The Canvas of Consciousness | Eckhart Tolle on The Inside Track To Freedom (Part 1)

Can I be aware of myself as a perceiving consciousness, without which there would be no sense perception? There must be a consciousness that makes the sense perception possible. And so that consciousness incarnates into the sense perception, so to speak. The sense perception arises by. Created by this consciousness. You wouldn't perceive anything without the consciousness behind the sense perception. So become aware of yourself as the awareness behind the sense perception that makes the sense perception possible. And that is a. And so you practice that auditory also. This is when you listen to any kind of sound. Natural sounds are particularly helpful. Bird song or hearing the wind in the trees or the sea, noise of water, any kind of water. So you listen to the noise, give it attention, but not 100% of your attention. Some attention is kept back and remains on the attention itself. Attention becoming aware of itself as the attention. Because you don't need to totally be in that thing. So you practice with relatively simple things. Natural things perceive natural, visually tactile. There's also a sense of smell, there's a breeze. There's certain. There may be a certain scent in the air of nature, whatever it may be. And then you also perceive that you might even be able to perceive a moment with all senses engaged. It's very rare, but it's possible that you can taste, smell, touch, auditory, visual. So you're totally every. All the senses are large, but behind it is a perceiving consciousness. And that gives you. And that is a point of rest, a point of stillness. You're centered within yourself. You're rooted in being, rooted in being. But that's. So you practice with simple things. And here particularly, this is a helpful setting, a retreat setting. And then when you go back into your daily life at home and at work, you continue to practice. It gets more difficult there because there are more challenges that arise. All these things demanding your attention. And then you endeavor to stay connected with that. First you have glimpses of it, and then it gets a little bit longer. And then you can perhaps stay connected with that even while engaged in activities. And then the next step is to stay connected with that even while you are thinking, so that thinking does not take you over completely. You can actually then think without losing presence. And then you have arrived. That's it. That's it. Wow. And your thinking then becomes actually more interesting, not no longer creating unnecessary problems. A lot of unconscious thinking is to a large extent creates continuous, continuous succession of unnecessary problems. And it amplifies challenges unnecessarily. Then that does not happen anymore. Then. So the state of. You can Be. You can have your attention entirely on the presence. If your eyes are closed, you may have 80% of your attention in the presence and even maybe just a remnant. If you're very intensely present in a meditative state, there's nothing left of you as a person in that state. It's just you. You have become the presence. And then you have little interest in sense perception then. Because that is so lovely. Because that's the way I. It came to me years ago when I was often going into deep states of presence out in nature. And you remained a certain period of time, but it's nothing to do with time anymore. And then you open your eyes. When I open my eyes, yes, you're still surrounded by beautiful nature. But I had the feeling what came to me was everything I was perceiving. It's a weird analogy. Everything I was perceiving was skimmed milk. But deep within me there was the cream, undiluted and so on. And then the rest is a diluted consciousness. So the. In India, they have a word for the state of absolute presence. Samadhi. Samadhi is a state of absolute presence. And I've been. Over many years, I've been saying the important thing is. Yes, to become familiar with. Learn to access that presence and then bring it into daily life. And then at some point, I realized that in India, they also. They've been talking about that for centuries because they have samadhi and sahaja samadhi. Sahaja samadhi means you bring presence. You don't lose presence when you interact with the world. Sahaja samadhi. Samadhi. Sahaja samadhi is the next step of being present while engaged in activities. And that is the. I like to quote this parable of Jesus where he talks about a man who. Who builds a house on the sand. And he's built the house. And then the floods come, the storms come, and the house, because as lacking a foundation, is swept away in the floods and the storms. And then there's another man. And Jesus describes him as. He is somebody who listens to my words and does them. In other words, he follows the teaching and the teaching. Of course, the essence of the teaching is, seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all else will be added unto you. Exactly what we're talking about, the kingdom of heaven that is within you. Everything else is secondary. And that comes. So there's the second man who listens to his words and does them, practices them. And before he builds, he digs deep. That's how the parable goes. He says, this man digs deep until he reaches the rock. And when he reaches the rock, he builds a house that is rooted on the rock, deep down. And then the floods come and the rains come, and the house is not swept away. It stands. So he talks about two states of consciousness. One, not being rooted in being and presence. Living on the surface, not having gone into the vertical dimension, which is the presence, only living in the horizontal dimension. So that's why in the parable it says, this man digs deep. He goes into the Virginia until he reaches the rock, then he builds the house. So this is the description of a state of consciousness that is rooted in present. And then the things of this world are no longer threatening. And they do not create an unhappy person anymore. The person has risen above circumstances. Circumstances still happen. But because the person is rooted in being, circumstances no longer determine his or her state of consciousness. So all the teachings point to that in various ways.