What Are the Vertical and Horizontal Dimensions? | Eckhart Tolle on Awareness

And in the movie of your life also, there must be things that go wrong, and they do all the time. Otherwise it's not interesting. And then there is another dimension that is accessible in human consciousness. There's a potential of realizing the vertical dimension as opposed to the horizontal dimension. The vertical dimension is realized. You enter it as you become present. And as you become present, the stream of thinking subsides, is replaced with a space of awareness. Awareness arises. And then when I ask you, who or what are you? Without reference to any thought, what does it feel like to be you? Without reference to a narrative in your mind that you call my life. So, for example, in this moment, you don't need to remember anything about your life. But when you don't remember anything about your life, are you still there? And what does that mean? I am still there? Without reference to a narrative, what is that I am that's still there? That doesn't seem to have any content anymore? Without the narrative, there's an I am without content. This is why it's so hard to describe it or to talk about it. What is left is a presence. That's all you can say about it. It's an absence of thought. But there's a presence there. You can't define it. And there you have no age. It doesn't matter whether you're 20 years old or 100. There's a presence, a beingness, a being. One could say, you know that you exist. Well, exist is the wrong word. You know that you are in that realization, in the vertical dimension, you know that you are. But that's all you know and all you need to know. Nothing needs to be or should be added to it. The being as itself. In ancient Greece, the temple of Apollo at Delphi had inscriptions. One inscription on that. There's enormous wisdom arising in ancient Greece. One of the inscriptions was. It goes back to Socrates or Pythagoras. Know yourself, know thyself inscribed. Okay. And then on another side of the temple, there was a strange. And people didn't know later on, when they looked at it hundreds of years later, thousands of years later, what does that mean? Maybe there's something missing. Let's look more closely. You are. Maybe it got eroded by time. There must be something else. But they couldn't find anything else. And a few people later realized the deeper meaning of it. And they actually go together with know thyself and you are go together. Know thyself does not refer to the personality. It does not refer to knowing the story of you in great detail. Exploring perhaps hidden things that you hadn't known about yourself. There's a place for that too. But what is meant by the ancient know thyself? It's not the self that we get to know through going through psychoanalysis for 10 years. Because you. Okay, let's. Because there's always new layers of memories. Oh, I hadn't realized that. So interesting. My life is becoming so complex and interesting. The longer I have psychoanalysis, the more interesting it gets. That has its place. It's fine, it's interesting. It's like a movie that's an interesting movie. And people like to see movies that are not only interesting, but interesting. Must mean things. Must. There must be things that go wrong in the movie, otherwise it's not interesting. And in the movie of your life also there must be things that go wrong, and they do all the time, otherwise it's not interesting. So know thyself doesn't refer to all the details of your life, hidden motivations, all those things, repressed desires. Know thyself doesn't refer to that. That's a different. A different knowing and a different self. A different knowing and a different self. The knowing there are to know here is not used with reference to conceptual knowing, analytical knowing, knowing through thought structures, thoughts, words, concepts. There is a deeper knowing that is non conceptual. And there is a deeper self than the conceptual entity, that is the egoic entity, the self that the Buddha described as an illusion, that is the conceptual entity. There is a deeper self that in Buddhism is described as the no self, and in Hindu teachings is described as the transcendent self, the Atman. So the inscription on the Temple of Delphi refers to that. First of all, the knowing is not the conceptual knowing. There is another way of knowing, and there is another self other than the self that you are familiar with, that you call your life, me and my life. So that's important to know. And the key is given in these two words. You are, that is the key to knowing yourself. And you are is the realization of being, which is the transcendent self.