Eckhart TolleNYT Bestselling author of the Power of Now

What It Means to Be Spiritually Unconscious

17 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief excerpt, Eckhart Tolle explains that being spiritually unconscious means being completely identified with the relentless stream of thoughts in one's mind. When a person identifies with each thought, the thought dominates their sense of self, making the inner voice the basis for personal identity. Tolle notes that this condition—deriving one's self‑concept from the mental chatter—is the everyday reality for millions of people worldwide.

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Unconscious in a spiritual sense means completely identified with the compulsive, incessant thought processes in your heads, identified with every thought that comes into your head. So when you identify with the thought, the thought has you in its grip. To such an extent that every thought has a sense of self in it. So you derive your sense of self, of who you are, from the voice in the head. And that is for still millions of humans on the planet, that is still their daily reality.