Product Description:
It's no wonder that The Power of Now has sold over 2 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over 30 foreign languages. Much more than simple principles and platitudes, the book takes readers on an inspiring spiritual journey to find their true and deepest self and reach the ultimate in personal growth and spirituality: the discovery of truth and light. In the first chapter, Tolle introduces readers to enlightenment and its natural enemy, the mind. He awakens readers to their role as a creator of pain and shows them how to have a pain-free identity by living fully in the present. The journey is thrilling, and along the way, the author shows how to connect to the indestructible essence of our Being, "the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death." Featuring a new preface by the author, this paperback shows that only after regaining awareness of Being, liberated from Mind and intensely in the Now, is there Enlightenment.
The Power of Now
A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
By Eckhart Tolle
New World Library
Copyright © 2004
Eckhart Tolle
All right reserved.
ISBN: 1577314808
Chapter One
YOU ARE NOT YOUR MIND
The Greatest Obstacle to Enlightenment
Enlightenment - what is that?
A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a
stranger walked by. "Spare some change?" mumbled the beggar, mechanically
holding out his old baseball cap. "I have nothing to give you," said the
stranger. Then he asked: "What's that you are sitting on?" "Nothing," replied
the beggar. "Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can
remember." "Ever looked inside?" asked the stranger. "No," said the beggar.
"What's the point? There's nothing in there." "Have a look inside," insisted the
stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief,
and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold.
I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look
inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside
yourself.
"But I am not a beggar," I can hear you say.
Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being
and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they
have great material wealth. They are looking outside for scraps of pleasure or
fulfillment, for validation, security, or love, while they have a treasure
within that not only includes all those things but is infinitely greater than
anything the world can offer.
The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some super-human accomplishment,
and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of
felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something
immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is
essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature
beyond name and form. The inability to feel this connectedness gives rise to the
illusion of separation, from yourself and from the world around you. You then
perceive yourself, consciously or unconsciously, as an isolated fragment. Fear
arises, and conflict within and without becomes the norm.
I love the Buddha's simple definition of enlightenment as "the end of
suffering." There is nothing superhuman in that, is there? Of course, as a
definition, it is incomplete. It only tells you what enlightenment is not: no
suffering. But what's left when there is no more suffering? The Buddha is silent
on that, and his silence implies that you'll have to find out for yourself. He
uses a negative definition so that the mind cannot make it into something to
believe in or into a superhuman accomplishment, a goal that is impossible for
you to attain. Despite this precaution, the majority of Buddhists still believe
that enlightenment is for the Buddha, not for them, at least not in this
lifetime.
You used the word Being. Can you explain what you mean by that?
Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that
are subject to birth and death. However, Being is not only beyond but also deep
within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This
means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true
nature. But don't seek to grasp it with your mind. Don't try to understand it.
You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your
attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never
be understood mentally. To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state
of "feeling-realization" is enlightenment.
When you say Being, are you talking about God? If you are, then why don't you
say it?
The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I
use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly. By misuse, I mean that people who have
never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that
word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about.
Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying. This
misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as
"My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false," or Nietzsche's
famous statement "God is dead."
The word God has become a closed concept. The moment the word is uttered, a
mental image is created, no longer, perhaps, of an old man with a white beard,
but still a mental representation of someone or something outside you, and, yes,
almost inevitably a male someone or something.
Neither God nor Being nor any other word can define or explain the ineffable
reality behind the word, so the only important question is whether the word is a
help or a hindrance in enabling you to experience That toward which it points.
Does it point beyond itself to that transcendental reality, or does it lend
itself too easily to becoming no more than an idea in your head that you believe
in, a mental idol?
The word Being explains nothing, but nor does God. Being, however, has the
advantage that it is an open concept. It does not reduce the infinite invisible
to a finite entity. It is impossible to form a mental image of it. Nobody can
claim exclusive possession of Being. It is your very essence, and it is
immediately accessible to you as the feeling of your own presence, the
realization I am that is prior to I am this or I am that. So it is only a small
step from the word Being to the experience of Being.
What is the greatest obstacle to experiencing this reality?
