In this solo teaching, Eckhart Tolle explains that the ego—both individual and collective—thrives on differentiation from an "other." He illustrates how identities built on race, possessions, or the body dissolve when the imagined need for otherness is removed, using vivid scenarios such as a world where everyone shares the same race or everyone receives a Ferrari at age 21. Tolle distinguishes between the surface "I" (the form identity that includes the body, achievements, and social labels) and the deeper essence identity that remains when form identity is seen for what it is. He describes the surface "I" as part of the horizontal dimension of reality where time, actions, and external phenomena play out, and urges listeners to honor this form identity without being bound by it, thereby moving beyond the egoic state toward spiritual awakening.
Chapters
One morning you wake up and everybody in the entire world is exactly the same race and color as you. Everybody, whatever it is, black, white, brown, whatever. What happened? And suddenly, if you had an identity, or if, if that was the main part of your identity, then suddenly it dissolves because that imaginary world that I just described that you wake up in does not even have a word for race, because if there's no other, there's no word for it. The ego, egoic sense of self, is a stage in human evolution that has had its function, but we are approaching the end of the egoic state of evolution, so that we need to now go beyond it, because if we don't, this ego, which I've been talking about, the individual ego— there's also a collective aspect to the ego, there's a collective ego that humans can identify with, and there's the individual ego that humans can identify with. The ego needs the other to differentiate itself from. It needs its enemies. Without the other— emphasizing as much as possible the otherness of others, You cannot contain, you cannot sustain your egoic sense of self. The ego needs that. So the ego— let's just give, I'll give one or two examples to see how it works. Let's say a certain possession you have, then you identify with that. You have a, what is it, great, whatever the great cars are, don't know, Ferrari or whatever people like, I don't know. Ferrari is a great ego car, by the way. It makes a lot of noise that says, look at me, me, me. So if you have Ferrari that can temporarily amplify your ego, Imagine a world where everybody at the age of 21 gets the gift of a Ferrari. It suddenly can't fulfill its purpose anymore because there's the other. There's no superiority anymore. Naturally, you identify with your body. The body may have a certain— has a certain color. Race is something important for many people to identify with. And of course, it has its place. I'm not saying let go completely. What I'm saying is, if you awaken spiritually, it does not take you over completely. It becomes part of your form identity. That is all that we've been talking about in the ego. I call that your form identity. And deeper than that, and we'll get to that, is your essence identity. So all this externals is your possessions, achievements, body, or race. It's another example. If race is important to you, it may be, that's fine. Imagine that you— it's a— you could have a— you can write a novel about that. It's an imaginary scenario. One morning you wake up and everybody in the entire world is exactly the same race and color as you. Everybody, whatever it is, black, white, brown, whatever. What happened? And suddenly, if you had an identity, or if If that was the main part of your identity, then suddenly it dissolves because that imaginary world that I just described that you wake up in does not even have a word for race. Because if there's no other, there's no word for it. If everything in this world were green, you wouldn't have a word for green because there's no differentiation. So the ego needs the other. and it's— no, as far as form identity is concerned, it is something to be honored. I'm not suggesting you should completely reject everything to do with your form identity. It has its place. The physical body has its place. Your race has its place. Your anything external that you have, it is a place for having things. You have certain possessions, that's fine. This is the— I'd like to suggest another concept that might be a helpful pointer. The What we are talking about here, so far we've been talking mainly about the ego, because we need to recognize how it works so that we can go beyond it. We've been talking about the ego, so I sometimes describe that as the surface 'I', the 'I' that exists on the surface of life. And the surface of life is your physical existence, your physical entity, all the extra so-called external things that surround you, which ultimately are all mental phenomena. We don't even know if there's anything actually out there. They're all mental phenomena. So this is the so-called external world. This is your surface reality. You just your surface 'I.' This is the— but your surface 'I' is not just the physical realm. Your surface 'I' is also the psychological entity of the ego in you, the invisible person with its conditioned mental-emotional conditioning. That also is the surface 'I.' And so This is what we could describe as the horizontal dimension of reality, the horizontal dimension where life unfolds, and you have a form, form identity, surface, I, that has— you have to see, recognize it for what it is, honor it. You're not ultimately— you're not your body, but you need to give attention to your physical body, look after it, and honor whatever there is on the surface of existence, which is all that. It's where time operates, past and future, where you do things, where you achieve things, where you acquire new skills. Everything requires time on this horizontal level of reality. You—
