This is a YouTube video titled "Who Are You? | Eckhart Tolle Reads A Course in Miracles" created in May 2023. The content features Eckhart Tolle reading and commenting on selected quotes from the spiritual text "A Course in Miracles." The video explores themes of self-knowledge, letting go of mental concepts, and deeper spiritual understanding, with Tolle providing insights into the text's meaning and significance.
So let us be still an instant and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean and what their purpose is. Well, today I'd like to read to you and comment on some brief quotes from A Course in Miracles. A few years ago I gave a talk about the Course in Miracles in a little bit more detail. The Course in Miracles. I don't know if you have read it or done it or heard of it. It's a channeled book, first channeled in the 60s, later part of the 60s, and first published in probably 76 and it's been around since then, become a kind of spiritual classic. It's one of the few channeled books that are deep and quite profound. It's not for everybody, definitely. It uses Christian terminology, but reinterprets Christianity so that it becomes a very deep teaching. Perhaps that's the original teaching of Jesus. It was channeled by a psychologist, clinical psychologist at Columbia University in New York. So she didn't understand the content very well, having little spiritual background. So it was dictated to her by an inner voice. So the Christian terminology is helpful to some people and a hindrance for others. It uses this old fashioned language with exclusively masculine pronouns and God the Father and talking about God as He. That may be considered a limitation, but you can look beyond that today. I would like to, instead of using the entire course here, which is a big book, I don't even have it right here. This book was published, just a little volume here of quotes from the Course in Miracles. And it's called Accept this Selections from a Course in Miracles, foreword by Marian Williamson, published by Tartar Cornerstone Editions. And the quotes are quite very short and beautiful. And they selected also quotes that are relatively neutral in their language. So you don't get a lot of the masculine pronouns and old fashioned terminology. So what I will do today is just select a few of these very brief quotes and comment on them. This does not mean I'm simplifying the Course in Miracles or reducing it to something simple. With a spiritual text, it's very different on other kinds of texts. It does not work in a cumulative sense. So the truth can be contained. The entire truth can be obtained in one sentence. So it operates in the dimension of depth, not extension. Although of course, paradoxically, the Course in Miracles contains lessons. One part is the text, the other part is the lessons. 365 lessons, one for each day of the year. So it gives you time in that sense, but it gives you time because you need Time to remove time from your mind, so to speak. That's quite a paradox. Some of the course in miracle writings are quite poetic. They're almost like little poems. And maybe I'll start with one of those little almost poems. They're quite beautiful. And perhaps the most profound one that I will start with comes towards the end of the course, which is if somebody does the course360. So it would be towards the end of the year, during the course. This is the longest quote in our session today. So it's actually a poem that I will read to you and I think you will appreciate the beauty of it. And then I will comment on the meaning in case you need it. You probably don't. I don't know yet if I'm going to read it all at once or read parts first and then comment on each part. It's about a couple of pages, well, short pages. There will come a time when images have all gone by and you will see you know not what you are. It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by, is truth revealed exactly as it is. That's the first paragraph poem. Let me just briefly comment. There will come a time when images have all gone by and you will see you know not what you are. It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns unhindered and unbound, where concepts of the self have been laid by, its truth revealed exactly as it is. Images have all gone by, and you will see, you know not what you are. Now what does that mean? Somewhere else in the course it uses the ancient expression know thyself as one of the main purposes of the course is to teach you to know yourself. Know thyself. Don't know if I can find it. And it doesn't it. How does that relate to a time will come when you will realize that you know not what you are. How can you know yourself? And then it says time will come as a positive thing that you know not what you are. Well, that's easily explained. To know yourself, you have to let go of concepts about yourself. And when you let go of concepts, mentally held concepts about yourself, then you no longer know who or what you are on the level of concept. And when you have, then let go of concepts where concepts of the self have been laid by, let go of is truth revealed exactly as it is. So when you surrender mental concepts about who you are, which is stories, narratives, interpretations, then another dimension of Knowing arises, which is deeper or higher. It doesn't matter what term you use. Then concepts. And instead of conceptual knowledge which you let go of, a deeper dimension of knowing arises. And in that deeper dimension of knowing that is not conceptual, it's not based on thinking. The truth of who you are reveals itself. That's the essence of all. Whether you look at Indian or Hindu teachings, Buddhist teachings, mystical Christianity, it's all the same Sufism. Now let's carry on with this poem on the same theme. I call it Poem. It's just part of the text. Let us be still an instant and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean and what their purpose is. Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world is for we do not know. Let every image held of everyone be loosened from our minds and swept away. Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thoughts of evil or of good that ever crossed your mind of anyone. Now do you know him not? But you are free to learn of him and learn of him anew, him being any other person. So this action here points to the clarity that comes, the deep realization that comes when you let go of thinking, basically. So let us be still an instant and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean and what their purpose is. Let every image held of everyone be loosened from our minds and swept away. So it's not only about ourselves letting go of self concepts. It's also about letting go of concepts that we hold of other people. Judgments, concepts, conceptualization. So meeting another person without any concepts. So you let go of the conceptual knowing so that a deeper knowing arises. Be innocent of judgment, it says. Judgment is basically interpreting things through thinking. Every judgment is a thought. Jesus also said, do not judge. So be unaware of any thoughts of evil or of good that ever crossed your mind of anyone. Now, do you know him? Not Once you've let go, you don't know him or her. See, we have the masculine pronouns. But you are free to learn of him and learn of him anew. What are you learning? You are learning about the deeper reality of the human being, of who he or she is in their essence, and then knowing yourself in the same way. Now the kid continues, only be quiet. You will need no rule but this to let your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world and free your vision from the body's eyes. Only be still and listen. Simply do this. Be still and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is. All concepts you have learned about the world, all images you hold about yourself.
