Note on Eckhart Tolle Eckhart Tolle, recognized as one of the foremost contemporary spiritual teachers, was born in 1948 in Germany where he spent the first thirteen years of his life. He graduated from the University of London, after which he was a research scholar and supervisor in physics at Cambridge University. Until his thirtieth year he lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety and depression, at times of a suicidal nature. One night, not long after his twenty-ninth birthday, he had a sudden and profound spiritual experience that radically transformed him and entirely changed the course of his life. Following this transformative experience, he dev

Portals into Enlightenment A unique aspect of Eckhart's teaching that I have found to be particularly helpful pertains to what he calls "portals" for entering directly and immediately (without the usual recourse to the practice of certain 21The Mother. Questions and Answers '57-58, 22 The Mother, Questions and Answers 1955, Page-16 techniques23) the consciousness beyond mind, and experiencing what he describes as a "raste of enlightenment" through connectedness with Being. Eckhart speaks of various such portals: The Now, or Presence, he considers the foremost portal, constituting an aspect of every other portal. To step into the

Mental Noise One characteristic of the mind that Eckhart has spoken about more often than perhaps any other teacher is the chatter or mental noise that takes place in the head almost all the time, a broader aspect of what Sri Aurobindo calls "the buzz of the physical mind."17 Eckhart 16 The Mother, Questions and Answers, 17 Sri Aurobindo distinguishes three main parts of the ordinary mind: proper, which is chiefly the thinking mind or impellent; the vitrify mind. which is a mind of dynamic will, ace ion and desire; and the physical mind, which is concerned with physical things only and is limi1 end to the physical view and experience of things. Closely

Mind, Thought, and Stillness The core of Eckhart's teachings is related to mind, thought, and stillness. The following statements, paraphrased from his writings and talks, encapsulate these central teachings: The ordinary or normal state of the human being is, at the present stage of the evolution of consciousness, a state of identification with mind and thought. In other words, the human being has ordinarily a mind-based or thought-based sense of self. From the spiritual viewpoint, this is a state of unconsciousness; one is lost in thought and lives in continual mental noise. Identification with the mind gives rise to a false self—the ego, a subst

Enlightenment Distinguished from Liberation From one viewpoint—prominent in Buddhism—enlightenment is essentially a state of living in present-moment awareness. No time is needed to enter such a state. From another perspective, found in Hindu thought, the enlightened state, usually referred to as Mufti or liberation, is one in which the time-bound illusory self of the ego has been abolished and replaced by the true and eternal Self, which is the Self of all beings and the one Reality of the universe. Whereas from the first viewpoint, enlightenment consists in entering the state of present-moment awareness, the second view regards enlightenment

-023_Enlightenment—Living in the Present Moment.htm Enlightenment—Living in the Present Moment On the spiritual path, such as that of yoga, which envisages a distant goal, one is apt to lose the focus on the present moment and become obsessed by the goal of a definitive enlightenment that lies in the remote future. What Eckhart tries to drive home is the psychological fact that preoccupation with the future, and lack of awareness of the present moment, are essential characteristics of the egoic consciousness that seeks fulfillment in the future rather than in the present moment. Because the future never arrives, one lives, whether one is conscious of it or not, in a state of constant dissatisfaction

The Pain-Body Some of Eckhart's psychological insights that I have found to be of the most practical value pertain to what he calls the "pain-body." At firsr I found it somewhat difficult to understand very well the meaning of pain-body because I could not quite relate it to anything I had come across previously in the teachings of other Masters. But after a while I came to recognize readily the similarity between the pain-body and some aspects of what Sri Aurobindo calls the life-nature or the vital being, which is a distinct part of the human constitution as he describes it. Life energy is beautiful, says Eckhart, when it flows freely, but when it is trapped, it produces co

-040_Sri Aurobindo^s Teaching and Method of Practice.htm Appendix I Sri Aurobindo's Teaching and Method of Practice The teaching of Sri Aurobindo1 starts from that of the ancient sages of India that behind the appearances of the universe there is the Reality of a Being and Consciousness, a Self of all things, one and eternal. All beings are united in that One Self and Spirit but divided by a certain separativity of consciousness, an ignorance of their true Self and Reality in the mind, life and body. It is possible by a certain psychological discipline to remove this veil of separative consciousness and become aware of the true Self, the Divinity within us and all. Sri Aur

-042_Sri Aurobindo^s First Major Experience.htm Appendix III Sri Aurobindo's First Major Experience Now ".reach Nirvana was the first radical result of my own Yoga. It threw me suddenly into a condition above and without thought, unstained by any mental or vital movement; there was no ego, no real world—only when one looked through the immobile senses, something received or bore upon its sheer silence a world of empty forms, materialized shadows without true substance. There was no One or many even, only just absolutely That, featureless, relationless, sheer, indescribable, unthinkable, absolute, yet supremely real and solely real. This was not mental realization nor something glimpse

Acknowledgments I am grateful to Eckhart Tolle for granting me an interview that helped me towards a better understanding of his teachings. I am also grateful to him for suggesting that I make a comparison between his teaching and that of Sri Aurobindo. I would like to thank Mohan Nair, Publisher, Editions India. Without his persevering efforts and help, this book might have never seen the light of day. I am very grateful to Galadriel Nair for her invaluable help in transcribing the interview with Eckhart—a task that demanded much patience and endurance due to unexpected problems in recording the interview. I thank also Thomas Lilly who painstakingly transcribed long extract