Eckhart Tolle interview with host Nina Rhodes 1998

[Music] hello welcome to contact I'm Nina Rhodes and today we are truly privileged to have as our guest mr. Eckhart Tolle who has written a wonderful book called the power of now a guide to spiritual enlightenment and I want to meet him immediately because this book is so fascinating and gives us all the information we really need to know about living life to its fullest welcome back heart thank you I I have read the book and I cannot tell you how important it has been to my life and I know that this was an incredible journey that took you to writing this wonderful book so would you kindly enlighten us as to what your journey was well it kind of goes back to my early twenties I'll just briefly tell you a psychological transformation that I went through at that time virtually an overnight transformation I just been awarded a scholarship research scholarship for Cambridge University so I've been doing quite well on an external level everybody considered that I was my life was successful but inside was suffering from very deep depressions and continuously anxiety you know had been suffering from that for years so I was actually miserably unhappy well everybody else around me thought that I was a very successful person so there was one night when I reached a kind of depth of a depression and a thought kept reoccurring in my mind that I can't live with myself any longer the pain this dreadful unhappiness is too much I can't take it anymore I can't believe with myself any longer and that sentence became a trigger for transformation I cannot live with myself any longer and suddenly I thought what does this mean who is the I and who is the self that I cannot live with there was a kind of separation that occurred at that moment I separated myself my sense of identity separated from the unhappy depressed and anxious person and suddenly there was me here observing that unhappy self so there was a dis identification and I thought how is that possible I can now observe the unhappiness as if it were in me but not essentially me so that was I described that in a little bit more detail in the book when I woke up the next morning I was in a state of very deep peace and that lasted for several months and it never really left me but that deep deeply blissful state lasted for several months and I didn't know what had happened to me how is it possible that from one day being a very anxious person I could suddenly become transformed into a deeply peaceful person it was only years later that I understood what actually had happened to me at that time so in a way what was it it's a realization that the suffering me is ultimately a fiction of the mind I had created a mental fiction that I believed in and identified ways you could call it the ego and through the pressure of suffering I separated from that fiction and when I separated from that fiction it collapsed as if a plaque had been pulled out of an inflatable toy because it ultimately wasn't real I realized then that the suffering self wasn't ultimately real it was a fiction and in a way that's also the basis of the book and when I later started to work with people very often people came to me in wearing some kind of suffering some form of pain and what I'm trying to convey and teach is that it is possible to live free of suffering to go beyond suffering well what the expression that I'm really fond of is instead of thing I am upset because the I am is self yes saying I'm having an upset yeah I am angry you know I'm experiencing anger of course you wouldn't say that I'm experiencing anger but to say I am upset or I am sick you know it's really sort of embedding that into yourself where you say you know I am having an upset well if you have something you give it away that's right so it's already progressing from saying I am angry or I am upset you say there is anger in me or there is upset in me you have already separated your essential identity from the emotional state so you're no longer reinforcing the emotional state through your identification so that's already at the beginning of inner transformation is that separation from the passing mental or emotional strange well that's such a wonderful time in life when suddenly realized that you don't have to be the victim of your thoughts yes that you could you can shut those off just through the power of being in the now and and understanding what you have written in this book now the word enlightenment has been tossed about in so many different expressions meanings philosophies could you explain to us what you what the book embraces with the power of now a guide to spiritual enlightenment what is enlightenment well as you say the word has been used a lot of times and people attribute different meanings to it but the word enlightenment essentially comes from the east originally from Buddhism it points to a radical psychological transformation but it's not confined to the East it also exists in other ancient religions the term salvation in Christianity I believe is really another form of the Buddhist enlightenment or the term liberation in Hinduism is really just another way of pointing to the same thing so they all point to the possibility of a radical inner transformation and before we look at that we need to realize that urgent need in the human psyche the personal psyche in the collective psyche for a radical psychological transformation all the ancient religions recognized that there is something wrong with human beings despite the ingenuity of the human mind there seems to be some essential