What Is the Essence of Every Human? | Eckhart Tolle Explains How We Are All Connected

So consciousness to me is the emanation of God, like the light of the sun, which expresses itself as the universe. The essence of every human is immortal because the one life is beyond life and death. It's eternal. It's only in this dimension that time seems to be real. So God expresses itself as you.

One of the challenges I faced when I first started reading your books and in the experience I was going through at the time, is something that everyone in here shares, the experience of losing someone they love. So a lot of things, if you lose them, you might even say your money. A spiritualist might say, well, that's probably a good thing. You'll be in a better place when you realize you don't need money. But when you lose a child or a spouse, you know, being present, how do you, how does, how do you be present with that and make everything okay? Because sometimes it's not okay. It'll never be okay again. But some people might feel like their lives are over. I don't have that thing that I love.

Yes.

How do you deal with that?

Yes. Deep loss. Whether it's through somebody close to you who died, or there's also a sense of deep loss. If a relationship like a marriage that lasted for a long time suddenly comes to an end, it's also a kind of death. And so there can be the emotions that then arise. Of sadness. You may find yourself, periodically, it comes in waves, periodically you cry and the deep emotion of sadness comes. The important thing is to bring acceptance to what has happened. At first it may be difficult. The first thing, you cannot accept the death or the loss, but that's okay. But what you can do is you can accept the emotions that you feel at this moment. It's natural. You don't feel, oh, I shouldn't be. No, you should. This is natural. So you accept that there's this deep sadness and that it comes in waves and you cry. And then gradually you realize certain things, that everything in this world is, as the Buddhists say, is impermanent. If you live with a partner, sooner or later he or she will leave you or you will leave him or her because one of you will die first. So everything, there's an impermanence built into everything in life. Nothing lasts forever. And the sense perceived universe is not as solid as it seems to be. The structures are not as solid as they appear. If you live in a western country, you often get the impression that everything is. There's a solidity to the external world. If you go to another country like India, you Realize that things are not as solid as they are. Even the buildings look a bit shaky. And things are not as organized. Things don't work very well. You see, in many third world countries you see old and decrepit people in the street, which in the west very rarely see, because old people and sick people are in buildings. They are kept away. They say they are looked after, okay, but you don't get a real sense of the reality of life in the west, because old age and madness and sickness, I'm not saying they shouldn't be, but the fact is, people who are approaching death, unless they are close relatives and you visit them, you don't see them in the third World. This is everywhere around you. So you get more of a sense of the nature of the fleetingness of human life, of every human life. The also all these things that you have life insurance here, and you think there's a solid foundation to your existence. It's not Anything could happen any moment. Life insurance is an illusion. It's fine, it has a function on a practical level, but really, first of all, it should be called death insurance, because you can't. It's about death, it's not about life. So but if you called it death insurance, nobody want to buy it. So there's a fleetingness to it. So once you get a sense of that, first you come to a sense of acceptance of it. And when it happens, first you accept the emotions that you feel. And then you may be able to accept that this has happened without too much of imposing a narrative on it. Although you could, depending on your beliefs, because you may believe that the essence of who they are has not died. And in a way that is, I would suggest, the truth. Because the essence of a human being, you can so see so clearly that if you look at a dead body, you can see so clearly that that body was never the true being that was there. The essence is gone, that human being. And so some people can even feel that that person is still there. The essence of that person is still there. So I want to. But I'd like to be able to suggest that even without having any particular belief, you can still come to an acceptance of the short lived nature of all forms, so that you do not. The period of mourning after great loss is natural and should be allowed to happen. But if you then impose a narrative on that which is negative, that can prolong the sadness that you feel for many, many years, or the anger that you feel about it. You feel that it is unjust that this happened. And so on which are all mental judgments. And then it is normal for a period of sadness, whether it lasts a few months or a year or two years. And then you practice surrender. And surrender is really the deeper acceptance, surrender to the isness of life. There's a story of the Buddha. A mother came to the Buddha and said was weeping because her child had died and was asking for advice. The Buddha and the Buddha says, okay, I'll tell you what to do in this village or town where you live. Go from one house to another and ask them whether they have ever had a death in their family and then come back to me. So she went from one house to another. It took several days and then she came back to the Buddha. And there was a relief because in every house that she came to, she had heard, they confirmed that, yes, they had also experienced people dying. Yes, yes, yes. And suddenly she was able to come to an acceptance, to surrender. But in that surrender there is a strange realization comes. Surrender means you're not judging this anymore as good or bad. You just accept the isness of that, in that. I experienced it when my parents died, both in the same year, although they didn't even live together and didn't even live in the same country. They were divorced many years ago, but they both died within six months of each other. So in that year I had the two. There was the death of my mother in the summer and the death of my dad in the fall. So twice I sat with first my mom's dead body, and then a few months later with my dad's dead body. And there were tears, I cried, then they subsided, then tears came again subside. And I sat with a dead body. And suddenly I could sense this deep peace underneath the sadness. So there was both the sadness, but with the surrender came also a deep peace. And that peace was something feeling my own essence. But in feeling my own essence, in this. And this is really what we've been talking about today, also getting in touch with that. The deepest level in you which cannot be seen. There's a beautiful quote from a French book. What is essential is invisible to the eye. Whatever is essential is invisible to the eye. So what I see in a human being, I see the body.

