5min chapter

Eckhart Tolle: Essential Teachings cover image

Presence Is the Foundation for Everything

Eckhart Tolle: Essential Teachings

CHAPTER

The Words Point to Consciousness

The words point to the possibility of knowing things, perceiving things, not through the screen of thought, but through consciousness. Consciousness is the spacious awareness. It's finding that small gaps arise in your mind where otherwise there would have been a continuous stream of one thought after another. So space consciousness arises naturally even if you haven't practiced meditation or anything. And so they're pointing to a reality in you. The strange thing is the our mainstream kind of world are largely unaware of that.

00:00
Speaker 1
So they are not explanations as such, you have to go where the words point, and you would see now where the words point. The words point to words, the possibility of knowing things, perceiving things, not through the screen of thought, but through consciousness. Consciousness is the spacious awareness. So it's finding, it begins with realizing that small gaps arise in your mind where otherwise there would have been a continuous stream of one thought after another, one object after another, cluttered, totally cluttered mind, a mind that never stops talking to itself and going on and on and making your life miserable. It's a possibility of realizing that occasionally, even without you wanting to do anything, naturally, the gaps of where some space consciousness arise from time to time in you, and you may not identify it as space consciousness, it could be that those are moments that feel where you feel alive and you feel it feels good, or you become aware of beauty, or you become aware of a feeling of goodwill flowing out from you towards another human being or another life form. To some extent briefly liberated from yourself, there are moments of natural self-transcendence that occur in your life, and if they didn't, nothing that I talk about would make any sense to you, because it's only through those moments that may actually occur more as you sit here right now, it's only through that space consciousness in you that they can recognize what I'm actually talking about. If you dragged somebody here, a friend or family member, and that person is sitting next to you, now we don't know whether that person has that bit of openness of space consciousness through which he or she could not understand conceptually, but get a sense of what it is realized, what it is that I'm talking about. Or it could be that this friend that didn't really want to come here, but somehow is stuck here now, might become increasingly irritated and frustrated and longing to get away from here. So if you're not longing to get away from here, that means, in fact, if you enjoy being here for some weird reason, then that means there's something in you that recognizes what these words I'm pointing to is real and very important. And so they're pointing to a reality in you. The strange thing is the our mainstream kind of world, the mainstream world that you meet through the media and everything else is largely completely unaware of that. So everything that you are told when you relate to the things of this world through the media and so on, what it tells you is absolutely important is not absolutely important. What it tells you is absolutely important, maybe relatively important, but not absolutely important. But if you miss what is absolutely important, then you miss the very reason for being here, because the reality reason for being here is for you to realize that that's the fulfillment of a human life. So space consciousness arises naturally, even if you haven't practiced meditation or anything, meditation is a more conscious way of realizing space consciousness, but sometimes it works for people. Sometimes it works in a limited setting of their meditation practice, but not in the rest of their lives.

Get the Snipd
podcast app

Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
App store bannerPlay store banner

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode