirmations, but come out connecting with a somewhat deeper level. Yes. In a limited way still. Yes. So they're seeking spirituality because they want something in this world. It still applies. Not that much has changed apparently. And then there are the seekers of this number three. Now the third group are the seekers of spiritual advancement, people whose motive for connecting with divinity is to gain knowledge and experience to aid their self realization. And I would add people also who want to have the high of what they conceive of as the high that surely enlightenment must be, as I sometimes call it. They want the fireworks they're waiting for, for some ultimate experience. So that's another group. Many like that. And of course I should talk about that in a minute. Number four. These are relatively rare according to the Bhagavad Gita are people who want to know God, who truly want to know the Atma, the self, who know that God alone exists and whose only impulse is for the divine and nothing else. And those are relatively rare. I just want God. So the ones numbers whose motive for connecting with divinity is to gain knowledge and experience to aid their self realization. So we have wanting to be free of suffering, wanting to be happy through this, that or the other three, wanting knowledge or experience or some high. And for the direct Wanting the One, I just want that. So it's of course, Bhagavad Gita. Of these four, the last is the highest. Because they know my truth and are devoted to me, as I am supremely dear to them. They are very dear to me. The first three are attached to the worldly objects or mental states they desire. But certainly all four types are noble. Because any reason for turning God ward or inwards will in due time lead to spiritual transformation and is therefore ultimately good. So my comment on this is the it is true that the ones who just want God are rare, and that's fine. It's not needed. Wanting to be free of suffering is more helpful. Those who want to be free of suffering or adversity who have had enough suffering, that is a very powerful motivation for seeking spiritual awakening. It's a more powerful motivation and more likely to lead to realization or awakening than those who are seeking either happiness. Because they will have to experience that none of the things they seek, even when they get them, is really going to fulfill that purpose of making them happy and fulfilled. And then they begin to suffer. And so they joined group one. So first you're in that group for quite a while, and then when you realize, okay, my manifestation is great, it works, but still it's not quite right because nothing fulfills me, then you go back to group one, you're suffering. And if you're seeking. Now, many spiritual seekers seek some kind of enlightenment experience or awakening. And sometimes I get. They write in and say, I've been trying so hard for so many years and it's not happening yet. I want to be free, I want to be enlightened, or whatever they call it. And they are expecting some kind of experience, or they believe that if they acquire enough knowledge about it, finally it's going to work. And so they become very knowledgeable. They can quote all kinds of scriptures. It's all there. They know more and more about it and more and more. And for those people, it's quite hard. In fact, unless they join another group, they're not going to make it. But they will have to join another group, which again is group number one suffering. Because if you try and try and try to get enlightened and then you get so frustrated, it's not happening. So you join the suffering group, and then you're much more likely to find it. So I'm really very fond of Group 1 suffering. As long as you are not identified with yourself as the suffering entity. When that becomes your identity, then you have another problem. But nothing that cannot be addressed and recognized in yourself. It.