This is a YouTube video titled "The Concept Of Enlightenment with Eckhart Tolle" containing a monologue or talk by Eckhart Tolle from February 5, 2008. In this content, Eckhart Tolle discusses the nature of enlightenment, emphasizing that it is not a future goal to be achieved but a present state to be realized. He explores the paradox between spiritual teachings that suggest either letting go or intense seeking, ultimately advocating for an intense presence in the now rather than striving for a future state.
To achieve the state of enlightenment, as if it were something that you can add to yourself, or something that will suddenly transform you into miraculous being, which you already are, but you won't know it. If you think that is going to come in the future. Enlightenment, or let's call it the egoless state. Okay, I want to achieve the egoless state. And of course the egoless state cannot be achieved in the future or in time. It is only by looking through it now that the ego state is here. Now, a state that you want to achieve is a mental concept in which that's endowed with self. And as such you can never reach it, because it's an abstract concept of who I want to be, not realizing you are it already. So the ego state, it does not lie in the future. It has nothing to do with future. You cannot make it into a goal. You cannot make. Whether you call it the egoless state or whether you call it enlightenment, you cannot make it into a goal. Goal implies future. Because the very entry point into the egoless state or the enlightened state, the present moment. If you make it into a goal that you want to achieve, you miss the entry point because you're looking to the future. Because goal implies future. And that is the dilemma of all spiritual seekers. Because they listen to spiritual talk or read a spiritual book and say, there is such a thing as the egoless state or the enlightened state, and perhaps I can achieve it too. And immediately they make it into a goal, project it away. It becomes mind, a mental image of who I want to be future. And not realize that their very search for to actualize that image prevents them from being it now. Because the entry point is here, this moment only. The ego can only be transcended through accessing the power of the present moment, no other way. Enlightenment is only in the power of the present moment, nowhere else. So it's never. It's only humans who give up the search, who realize it's already here. So you have to, one way or another, either because you're totally frustrated with the spiritual search, or because you suddenly see the truth of it, give up the search as if it were future. Now, it seems to conflict with certain teachings. Let's say, basically, there are two conflicting spiritual teachings. One says, that seems what I've just said, but it's not quite it. One says, there's nothing you can do, and you might as well totally relax because you can't bring it about. There's nothing, absolutely nothing you can do about it. So let go, forget about all. Some teachers say that forget the whole thing, just have fun. The other teaching says if you do not want enlightenment as intensely as a man, a drowning man, wants air, you're not going to get it. Now, what I just said seems to be more towards the other, that you cannot make it into something to want or to get. But really the truth is hiding. You bring the two together and how does that look? If you bring. How can you bring those together? On the one hand, there's nothing you can do. That's true. And on the other hand, an intensity is required. You bring the two together. The very intensity that is mistakenly interpreted as an intensity that's driving you towards a future goal can become an intensity that is driving you into the present moment. That's the uncompromising intensity of there's only this moment. And that, yes, that there's an intensity there that goes. Takes you deeper into this. It's not an intensity that drives you into future. There's nothing you can do is true in the sense that if doing requires future and time, that doesn't help you. And of course, going into the present moment and becoming internally aligned with the present moment isn't really a doing in that sense. There's nothing you can do. You can only allow the present moment to be and go deeply into it. It's a question of how you use language. So in that sense, they are right. There's nothing you can do. And the others are also right. The intensity is required, the intensity with which you embrace the now. So that's there's the point. No future state. You're not becoming something that you are not now. And so you may have heard some spiritual teacher saying, you are enlightened already. And that's deep down, that is true. Every human being is already complete. Within, on the level of form, there are all kinds of things that perhaps you could still do and play around with and add to yourself and learn or experience. But in the depths of who you are, your essence identity is already totally complete. It doesn't require more time or more things to be added to who you are in your essence. And really that is what matters. In that sense. Future can only prevent you from being it, finding it and being it now. So it's for some people hard to get rid of this idea, because it's no more than an idea in the head that I need to achieve something, become something. But it's not really true. So it's truer to say you are already it. You just need to realize it that you are already fully yourself. You are already fully yourself. You don't need more time or more of anything to be who you are already. No, you're already divine, timeless, eternal in your essence. Everything else is on the level of form. And it's a. It's a dance, a game, a play of form. There you. Sometimes you get more and then you lose again. You can play. So no more spiritual seeking Intensity, yes, but the intensity that drives you into the now. Not an intensity that wants to actualize an imagined state. Me as the Enlightened One, which you already are.
