This is a YouTube video titled "The Deepest Truth Of Human Existence with Eckhart Tolle" recorded in February 2008. The content features Eckhart Tolle delivering a contemplative talk or meditation on the nature of human existence, focusing on inner stillness and self-awareness beyond the mind's noise. The talk is presented as a guided meditation rather than a traditional lecture, inviting listeners to experience a deeper dimension of consciousness.
I would like to explore with you this afternoon the deepest truth of human existence. When I say that, that may sound a little bit abstract, interesting, but abstract human existence. And it may sound a little bit philosophical, but this is not a lecture on philosophy, nor is it a lecture at all. The best way to look upon it is as a meditation. Although somebody is speaking, seeking look upon it as a meditation. So when I say the deepest truth of human existence, it sounds a little bit removed from your everyday concerns. So let's put it in another way. We are here to explore the deepest truth of who you are, because you are human existence. We are here to explore the deepest truth within yourself, knowing yourself at the deepest level, a level so deep that knowing yourself and knowing God become one and the same. There are two levels to this talk, if it can be called that. One is the words and one is the gaps between the words. A certain stillness. I just point this out because it is helpful as you listen, to be aware not only of the words, but of an underlying field of stillness out of which the words come. Nothing personal. There's a field of stillness that is both within and without gaps between the words. A silent space in between and underlying the words. And simply to be aware also of that dimension. Then listening to these words is more than absorbing information, because there isn't that much information here. It's not an information, but based talk. Then it becomes a meditation to just sit here and listen. And the deeper teaching, if it can even be called teaching, is not in and through the words. The deeper teaching lies in the dimension of step stillness. Because the moment you acknowledge that underlying dimension, you have accessed a realm within yourself that is deeper than the stream of mind with which most people are identified as themselves, simply as we sit here to acknowledge, to notice, to listen to an underlying stillness, that which acknowledges that in you, that which is able to listen to that dimension, listen not to something, listen to nothing, to nothing, just the act of listening. That in you which is able to acknowledge that dimension, to be attentive to that dimension, is a realm of stillness underneath the stream of mental noise. In other words, the moment you pay attention to that dimension of silence, there is a stillness in you. Because through thought you cannot paid attention to silence, because thought is noise. So already, although through words, we are going to progressively explore the deepest truth of human existence, even as you sit here and follow the words that progressively explore the deepest truth of human existence, that deepest truth of human existence is. Is already emerging in you as you sit here and listen, even now, simply by paying attention to silence through the inner stillness. That is the only way you can notice. The stillness in you notices that. And you have gone beyond the continuous stream of mental noise that for most people, is who they think they are.