Identification with your mind, which causes thought to become compulsive. Not to
be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this
because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This
incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness
that is inseparable from Being. It also creates a false mind-made self that
casts a shadow of fear and suffering. We will look at all that in more detail
later.
The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth
when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." He had, in fact,
given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and
identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone,
lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of
continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing
fragmentation of the mind. Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being "at
one" and therefore at peace. At one with life in its manifested aspect, the
world, as well as with your deepest self and life unmanifested - at one with
Being. Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict
within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant
thinking. What an incredible liberation this is!
Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels,
images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It
comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman,
between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that
creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a
totally separate "other." You then forget the essential fact that, underneath
the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that
is. By "forget," I mean that you can no longer feel this oneness as self-evident
reality. You may believe it to be true, but you no longer know it to be true. A
belief may be comforting. Only through your own experience, however, does it
become liberating.
Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance.
For example, there is nothing wrong with cells dividing and multiplying in the
body, but when this process continues in disregard of the total organism, cells
proliferate and we have disease.
Note: The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it
becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you
use your mind wrongly - you usually don't use it at all. It uses you. This is
the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The
instrument has taken you over.
I don't quite agree. It is true that I do a lot of aimless thinking, like most
people, but I can still choose to use my mind to get and accomplish things, and
I do that all the time.
Just because you can solve a crossword puzzle or build an atom bomb doesn't mean
that you use your mind. Just as dogs love to chew bones, the mind loves to get
its teeth into problems. That's why it does crossword puzzles and builds atom
bombs. You have no interest in either. Let me ask you this: can you be free of
your mind whenever you want to? Have you found the "off" button?
You mean stop thinking altogether? No, I can't, except maybe for a moment or
two.
Then the mind is using you. You are unconsciously identified with it, so you
don't even know that you are its slave. It's almost as if you were possessed
without knowing it, and so you take the possessing entity to be yourself. The
beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity -
the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you
start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated.
You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond
thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also
realize that all the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy,
inner peace - arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken,freeing yourself
from your mind
What exactly do you mean by "watching the thinker"?
When someone goes to the doctor and says, "I hear a voice in my head," he or she
will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar
way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the
time: the involuntary thought processes that you don't realize you have the
power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues.
You have probably come across "mad" people in the street incessantly talking or
muttering to themselves. Well, that's not much different from what you and all
other "normal" people do, except that you don't do it out loud. The voice
comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on.
The voice isn't necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at
the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or
imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong
and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is
accompanied by visual images or "mental movies." Even if the voice is relevant
to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is
because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all
your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited.
So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally
distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person's own
worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously
attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of
untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease.
The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only
true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the
voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any
repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing
in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by "watching the
thinker," which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be
there as the witnessing presence.
When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not
judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the
same voice has come in again through the back door. You'll soon realize: there
is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization,
this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the
mind.
So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also
of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has
come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence - your
deeper self - behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then
loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer
energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the
end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.When a thought subsides, you
experience a discontinuity in the mental stream - a gap of "no-mind." At first,
the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become
longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside
you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being,
which is usually obscured by the mind. With practice, the sense of stillness and
peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a
subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.
It is not a trancelike state. Not at all. There is no loss of consciousness
here. The opposite is the case. If the price of peace were a lowering of your
consciousness, and the price of stillness a lack of vitality and alertness,
then they would not be worth having. In this state of inner connectedness, you
are much more alert, more awake than in the mind-identified state. You are fully
present. It also raises the vibrational frequency of the energy field that
gives life to the physical body.
As you go more deeply into this realm of no-mind, as it is sometimes called in
the East, you realize the state of pure consciousness. In that state, you feel
your own presence with such intensity and such joy that all thinking, all
emotions, your physical body, as well as the whole external world become
relatively insignificant in comparison to it. And yet this is not a selfish but
a selfless state. It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as "your
self." That presence is essentially you and at the same time inconceivably
greater than you. What I am trying to convey here may sound paradoxical or even
contradictory, but there is no other way that I can express it.
Instead of "watching the thinker," you can also create a gap in the mind stream
simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become
intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to
do.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Power of Now
by Eckhart Tolle
Copyright © 2004 by Eckhart Tolle.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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