flaw which causes humans to go into suffering to create suffering and pain for themselves and for others and the ancient religions have given different names to that essential flaw so Buddhism for example calls it straight forward courted suffering one of the characteristics of human existence produce and says is suffering Hinduism says humans in a state of delusion there's the Veil of Maya we do not perceive things clearly we see them as through a veil so we are deluded Christianity says there is an original state of sin that humans are in so if you look at the deeper structure underlying all those terms what it's really saying is there's something not right something seems to have gone wrong but all the religions also say there is a path there is a way of reversing this so there's a bad news which all religions agree on and there's the good news which also own religions agree on do they agree in the process that it would take to create this the so called enlightenment because we do live and I know this just in everyday life people live in a state of victimhood yes essentially yes the process is the same sometimes the names and the terminology differs but the essential process is the same and really what it starts with is to dis identify from the thinking mind now this for some people may be a new thing because most people are totally identified with their thought processes so they are kind of trapped in their mind and most people never or almost never experienced a gap in the stream of mind so the mind is like a river that pulls you along and another way of describing it is to say that it's almost as if somebody had built a noise machine into your head it would be a finished thing to do imagine some demon builds a noise machine into your head and it doesn't have a switch off button oh it's so true it's that constant inner dialogue that you you feel that you know I can i quiet my mind and the the native cultures have a thing that it's a trickster the chess the trickster keeps trying to trick you into these negative thinking patterns and there are ways to quiet the mind and be still and yes people feel I think if even if there's a low on the conversation people feel they must fill it immediately because the thoughts are going so quickly that's right that's right so there is a way and innovate the first step is stand back inside yourself take one step back and observe what the mind does so you become the observer of your mind that's a very essential step and then you will find that there are certain patterns that occur again and again thought patterns orphan negative ones they're like old gramophone records that perhaps have been playing in your mind for years so you take a step back and say oh so there's my mind's there I can oh observe the thoughts that go through my mind so your sense of identity shifts from being the thought to being the observer of your thoughts sometimes called the witness so you are witnessing all the thoughts that go through your mind and that's a very essential shift in identity in a kind you know why you go with your breath draw more deeply into yourself from where you observe the flow of mind the flow of thinking now in the flow of mind we're witnessing your thoughts is this without judgment without editing it saying I don't want to think that yes or whatever so it's then without judgment and without editing what the thought flow is that's a very good point because the moment you judge what you're observing it's the mind again yeah so it's only when you're free of judgment and you're simply you're almost like a mirror they just shows you what the mind is doing you're not taking any position and say I like that or I don't like that you allow the thoughts to be but if you allow the thoughts to be they lose their energy because you're no longer feeding them energy through your identification it's when you're totally identified that all the thoughts actually feed on you on your life energy yes and you then find that a lot of your thinking is actually completely useless especially in the middle of the night when you can see your problem in the world in your mind and you wake up in the morning and certainly it wasn't that bad you're not solving it anyway by digitizing it in fact it was creating problems wrong exactly like sleeplessness yeah tiredness the next day's productivity that's right so that's the first step now the negative the next step is to consciously occasionally create little gaps in the stream of mind that can start with a simple thing like taking one conscious breath just taking one conscious breath about conscious price means you're focusing your attention on the breathing you observe how the air flows into your body and out of your body now by doing that you take attention away from thinking because you know you're not observing the breaths directly it flows in and out and during that time which may only be 10 seconds the mind is still you've taken consciousness by choice you've taken consciousness away from the mind and put it onto your breathing so you've created a little gap in the stream of mind and in then get in that gap there's a nurse suddenly there's a dimension of inner stillness and that's a wonderfully liberating thing suddenly stillness and in that stillness if you go more deeply into it there's also a very subtle joy there's even love there's a presence it's kind of finding a deeper you a deeper sense of self than the mind that you find in that stillness and this is just one example is you take a conscious breath and use moments when the gap occurs naturally for some