The "Inexistence" of the Consciousness | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

As you know, I may have mentioned before, nature can always help you to get back into presence and out of your mind. Out of your mind is usually has negative connotations, but not in the way I use it. So even in the midst of a city, there's always a little bit of nature somewhere. In New York, you might have to look like a tourist, but the tourists are looking at the buildings and you'll be looking at a little bit of sky. So the sky is always there. So even to look at the sky can be a meditation. You can look at the sky and whether it's cloudy, if it's cloudy, there will still be light coming through the clouds, otherwise it would be completely dark. So there is the analogy is the sky is your consciousness the emptiness of the sky, the vastness of the sky is the unconditioned consciousness. And the clouds are the thoughts, thought formations or mental emotional formations. And sometimes the sky is totally cloudy, dense layers of cloud. Even then there is some light coming through. And there's the interesting. It's a good analogy. The best thing probably that you can find in this world of sense perceived phenomena, the best comparison or analogy to the inner spaciousness, stillness, unconditioned consciousness is actually the clear sky. Now, the interesting thing about the clear sky, we have a name for it, the sky. In some languages you have two names. One is heaven and one is sky. In other languages, there's only sky, which both can mean heaven or sky. So in those translations, Jesus says the kingdom of the sky. In French, Italian, probably Italian, Spanish, German, Jesus actually says when he talks kingdom of heaven, it's actually translated as the kingdom of the sky. And so that's very interesting because the sky is actually nothing. If you ever went up in this direction, hoping to get there, you would never find it because ultimately there's no. The sky does not actually exist as something in this sense. But in the same way that it table exists or a cloud exists, although we have it appears as if it were one of many things in this world, we have a noun for it, the sky. But if you look, there is no such thing as the sky. It's a certain appearance. There is the sunlight beyond it, there is the vastness and darkness of outer space. And somehow the two coming together creates the illusion that there's something there. But you could never touch it or feel I'm now in it. You can be in a cloud, but you can't be in the sky. You never know where is it. I've been going upwards for 20 miles and still don't know where it is, and before you know it, you're in outer space. Where was it? There is no sky. In the same way that the consciousness that underlies everything, that is the essence of who you are, does not actually exist in this world in the same way in which an object exists in this world, although we have a word for it, we have a noun for it, we call it the consciousness. Believing that there is something that is consciousness, but there isn't. It is an emanation from the unmanifested. So in itself, the consciousness is not an object. You could never say, there it is. That's actually Jesus said, literally when they asked, when does the kingdom of heaven come? Or where is it? Kingdom of the sky. You can never say, ah, there it is, or it's over there. That's what he literally said. So you can't say the consciousness. This is the analogy. The sky is the consciousness, not the only place where it's used. It's also used sometimes in Chinese, ancient Chinese spirituality, Daoism, and so on. The heaven, the sky, the vastness of it, but it is intangible. It does not exist in the same way that consciousness does not exist, because existence, that word means ex, is from the Latin out, ist, to stand. It stands out. Something that exists stands out into this world. It projects itself into this dimension. But the sky does not exist because you can never find it. And the consciousness does not exist in the way that something out here exists. It is the. The ground for existence. It is the being before the being becomes something. So there is being and there is existence, the being very different. It sounds almost like an obscure existentialist treatise, being and existence. But that is why people like Jesus used the sky as the closest he could get to explaining what the unconditioned consciousness is. And so when you look at the sky, the equivalent of the vast emptiness or spaciousness of the clear sky is your inner spaciousness or emptiness. And you can never say, it can never become an object for yourself. In the same way that I see the table or I'm now aware of the consciousness, you can't be aware of the consciousness because the awareness is it. So there's no duality. You can't make it into an object. And that means when you are rooted in that dimension within yourself, that is very different from the form identity, the egoic identity. In the egoic identity, you. You have made yourself into an object of consciousness. Starting with, as we mentioned the other day, the pool of water in which Narcissus saw Himself, the ancient myth. And so that was the beginning of human consciousness. Forming an image of itself and mistaking the mental image for who you are. So you make yourself into an object of consciousness. Then you have a relationship with this object of consciousness, which is a mental creation, a mental formation. And this object of consciousness becomes you. And you have a relationship with yourself. That's a strange thing. Now you will find that your dog is so much happier than you and experiences so much more joy. Because the dog does not have a relationship with him or herself, hasn't created a mental image that he can be unhappy with. I'm not happy with the way I look. My tail is too short, my legs are too short. So it has no. Therefore it's life. Nothing in nature has a relationship with itself. It is itself. The tree is itself, the flower is itself. It is never unhappy about itself. You can only be unhappy about yourself if you have a relationship with yourself, which is the ego.

So if you discover within yourself that a lot of the time you are in a state of lack of insufficiency, of not enough, and you feel that the answer to the remedy is to be active in this world and achieve and do as much as possible, then you'll probably find that ultimately that is not the answer to your state of lack. In order to transcend, to go beyond your state of lack of neediness, of not enough spiritual practice and spiritual realization is necessary. Focus on the realization of being. It's only there that you can go beyond that state of lack, which is ego. Go within and discover who or what you are beyond the parcel.