When The Power of Now had been out about a year, letters started arriving from every direction. Buddhist monks. Christian nuns. People in prison. People close to death. Then a famous news magazine reviewed the book, and the reviewer summed it up in two words. Mumbo jumbo. Eckhart Tolle tells this story with some amusement, because of what the magazine happened to be called. Time. A book about the timeless dimension of consciousness, handed to a reviewer at a magazine named after the very thing the book is about. He uses it to make a point about the mind. The human mind is potentially a magnificent tool. It solves problems, it creates remarkable things. But something has gone wrong with it. A large share of our thinking is not only unnecessary but destructive, problem-making rather than problem-solving, and on a collective level the strangeness seems to be increasing. Most people are completely identified with that mind. There is a script running, built out of conditioning absorbed since childhood, and it decides what you say, what you do, and how you react. Something is controlling you and you assume it is you. You can see it plainly in the person on the street having an argument out loud with nobody. Most of us are doing the same thing, only silently, and often just as angrily. Look closely at someone lost in that stream and you notice something odd. There is no one quite there. An absence, rather than a presence. Which is why the present moment matters so much, and why sensing stillness is the doorway into the deeper dimension underneath the personality. Eckhart goes much further into this in the full session. Join Eckhart Tolle Now to watch. 👇
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Video Summary
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The speaker explores the concept of the present moment as the only true reality, contrasting it with the destructive nature of the conditioned mind. By distinguishing between the \"surface personality\" and the deeper, transcendent self, the talk emphasizes that liberation comes from shifting awareness away from mental noise and toward the stillness of the Now.
Potentially, the mind can solve problems
and create wonderful things,
potentially a wonderful tool,
unless something goes wrong.
And something has gone wrong with the human mind.
The present moment, which is all there ever is,
for most people, not you,
because you're all awakening beings,
well, most of you,
except one or two who came here reluctantly
because your friend or relative said, you need to come.
We don't know whether you're ready or not for this.
Maybe you are, maybe you go, wow.
Or maybe you go, I can't stand this anymore.
He's talking nonsense.
Mumbo-jumbo, a little anecdote before I carry on.
When the power of now came out,
after a year or so,
more and more people were communicating,
mostly through letters at the time.
I don't know if the internet existed,
but people didn't use it very much.
Letters came from all parts and walks of life,
mentioned earlier in the introduction.
And people responded to it from,
there were old people,
some younger people, not younger people,
gradually, they came also, they gradually grew.
There were people from Buddhist monks,
I got some letters from Buddhist monks,
got Christians, some Christian nuns,
prisons, people, now we work more and more
with people in prison,
people who were close to death,
come letters saying, wow, this was so wonderful.
And finally, the book came to the attention
of a certain famous news magazine,
and they wrote a review of it.
And the reviewer was not ready for it.
And the reviewer summarized the book as mumbo-jumbo.
Now, not surprisingly,
the name of the magazine was Time.
Now I understand why the reviewer did not get it.
Because the power of now
is about the timeless dimension of consciousness.
How could a reviewer for Time possibly understand?
Not surprisingly, soon after,
the magazine went into a slow and then accelerating decline.
And I haven't seen it at newsstands in a long time.
It may still exist in the cloud
or wherever the mysterious digital world.
So it's a little bit like Time,
it's a little bit like a criminal who commits bad things.
And you see the effect of what the criminal did.
Suddenly this is gone, and then he's destroyed that.
Oh, it's destroyed, what happened to it?
Well, he was here, Mr. Time came.
Where is he now?
I don't know, we just, the effect of it you see everywhere.
But where is he?
You can never, a criminal that you can never see or catch.
The effect of Time you see everywhere.
So there's only the present moment in your immediate
experience that's a very important realization
because that takes you the awareness of that fact,
not just intellectual recognition that this is actually so,
but to actually, to sense the, I don't dare I say it,
to sense the power of the present moment.
That is something that one cannot explain.
We are very fortunate, I noticed when I came on earlier
to do the soundtrack, we are very fortunate in this place
because almost everywhere we talk,
there's always some background noise, air conditioning.
But here there is absolute stillness.
And that's now, and I sometimes recommend to be aware
of stillness and that also, that awareness is inseparable
from the present moment.
So to just, this is the, I sometimes call it the portal
into the spiritual dimension, the transcendent dimension,
the timeless dimension, the deeper dimension to who you are,
to who or what you are, the depth within you
that is transcendent.
The deep eye that is underneath, so to speak,
the surface eye personality that everybody has one.
It is the script that is built
into your mental and emotional field,
that you grow up with, you accumulate,
the conditioning of your mental emotional field
is a certain script that most humans are identified with
and they think that's who or what they truly are.
And the script is the conditioned mind
or the automatic thinking,
the involuntary compulsive thinking.
A lot of it, large percentage,
not only completely unnecessary,
but destructive and toxic and problem-making,
not problem-solving.
Potentially the mind can solve problems
and create wonderful things,
potentially a wonderful tool,
unless something goes wrong
and something has gone wrong with the human mind.
There's still wonderful aspects are still there,
but increasingly there seems to be some craziness
and it seems to be growing.
There's time periods when it increases
and time periods when it decreases
on a collective level,
but there's the human mind
that most people are completely identified
with this entity, the me, my person.
I can sometimes, I observe people,
how they carry the burden of their own personality,
how they carry a heavy burden of themselves.
Their self is a burden.
And so it makes them say things,
do things, react to situations,
all because they've been conditioned to say,
do and react in that way since childhood,
perhaps past lifetimes too,
but we don't even need to go.
There's enough trouble in your present life.
And so there's a conditioned entity
which has certain mind structures and personality forms.
It's like something is controlling you,
but you think it's you.
And it's like a stream.
And if you're not talking out loud,
it's going on in here, silence in here,
a lot of noise.
The voice in the head is talking.
And when you observe people,
there's a total absence.
When you look at them, they're not there at all
because all their consciousness is being absorbed
by mental noise.
There's an absence there, not a presence.
Some people talk to themselves in the street.
You've probably seen, they talk.
Well, they have a conversation with themselves.
And usually it's angry.
A lot of the time it's angry.
And many other people have the same thing
going on in their heads.
They're just not out aloud.
So humans are identified with the conditioned mind.