people it happens when they go out into nature you're surrounded by trees in the forest and you're suddenly overwhelmed by the beauty of nature and when that happens also for that moment the mind stops in their stillness like a sunset yes something overwhelmingly beautiful can sometimes create that stillness and for most people it only lasts for a few seconds but if you become conscious of it you can actually prolong it and go into it and feel the stillness inside you so it can happen through Beauty it can also happen for other people through physical exertion when they are very when they are engaged in some kind of physical activity perhaps even jogging although some people wear Walkman while they drove so it can't happen then but extreme physical exertion can sometimes also lead to mental stillness so it you can find it there other people find it in the moment of extreme danger I don't know if you have read accounts of people I've seen quite a few accounts of people who were driving in the car and they knew an accident was about to happen there were only a few seconds left and they could see it in every turn now and at that moment many people reported that suddenly they became very very still in peacefull and they became become just the observer of what was happening and there's no fear seems to go in slow motion yes I noticed that the other day I was jogging and I began to fall and as I fell it was just like in slow motion and and I I've experienced when there is danger you sort of just experience it in a very different manner of thought and and emotion and the breath is you've taught this you do exquisite meditation sessions because I've been privileged to be present in them and my husband was telling me that he uses the breathing when he can't sleep at night when his mind starts now and the breath is a very profound thing and we take it for granted because we're so busy with the mundane but most meditative processes and it starts with taking breath yes and you just breathe and the breathing itself is a very profound method of just quieting and understanding the miracle of breath and the body and just being at quiet with self so I see what you say by the magic of that yes price is a very old form of meditation is probably the Buddha who first created it the Buddha's teaching is so simple and really one of the main points is be conscious of your breathing under par now sati yoga is the vegetation on your breath the breath awareness meditation and why it works so beautifully is that it takes attention away from thinking it takes consciousness away from thinking so and then it becomes what I call presence if you take consciousness away from thinking what happens you become very very present in the here and now whereas if you are involved in thought activity you're never in the here now because thought is always either in past or future so here and now the present moment is really the key to that inner transformation so whenever the mind becomes still what happens simultaneously is you become present and that in itself is a transformation of consciousness that presents and out of that presence comes a different sense of identity a sense of a very deep sense of well-being that's inside everybody but usually it's buried underneath the mental noise everybody carries inside a sense of peace and well-being and a natural connectedness with who you are but most people are not conscious of it they seem to have lost it all they never lost it but it becomes so covered up by mental noise that they can never feel it so they are cut off from their deeper being and that's a dreadful deprivation sort of like falling from grace almost yes yes and in a way that is really the origin of this flaw that I mentioned earlier what Christians call sin one is I'm called suffering or Hinduism calls delusion there it's a disconnectedness from who you essentially are on a deeper level yes and then what you have as a substitute is a mind made sense of self which we call the ego which consists of past of things that happen to you of mental images you have about yourself your conditioning so it's an artificially mentally constructed sense of self which most people's most people's identity is lies in that and because it's it lacks any foundation in reality it really lives in a state of constant fear yes you mentioned something that was so profound and that is most of us either live in the past of this happened to me living in the victimhood of whatever happened in the past and living their life on well this happened to me before so I better be careful or worrying about the future they're either reminiscing in in in in a depressive way about the past or and anxieties about the future so there now is totally lost for them for the pleasure of just the presence that's right it's essential that the the loss of now is also the loss of being and the loss of your essential identity because it can we found in the now so when people come from the artificially generated sense of self that we call ego which is mind mate and consists of images of who you are but you need to defend and feed constantly it's that creates constant fear so you're never fully present here and now in this moment so then now for most people is never or very rarely acknowledged and all it is really is a means to an end it becomes reduced to a means to an end because everybody is striving to get to some future moment which promises to give them what they want so they're always reaching out to the next moment the now becomes is reduced to means to getting to the next moment so it's never really