And.

And I see whatever their mind, the words I hear, whatever I perceive is their mind and their body, their personality. But the essential thing about the human being is deeper than that. The essential thing about me is deeper than any thought or any emotion, it's consciousness itself. And so in that peace that I felt underneath the sadness, I could Also feel the essence of my mother and father as a deathless essence. And I don't even want to say whether it's reincarnation or no reincarnation. But every human being is like a spark of the divine. I see consciousness, that is the essence of every human being, of every being is like array of. If you take the analogy of God. Let's take in this analogy, God is the sun. As you know, in the past, in other cultures, they worship the sun because the sun is life giving. It gives force of itself continuously. It gives and gives. It pours out energy continuously. And every life on this planet is the life of the sun. The warmth in your body comes from the sun, it's calories. So the sun is in you. The sun can be used therefore, as an analogy in the sense perceived universe for God, which of course God is not. In the sense perceived universe, God transcends the sense perceived universe or anything we could imagine, even talk about. And yet I'm talking about it. And then you have the sun, then you have the sunlight. The sunlight comes from the sun, and the sunlight gives life to everything here. Now, is the sunlight separate from the sun? No, it's an extension of the sun. There's not a separation. The sun extends. You can't even say exactly where the sun ends. It has no surface as such. So you could say that the sun ends wherever the light of the sun ends, which would be beyond the earth. So in this, this is an analogy then, for what to me God is and what consciousness is to me, the consciousness that is the essence of every being. Oh, by the way, consciousness to me also manifests in every life form. That to me solid, so called inanimate matter is like frozen consciousness. Plant life is like consciousness in a different state. The human mind is like consciousness, like water. You can have water in different states. You can have water as ice, you can have water as liquid, you can have water as vapor. So consciousness can exist in many different states, but the entire life is an expression of the one consciousness which emanates from the source, from God, the central intelligence of all life. And so every human is an expression, a temporary expression of the central intelligence of all life. Briefly, very brief, and in a cosmic scale. Every human life is a flicker. If you could see the planet, humans on the planet, a human life on the planet on a cosmic scale, one human life would go like just a spark and it's gone. And so there are billions of sparks on the planet. The one consciousness continuously expressing itself in forms. But of course, we attach Names to the sparks. So the. The essence of all life is really divine. Consciousness is the light of consciousness is not God in the same sense that the light is not the sun. And yet it is. So consciousness to me is the emanation of God, like the light of the sun, which expresses itself as the universe. And so as that, the essence of every human is immortal. Because the one life is beyond life and death. It's eternal. God is eternal. It's not subject to time. It's only in this dimension that time seems to be real. So God expresses itself as you, as me, as even as the dog, in a different form, as the flower. These are expressions of the One. And then when you recognize that now, does this particular expression of the One, which is a human being in a human body, does this particular expression of the One still continue in its seemingly separate, individualized state, even after the body has dissolved? So does this particular expression of consciousness, I.e. you or somebody close to you who died, does this particular expression of consciousness still continue to express itself as a particularized expression of consciousness? Or does it immediately go back to the one consciousness? This is something that one can look at. My suggestion would be that for a while it continues on its journey as a seemingly separate entity, even after one particular body has dissolved. So, in other words, it's not immediately absorbed in the Oneness again. It continues for a while as perhaps other separate existences. The journey continues. And so in that way, the universe becomes more and more conscious. Now, God exists in a transcendent dimension that is timeless. So in that sense, God does not need to become more conscious. But when God expresses itself in our dimension here, there is a seeming evolution of consciousness. In other words, one could say that God gradually is expressing him, her itself, gradually more and more fully in this dimension. And I think what I've just said now is the most one could say I've already said too much. Because the mystery of the universe cannot be contained in words. It.