In this lecture Eckhart Tolle explores the metaphor that ordinary life resembles a dream, drawing on philosophical, religious, and cultural ideas about reincarnation and the fleeting nature of experience. He explains that each lifetime can be seen as a dream entered to raise consciousness, and that through successive incarnations one can become a "lucid dreamer"—a state of conscious living. Tolle argues that the only thing that can be known with absolute certainty is the presence of consciousness itself, which underlies all experience, whether the world is a dream or reality. By directing attention inward and recognizing oneself as timeless consciousness rather than a temporary psychological or physical identity, one can dissolve the fear of death. He illustrates impermanence with historical footage of people who have long since vanished, emphasizing that all forms dissolve, but the underlying consciousness remains. The talk concludes that awakening to this timeless essence—what various traditions call eternal life, the kingdom of heaven, or the deathless realm—liberates one from death anxiety.
Chapters
All this could be a dream, and many philosophers have argued that normal existence is very much like a dream, or say it is actually a dream, but it is a little bit like a dream because everything that you experience evaporates fairly quickly, just like a dream. In some traditions, you regard— they regard reincarnation, which is a— many cultures believe that reincarnation is a fact. There was a time in early Christianity where there was some belief also, but then they didn't like it anymore. That every time you incarnate in order to become more conscious, in order to raise the vibrational frequency of this invisible entity that you call you, you enter another dream and another dream. Every lifetime could be regarded as a dream that you enter. And gradually within these dreams you become more conscious with every dream until eventually you're able to have a lucid dream, which means you become really conscious in this lifetime. You all know what What a lucid dream is in normal life, occasionally it happens to people when you're dreaming, you're in bed and dreaming, and in the middle of the dream you know that you're dreaming. Oh wow, this is just a dream. Then the dream, even if it was not a pleasant dream, the dream is not threatening anymore because you know it's just a dream. And then you say, oh well, I could probably do anything and it wouldn't matter. Because it's just a dream. And sometimes you can actually do things, but not for long, because when you're really— when there's a lucid dream, you become conscious that you're dreaming. The dream very soon will come to an end, because it seems the 2 states of being conscious and dreaming are not really compatible for very long. So when you wake up— Yeah. Then you wake up and say, oh, that was interesting, I had a lucid dream. Now, if every lifetime can be regarded as a kind of dream, you lose yourself in the dream and then you wake up again. And after a few lifetimes, you don't lose yourself in the dream anymore, and that's called a spiritual awakening. When you awaken to a— and that's called conscious living, is a lucid dream. lucid living rather than lucid dreaming. In order to make it more experiential, you could say all this could be a dream, and many philosophers have argued that normal existence is very much like a dream, or they say it is actually a dream, but it is a little bit like a dream because everything that you experience evaporates fairly quickly, just like a dream. So all the— whatever happened this morning or yesterday or 10 years ago, it's gone. It leaves some traces behind as memories, but there's a dreamlike quality because nothing lasts for very long. Every experience is fleeting, the fleeting nature of all experiences subject to impermanence. So in that sense, it's very much like a dream. And you could say, well, maybe— Maybe you are dreaming that you're sitting here in this church listening to a man talking and this man is saying to you in your dream that you may be dreaming. You will never know for sure that you're not dreaming. Maybe it is a bit like, very much like a dream. Am I really, am I dreaming this? So next question arises. This is a question that Oprah used to ask people that she interviewed. As a last question, she would ask people, what do you know for sure? And people gave all kinds of answers, whatever they thought they knew for sure. I can't even remember if she asked me, and I'm not sure— I can't remember what answer I gave. I hope I gave the correct answer because there's only one correct answer. There's only one correct answer. Now, I'll tell you what this is in a minute. Of course, people gave all kinds of answers. I know for sure most of the things they didn't really know for sure, but the only correct answer— there's only one thing that can you know for sure, absolutely, because everything else may be a dream. What is it? And the only thing that you can know for sure is that you are conscious of whatever it is you're experiencing now. There is a consciousness in which this experience arises. If there were no consciousness, there would be no experience. Whether you call this experience actual reality or dream, it doesn't really matter. Even if it's a dream, there must be something that is real in the dream. And that's the consciousness. Without consciousness, no dream. There's a consciousness in which the dream arises. And so let's say this is a dream. Okay, in fact, it is a bit like a dream. Life is a bit like a dream because it evaporates. If you look at— if you look at— I like to sometimes watch on YouTube, clips of little clips that filmed early cameras. They had them in 1910, 1920. They have cameras at street scenes in New York, in London, people running around the streets and groups of lots of people. You see them all. They're all— these physical forms have dissolved completely now. It's not that many years, 100 years. They've dissolved completely and you look at them and nobody knows who they are anymore. But they all had their important problems and they were running around totally immersed in this dreamlike existence. Oh my God, what's going to happen now? And then they're dead. All problems dissolved completely. Solution to all your problems gone. Oh. It wasn't— that was it? Yeah, okay. So if we took a picture of us here and then 100 years later, or let's say 150 years, give it a bit more time, people say, you have a photo of a church and a person was talking, and who are these people? I don't know. They're gone completely, dissolved. All these are— but then there's, oh, this guy, he looks like— wasn't there this guy Eckhart Tolle? He wrote some books that are not available anymore now. They're out of— Oh yeah, maybe, but that's just a name. It's gone too, completely dissolved. So there is a dreamlike quality to life. But the essence behind the dream is the consciousness. And that's the awakening. If you can awaken to that, then you lose the fear of death also, because that— when you awaken to the fact that the essence of you is consciousness, and you sense and feel that at this moment, If you let go for a moment of all your memories, all your history— let's assume you have no history. Who are you without your history? What's left of you? What is your sense of being without your history? Is there anything left? And what is it that is left? There's something left, but it's hard to name it. There's a presence, a beingness, a sense of I am, but without— and that is your essence identity. That is the timeless identity that is beyond death. That is what Jesus called eternal life. Or the kingdom of heaven. That is what in Buddhism is called Amara Bhāti, the deathless realm, the deathless dimension. That is the liberation from the fear of death, to realize yourself as consciousness itself before it becomes something, before it becomes a physical form, becomes a mental form. Emotional form. Consciousness incarnates into forms continuously. Every form is subject to death and decay. Physical form. But you are the timeless consciousness that experiences itself as a temporary physical vehicle and a temporary psychological entity that survives longer than the physical vehicle, but not forever either, because it goes through metamorphosis. and eventually ascends. But let's, you know, not go that way at the moment. So that's a liberation from a narrow sense of identity, and that's, I would suggest, that's becoming free of the fear of death. That's a— I don't know, this is very vital, a very simple knowledge that could be taught. To direct your attention within so that your consciousness is not— is no longer totally identified with the psychological entity of you that is a person. That is the awakening within the dream.
