The Fourth State of Consciousness | Eckhart Tolle (Sub ESP)

That state of spaciousness is already in you all the time. There is an equivalent of dreamless sleep in our ordinary existence, but most people are not aware of that. And that is a dimension of consciousness that is possible for human beings that has certain similarities with dreamless sleep. And although spiritual teachers and so on have spoken about it and pointed to it for a long time, thousands of years, it still is not common knowledge that there is a potential in every human being for realizing within him or herself a state of consciousness that is deeper, infinitely deeper than the ordinary state of thinking and doing, normal life. I sometimes call that state spaciousness, inner spaciousness, or sometimes call it presence or stillness. In Indian spirituality, India, I mean, India, they have a word for. They talk about. They have been talking about it. They have a term for this. They call it the fourth state of consciousness, Turiya, which is, I believe you have dreamless state, dreamless sleep, you have the dream state, you have ordinary wakefulness, and then you have the fourth state, which most humans don't know that it's there for them. They don't know. And that is the greatest, one could almost say, yes, tragedy, a human life is to miss the possibility that there is in a human life to realize that false state of consciousness. There is an assumption by spiritual seekers even in India, and anybody who hasn't realized it for themselves or even had glimpses of it, there is an assumption that that fourth state is extremely hard to attain. And you need countless years of spiritual practice or countless lifetimes to finally achieve the fourth state of consciousness. And that belief actually prevents you from realizing it within yourself, because that state of spaciousness is already in you all the time. So if you have the belief that it's something that you need to achieve at some future point, that belief, that thought would continuously prevent you from realizing it now, because you mentally will always project. And then you say, I'm going to meditate because I want to achieve at some point the false state. And then that can be a great hindrance in your meditation because it prevents you from going deeper into the present moment where the false state is. Or one could almost say it's not just where the fourth state is. The present moment is the fourth state of consciousness, the space of now. Not what happens in the now, but the deeper the space in which it happens. The background to your life is continuously there, and continuously also often seeps through one thought. In between two thoughts you go three seconds. For three seconds you are free of yourself. And you might look at something, ah, or whatever it is or just experience a moment of peace and aliveness. And then, of course, you get drawn back into thinking. And then at another time, a little space comes in again. When you. Maybe all kinds. When you're tasting something. Perhaps there's just the perception of the taste. Without any mental interference. Just an aware presence behind the sense perception. And then you notice that the state is always there. Every thought exists in that space. Is only a wave movement in the space. And so it's not something that you need to attain as if you didn't have it. But because it's already here. It is essentially who you are. It is intrinsically one with the essence of your being. And if you don't know that, then your life is very limited to just a little person. With no transcendent dimension to your life whatsoever. And so here we are in order to deepen our realization of inner spaciousness. That's all. It's so you realize something that is already here. Rather than needing to look for it. So why do you often not realize it? Because you overlook it. Just like the fish may overlook the fact that the fish is surrounded by water. And starts looking for it. Where's the water? People keep talking about the water. And the more the fish looks. The less likely that it will find the water. So that spaciousness is something that at first may appear in your life as a glimpse. And then at first, in many people's lives. They don't know that that is spaciousness. They experience it as a heightened aliveness or deeper sense of peace or joy. An absence of problems for a little moment. So they don't know that this is a different dimension of consciousness that is suddenly arisen. They can still confuse it with something else. As I did when the shift happened. And that was a rare thing in my case, it didn't. It happened in that kind of state. For most people, it's a more gradual thing. It comes gradually, first in glimpses. And then suddenly it's there for a longer period of time. Or you go deeper into it. And there's a gradual transformation of consciousness. Might be so gradual you don't even notice it. And when it happened to me, I didn't realize that there was spaciousness. I didn't have the word spaciousness. I didn't know anything about the fourth state of consciousness. I knew nothing about presence or even mindfulness. I didn't realize even that my mind had subsided and become spacious. All I knew is, suddenly life is very peaceful. This moment feels so good. That's all I knew. And where does this peace come from? I asked. Didn't know. I didn't know it was the depths of who I am. Realizing the depths of who I am was joy and peace. But I didn't have a word for that. I couldn't call it the depths of who I am. I just thought, why am I suddenly so peaceful? And I started keeping a diary which said, I don't know why I suddenly feel so peaceful. I just want to write down my daily experience of peace in case it leaves me when at least I can remember it. And I wrote, it's still somewhere. I don't know where it is. Locked away. I don't need to look at it. But it's interesting that there was no understanding of where did this piece originate? What is this peace? How did it come about? The understanding came later. So you two, you may well not you, but people in your life. Anybody who is not totally continuously unhappy, anxious, angry, fearful, or continuously upset or continuously in a state of deep discontent. And there are people like that don't know what the percentage of the population is. A not insignificant percentage of the population live in an almost continuous state of discontent in one form or another. There's always a residue of anger. They're just waiting for the next thing to be angry about, to be upset about. Or there's a continuous. Whatever the state is, certain percentage, yes. Or they're totally unhappy and depressed and everything is just dreadful. Or they approaching the borderline of what we conventionally call sanity and insanity. And then they step beyond this borderline and then they're declared clinically, whatever, insane or what. So there are many people in mental homes who are so obsessed with their minds, no space whatsoever. And people are very unhappy, totally unhappy most of the time. Also, they experience virtually no relief from their mind. So no spaciousness at all. Makes for very unhappy life. And that is the equivalent of somebody who cannot, if that were possible, who cannot go into dreamless sleep. All you ever experience is your dreams. And something prevents you from going into dreamless sleep. That would be awful. And of course you would go insane. The same applies to ordinary wakeful state. Somebody who has absolutely no access to the spaciousness within will be extremely unhappy in their ordinary wakeful state and will make others unhappy. Some become violent and create violence in them. Sometimes there are sometimes people, of course, violent people are so unconscious and unhappy that they become violent. Often they attract. Get attracted to each other. And then you have a group of people, thousands, hundred thousand, sometimes a million millions, who are violent, no spaciousness. And then they create whatever, what we call genocide and so on. All these things, the most awful things created. Life becomes a nightmare. They create a nightmare, either a collective nightmare or a nightmare in their personal lives. So that is like somebody who has absolutely no access. Imagine you could only dream, but never reach the dreamless state. You would go insane. Because you need the dreamless state now, in. In ordinary wakefulness, you also need the spaciousness. And if you have absolutely no spaciousness, you go virtually insane. It.