Eckhart Tolle argues that picturing God as an old bearded man limits understanding of what is actually an unnameable, boundless intelligence that can't be captured by language or concepts. He describes this presence as something you can sense when your mind becomes still, a sacred invisible force both within and beyond you.
Every cell of the body has partakes of that intelligence and it's all organized, coordinated continuously until one day this vast intelligence that is the invisible you decides to depart and then it goes— It's still you for a while. This is another— we may go on to that some other time. Don't have to, or when you're dead you'll find out anyway. So when the time has come, this beautiful consciousness, the inhabiting presence that made this body possible and held all the atoms and molecules together as an intelligent, highly intelligent organism, at some point something happens and this thing departs. Pshh! And then the body is still there, but not for long. All the atoms and molecules say, "What are we doing here? We don't need to be here anymore. Let's go somewhere else." And they go.— and then a few bones are left, and that's it. And the bones could survive 1,000 years, but nothing much. And so it's— the body then quickly dissolves into nothingness. So the presence is gone, and we call it death. Tolle. God, then— I don't use that word very much because the moment you say God, it creates an image in your mind of an entity, a finite entity, because the word is kind of encapsulated— God. And traditionally we have I see, not anymore perhaps, we've gone beyond that, but for a long time, everybody in the Christian tradition, everybody thought of God as an old man with a beard. You can still see him in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, it's the guy with a beard that goes, "Mmm." and traditionally been regarded as a kind of controlling father figure, the ultimate father figure, and that is very limiting, and that's why many people these days find it hard to believe in God, because they say, this can't be right, they say, because if it's God, God must be omnipotent and omniscient, which means he can do anything and he knows everything. And so they say, because if he doesn't, if he cannot do anything and doesn't know everything, then he's not God. And then the next step is, they say, look at all the suffering in this world, all the dreadful things that happen in this world, If there is a God, God must be omnipotent. And if God, if there is an omnipotent God who does not, who allows all this suffering to happen, then it's not God. Because then they say, my morals are higher than this guy's, because then, because I wouldn't allow all this suffering to happen if I were, so therefore I would be superior. And then the next step is say, therefore there is no God. Okay, and as far as this childlike image is concerned, they may be right, not as God, not as a controlling father figure somewhere and who doesn't do his job. There is a more open way of looking at, not just thinking about, looking at and sensing and perceiving this all-pervasive intelligence that, as I see it, is an emanation of this one unnameable source of all life that we call God. Like the sun emanates light, God— and God does not exist as such, because exist means to— ex means out, to stand out. God is not an entity in space and time. God is cannot be known or understood. It would be absurd to try to know or understand, but I'm trying anyway. But the— this unnamable source of all life emanates into the light of God is consciousness. It emanates into this world of space and time where gradually The world is— God is awakening into this world and continuously incarnating into this world, and this is the world of space and time, and here gradually the universe is undergoing a gradual awakening process. God itself is beyond space and time, doesn't undergo any process, but it sends God sends out— oh, by the way, I find it very hard to call God 'he' because you're limited already. 'It' is also difficult and 'she' also limits it. So maybe one day I'm going to ask God, 'What are your pronouns?' and then God will come up perhaps with a good, very good pronoun, but so far we don't have one. So there's an— and this, if you can sense, if your mind becomes still, there's a stillness in you, then you can there's a presence that you become aware of that is within and without, especially if you're out in nature or in a still, in a quiet room. You can sense that you are— there's not just the stillness within you into presence, the presence is also within and without. In this room, we could sense, if you're still enough for a moment, You can sense that the space of this room is also a presence, an invisible presence. So when you're really present, then you notice— I reluctantly use that word— that presence is sacred. There is a sacred presence that pervades this world.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
