This is a YouTube video titled "What is the Purpose of The Ego in the Awakening Process | Q&A Eckhart Tolle" containing a spiritual discussion from July 1, 2021. The content features a dialogue between two speakers exploring the role of the ego in human consciousness and awakening, touching on themes such as the evolution of consciousness, spiritual realization, and the nature of energy. Although it is a conversation with multiple speakers, Eckhart Tolle is not explicitly identified as one of them in the excerpt.
Do we need ego only for the purpose to find out that we are not it? Or could it be useful for anything else? Ego is a necessary stage to go through, because there is a pre egoic stage. For humans, there was where they live in relative happiness compared to the egoic state, in a simple oneness with nature, with each other, in tribal communities. But for the growth of consciousness, we have to go through the egoic stage, form identity developing. The ego is not to be totally. The ego has its purpose. You cannot become awakened without going through the ego. It's like having those pre egoic societies. People lived in oneness with nature. They didn't even know it. They didn't know that they lived in oneness with nature. They just did. So in order to experience or to know something at a deeper level, you have to go through a loss of it first. You go through a loss, as described in the parable of what is called the prodigal son in the New Testament. The prodigal son is the son of a father who loves him and is wealthy, but he wants to lead his own life. He leaves the father's home, goes to foreign country, gradually squanders his wealth and becomes destitute. He loses his connection to the source of happiness and wealth. And then messengers come to remind him who he is and that the father wants him back. So he then returns to the father's home, and then he is known by the father. And the father loves him more now, so. Or he is back home, but it's not the same home as before. There is an added dimension to it that wasn't there before. So we are all prodigal sons. We have to lose our sense of oneness in order to regain it at a deeper, more conscious level. Our connectedness to the source before it was an unconscious connectedness which just resulted in relatively unproblematic life, simple unproblematic life. And then so it's paradise lost and paradise regained. When paradise is regained, it is regained at a much deeper level than before. There's an added dimension of consciousness there. And that is there because we moved through the egoic stage. And what we learned in the egoic stage will not be totally discarded. The form identity remains. Our next stage is in the evolution of humanities. Once humans are rooted in being, the next stage is conscious creation, where humans can manifest without having to go through the laborious processes that at the moment, we still have to go through factories, heavy technology for the history, for the future of humanity. I don't necessarily see an ever increasing technology it is more likely that technology is one branch of humans development, but not the branch that will lead further up the tree. The ability to manifest through consciousness, will you already have it? To some extent. There are things that you can manifest in your life, especially if you are rooted in the consciousness. So it's not the ego that wants to manifest, but the consciousness ones can use you as a vehicle for what it wants to manifest consciously in this world. So a time will come when we can manifest what now we laboriously produce energy. It's absurd how we use where we seek energy in fossil fuels and so on. Ultimately, obviously the next step is there are two inexhaustible sources of energy. One is outer and one is inner. The outer inexhaustible energy is our sun. It's an outpouring of energy and it's virtually limitless. Although we know that the sun has a lifespan, but that is not relevant to us because the lifespan is a few more million years and that is an inexhaustible supply of energy on the outer. And then even the sun is only an external expression of the inexhaustible energy that is the source of all life. So it's just an outer manifestation. And this is why ancient traditions worshiped the sun, because in a way one could say, well, that's very much like God, because it's a continuous giving of life. It's a life giving entity, not asking anything back. It just gives of itself continuously. So when people say energy is limited, of course energy is not limited. It's only the way we look for it that's limited. If we continue to look for it in fossil fuels and so on, that's limited and can be very harmful. But energy itself is not limited. The sun is unlimited and the source of all life is unlimited. We just have to find. So the next step is using sun energy and then after that is being able to use the energy source energy for creation. You can't even imagine, even science fiction books can't even think of any that have even thought of what life can be when humans can effortlessly generate or manifest what they need or want. But it won't be. They will not manifest superfluous or unnecessary things as the ego would. So let's not go too far into that.
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 person.
