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Nov. 1, 2022 - Stay Free - Russel Brand

01:05:18

A Great Reset Will Happen…With Guest Eckhart Tolle - #025 - Stay Free with Russell Brand

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	hmm hmm
	hmm foreign
	In this video, you're going to see the future.
	Hello and welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand.
	Today it's subcutaneous, that means we look under the skin of an important guest and I'm so excited to tell you that today we're talking to Eckhart Tolle.
	Now if you don't know who Eckhart Tolle is, Eckhart Tolle is the author of The Power of Now.
	He popularised new forms of Buddhism, one of the most significant figures of the new age, darling of Oprah Winfrey and my Personal favourite accessible spiritual teacher.
	What I'll say about Eckhart is you feel it.
	You watch the show because now these podcasts can be watched as well as listened to.
	And you will see in Eckhart Tolle's eyes that he is connected.
	Now, the reason that I believe that Eckhart Tolle is an important guest is because on stay with Russell Brand, I'm so keen that we are able to align and combine individual personal spiritual awakening with collective cultural awakening so that we are empowered to run our own lives and run our own community and get beyond artificial divisions so that we can become collectively powerful enough to confront centralized authority wherever we experience it.
	Otherwise, we might end up in some kind of dark Orwellian nightmare.
	And if you want to know more about dark Orwellian nightmares, why don't you join Books with Brad, my book club that I run with philosopher Professor Brad Evans.
	We've already done week one on 1984.
	It is absolutely fantastic.
	You will see things in 1984 that you've never seen before, beyond the surveillance, the thought control.
	The 2 plus 2 equals 5.
	The inability to communicate openly.
	If you become spiritually enlightened, you are less susceptible to authoritative centralised state power.
	You have personal individual connection and authority.
	You are not so susceptible to manipulation.
	Have a look at this.
	His pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing in large neat capitals.
	Down with Big Brother.
	Down with Big Brother.
	Oh my god, that's brilliant.
	Tell us how, how did we come up with, you did it, did you?
	Your wife?
	Who's, how did we get that brilliant, brilliant thing?
	Yeah, my wife, the brilliant artist, Chantal Mirza.
	She's, yeah, phenomenal.
	And then Chantal did this image.
	And we're going to give it away as a prize at some point, aren't we?
	But when we've reviewed, oh, it's stuck to the wall.
	But when it's, when we've done it, quite rightly, really, because you should have pictures stuck to the wall, when we've, um, when we've reviewed 9-8-4, we're going to give this away as a prize, aren't we?
	So beautiful.
	Your wife's a brilliant artist.
	I'm very lucky.
	Yeah, you're lucky to have a brilliant artist wife.
	You are lucky!
	So sign up to Stay Free AF for the chance to win that art, to join our book club, and also to watch the interviews live as they happen and ask your own questions.
	Like new members I Like Onion Rings, a Justy Crip, and a Rabbit's Home.
	Welcome, welcome, welcome all of you.
	Where do we live?
	In the moment.
	So what are we going to do now?
	We are going to talk to Eckhart Tolle.
	I'm going to be asking him about individual awakening, collective awakening, how he copes with the constant flow of terrible news, the inundation of crisis consciousness the whole time.
	I'm also going to be asking Eckhart some of the questions you sent in.
	Thank you very much for joining us.
	What I'd love to frame our conversation around today, if I might, Eckhart, is the sense that we are living in a time of crisis, where we are lurching from one crisis to another, where we move from a financial crisis into a pandemic crisis, into a war crisis.
	How do we align individual spiritual awakening with collective awakening?
	And do you think that spiritual awakening, when attained, as it can only be in the present moment, means that we are somehow divorced or separate from community activity in the same way that we would be separate from sort of personal goals of the fulfillment of personal passions, say.
	Do you have trouble squaring that circle?
	Well, we are certainly moving into turbulent times and Perhaps it's helpful to become more aware of one's own state of consciousness.
	That's the main thing, is to become aware that everything is experienced through your state of consciousness.
	And your state of consciousness determines the way in which you experience so-called reality.
	So you could divide, for example, your experience of reality into three parts.
	One is you experience reality through your past, which is of course all the things that have happened to you and all the things that make up your personality.
	They are accumulations, mental-emotional accumulations from the past, and that's who you consider yourself to be.
	That's part of your reality, is your past, or whatever happens even in the more recent past.
	Another part of your reality is the future.
	Many people are very much focused on the future, what's going to happen to me, what's going to happen an hour from now, tomorrow, next year.
	What's going to happen to the world?
	Are we going to survive?
	Am I going to make it?
	Etc, etc.
	So we have the past as part of your reality, which makes up your identity in the sense of personal identity.
	You have the future, which you look to for fulfillment or liberation from a state of Insufficiency or lack, you look to the future for liberation, which is normal.