paid any attention to accept less that mean even fear of getting to the next moment I know that I was I remember saying to my daughter when she was having a party let's celebrate our celebrations people were in for a dinner party will the food come on time or will this happen right or will this get burnt or even on a holiday well my luggage get lost with the room be right will they be a plane crash they even worry about going on the pilot say how fortunate I am to be able have the time to take this holiday or to plan this wonderful celebration of an anniversary or a birthday or or some great event they're concerned about all the ramifications and all the details and they worry and then the event is over and they're watching it with this watchful frightened eye and then it's over and they're so thrilled but this wonderful celebration is over how fortunate I am to have the opportunity to celebrate this moment yes and most people they actually miss the whole celebration because they're in that state of constant anticipation and anxiety absolutely can we discuss the antibody or have we have we touched on that mostly no we just come to that in a second because it's deeply connected with the now but I'll just say something else briefly first that we need to realize fully that all we ever have in life is this moment because there is nothing else yes when the future comes it comes as this moment people think things happened in the past but nothing happened in the past when it happened it was the present moment it cannot happen at any other time so you cannot you cannot feel experience do or think anything ever that is not this moment this moment is your life that's all there is yes and we get conditioned at an early age to miss it already at school it's constantly preparation for something else it's a constant looking to some future moment so it's a deep very deep-seated conditioning of ignoring the present moment ironically speaking of present moments we only have about four minutes left so I'm thinking is the present moment now we have to think about the future so much to talk about I do want to say one thing though before we continue with the inner with the with the antibody is that the power of now and I'm going to show this to our viewing audience is a wonderful book that is one of the bestsellers now a banyan books and this can be purchased at banyan books also at the greenhouse books and that's in the Denman mall and for your meditation centers which truly I have to say our life-changing and actually exemplifying what you're talking about being in the now and you walk away with such a great feeling of peace and the number to contact you about the book and I understand you're getting tons of email from people that have read the book and are and just enjoy over it so the number is two to four three one seven nine and I'll repeat it two two four three one seven nine for people who want to part taken in this great gift that you have to offer so with three minutes left and the master publishing is the name of company and what is the mastic it's hard to translate but it means some approximately I greet the spirit within you I greet the spirit within you it's a Mayan greeting as well and so the inner body the inner body now because the mind is so active continuously and continuously tries to take you away from the now we need some kind of anchor so that we can focus our attention in the now and they by inner body I mean having some of your attention in the inner energy field of the body to actually feel the life energy in the body in your hands there's life in there in your feet in your legs in the totality of your body to focus attention on that and feel that as much as you can when you're alone you can practice it take attention away from thinking feel your life and you can actually feel the life that is that courses through the body and that can become a very powerful anchor for staying present if you can feel the life that you are the invisible life that animates the body the Chi energy yes you can call it Chi have some attention in that even when you're listening to somebody talking or when you're waiting somewhere feel the inner body that keeps you present in the now and the mind can't easily take you away from them your aliveness we need to wrap with a message and I know that you must have something to say to the people that is a sort of an ending to this well I would say make the present moment your friend and not your enemy be friendly with it and then you will see how life becomes friendly towards you because the present moment is life if you make friends with the present moment and always say yes to whatever is life becomes friendly to much you because life always shows you the face that you show it it's always a mirror yes and indeed it is and I look at your face and I must tell you I see such a great deal of peace and such a great deal of joy and I am so pleased that you came to write this book and teacher some of the power of living in the now and and indeed it is a very enlightening process and I find myself using it all the time and it helps with creativity and productivity in life and truly celebrating your celebrations and so thank you for coming thank you and thank you for watching contact I'm Nina Rhodes until the next time please take care [Music] [Music]

Channel: Craig Delahunt

Views: 86,135

Keywords: Eckhart Tolle, Nina Rhodes, The Power of Now, A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Id: ObAGAUJ08Vk

Length: 27min 9sec (1629 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 02 2013