What Do You Think About Near Death Experiences? | Eckhart Tolle

When you die, there is a freedom that comes, because— but the freedom you have already found in this lifetime, because you have died to this identification with form. Every human being is consciousness manifesting as a temporary form, taking form as what we perceive as a human being. So the human being itself is a manifestation of consciousness and ultimately no other than consciousness. The death experience, when you die, what happens? There's a question here that I might as well answer at the same time about death. It's quite a— I laughed a little when I saw it. Why is it that we need to awaken? We all die anyway. That seems to make sense. Is it that you are still awakened after death and the next lifetimes in eternity? Now, if you have experienced, I don't know if you have been with somebody, if you sat with somebody who died, who is dying, I don't know if you have experienced it, then you will have experienced, if you're able to surrender to that moment, it's a very sacred thing, a very sacred moment, and there's the moment when the transition happens between this body being inhabited by this field of consciousness, and then suddenly the body is just a body, and there's a huge difference. And you immediately see this body was never that being. It just looked like that being. So that being, as I said earlier, we're all ultimately invisible, and what is— what you see of another person is relatively insignificant and not destined to survive. So my intuition is— I'll verify it, I'll come back to you after I've died and let you know whether it's correct— the person does not survive, the personal sense of self does not survive, but that which is deeper than the person in you as, let's call it, a spark of consciousness, that form— first you are the physical form. Deeper than the physical form, you are the consciousness that inhabits the form, and that consciousness is inseparable from the one consciousness. There is no separate consciousness. Consciousness does not have a plural. There are no consciousnesses. Consciousness is a singular. There's only one consciousness that manifests as, we could call it, a ray, or as a ray of consciousness. You are this ray of consciousness. As a ray of consciousness, consciousness is not subject to birth and death, so it is timeless. This ray of consciousness that you appear as this particular person does not necessarily immediately dissolve into total anonymity. It remains in most cases as a particular ray, but it's not the person anymore. What happens then? It returns briefly to the source in the same way that a bee returns, goes to the beehive and deposits what it has collected. And every human is the one consciousness experiencing and learning and evolving in some way, even the most insignificant life form is the one consciousness evolving and learning. And what it has learned, not the details, but the essence, it contributes something to the whole. That is an intuition that came to me some time ago, and I believe it. There's some truth in it, but we can only speak of it in terms of analogies. So what you— your growth in consciousness becomes part of the one consciousness. So So the who you are in your essence survives, does not ultimately— there is no death. And when you die as an ego in this lifetime, this is called die before you die, then you already know that as a living experience that you in your essence are beyond death. And that's the beautiful thing when the ego goes. Then you die before you die, and you can sense the essence that you are. So I'm never going to die, and you are not either. But the, of course, the body dissolves. The body will dissolve. What is your level of consciousness throughout your life and as you die, that is an important factor in what happens after that. There are people who tell me that I don't want to reincarnate again, I don't want to come back, it's so hard, please don't let me come back. And then there are others who say, I hope I'm going to come back because I don't want to disappear into nothingness, I really hope I'm going to come back. Reincarnation, is reincarnation a fact? Yes, but I would like to bring reincarnation into something that you can actually experience firsthand here and now. The deeper meaning of reincarnation as I see it is you identify with form, then you reincarnate. Carnate comes from flesh. Flesh means form. Carnate, 'Con carne,' it's flesh. So you reincarnate, which means you identify with form, then you reincarnate into a form. Reincarnation is identification with form. How do I go beyond reincarnation? You have to do that here and now, and that means that is what we are doing here, do not identify with thought forms in your head. That is the most basic reincarnation that happens continually to human beings, is the complete identification with every thought form that comes into their heads, and then they become it. "Ooh, ooh, that's how it is, let me tell you." You can see how completely identified they are with thought, So the consciousness is completely drawn into the form. The consciousness that they are, the consciousness that you are, is completely drawn into form. It does not know itself as consciousness. It only knows itself as form. And that is the compulsion to reincarnate, which most humans who are not awakened, or at least awakening, still have. And you can extrapolate from there that when you have this compulsion in your— throughout your lifetime, the compulsion to reincarnate will continue after this body dissolves. But if you have gone beyond the compulsion to reincarnate in this lifetime, which means identify with every thought and every emotion that comes up, when you have recognized the essence of who you are beyond form, that realization does not leave you. You are— when you die, there is a freedom that comes because— but the freedom you have already found in this lifetime because you have died to this identification with form.