	You look to the future to become a more complete human being, to achieve or acquire this or that.
	That's all fine.
	And then you have the present moment, the immediate experience of the present moment.
	And that's often overlooked because future and past have obscure In the cases of most people's lives, past and future, past in the sense of carrying the weight of a personality that's based on the conditioning of your mind, and then the future in the sense of desperately needing to get somewhere, there's the hope of fulfillment, and at the same time there's the fear of non-fulfillment or loss, so the future is a two-edged sword.
	On the one hand, it promises fulfillment and it might give it to you.
	Or it is experienced as a threat of loss or something bad happening or death or whatever.
	So they tend to obscure the present moment.
	And then there's, I would add, a fourth thing that's only come into people's lives in The past decade and the experience of reality, there's a virtual world of the reality.
	So there are many people these days who spend several hours a day focusing on the virtual reality of social media, whatever it is that they're engaged in, when they look at their screen.
	So we could say perhaps there's your screen reality, which for many people, unfortunately, especially young people, has actually become the main way in which they experience reality.
	And that's quite amazing.
	It's something totally new.
	Until recently, it's only been past, future and present moment.
	Now it's past, future, present moment and then the virtual reality.
	So that's something that we need to be aware of.
	The spiritual dimension can only come into your life through awareness of the present moment reality, your immediate reality in the present moment, here and now.
	That's the entry point into the spirituality.
	And that is often overlooked in people's lives.
	They overlook the most important thing there ever is, which is actually the immediate experience of this moment, which after all is all there is ever.
	So, past and future are actually experienced as mental formations.
	One could say that past and future don't really exist except as thoughts in your mind.
	Without the thoughts in your mind, there's no past and future.
	One could go into that.
	Philosophical questions may arise out of that, but we don't need to go there.
	May I interrupt for a second?
	I'd like to see you, Russell, but I can't see you right now.
	I can only see myself.
	Oh, there you are.
	I don't like looking at myself, because that is Do you know the story of Narcissus?
	I was in it. The uh, the, the, the Greek, the, it's a mythological tale.
	I call it, it's a story of how the first selfie happened.
	So the story goes back into a mythological past.
	It's not a... I don't think it ever really happened, but it's the deep wisdom embedded in that story.
	There was Narcissus, the man, a very beautiful young man.
	He was very, very happy.
	He didn't know he was beautiful.
	There were no mirrors, but he was just happy.
	One day he saw a very still pool of water, And he looked into this pool of water and he saw his reflection.
	For the first time, he saw himself in the reflection of this water.
	And as the mythological tale goes, it says he fell in love with himself.
	When he saw himself, he saw that he was beautiful and he fell in love with himself.
	And after that, he was never happy again.
	And there's enormous wisdom in that story because to me it tells the story, I sometimes jokingly say it's the story of the first selfie, but really it tells of the beginning of the human ego.
	The human ego is the formulation of an image in your mind that you have of yourself.
	It consists of visual image and, to a larger extent, a narrative that's connected, a story that you tell yourself, that you believe in, that you say, this is me, this is who I am.
	So you begin, as the ego developed, humans began to live with dividing themselves up into two.
	There's me and the image that I have of myself, and I live then through a mental image of myself.
	And so that is the split that happens.
	Perhaps this is what sometimes is described as the fall, the fall of humans into the egoic consciousness.
	And this is what we are still living with.
	And over the millennia, the ego has become stronger and stronger.
	So our Entire identity is then based on that mental image that we have of ourselves, which in most cases has now become a narrative.
	This narrative you call me, me and my life.
	People call it my life.
	And they don't realize when they say, my life, they're talking about a story that they're telling themselves in their minds.
	People carry this burden of, because every life is so problematic.
	Every life is a heavy, there's a heaviness to this life.
	It's a problem.
	Many people's identity is experienced as a big problem.
	And they're looking for a solution to this problem of me.
	Then you look to the future, and occasionally it helps you a bit.
	The future enables you to do things, et cetera, et cetera.
	But eventually, as you grow older, as I'm growing older, and I begin to realize the future is also very lethal.
	It's going to eventually kill you.
	First, the future gives you everything.
	All the possibilities are there.
	It's a wonderful thing to have time.
	It really is time.
	The universe gives you time to do things, to acquire things, to get better at this or that.
	And then this beautiful thing, time, that you need for everything, and you have it, and then it turns around and it starts killing you.
	It gives you everything and then it takes everything away.
	That is time and that is the world that we live in.
	I call it the horizontal dimension.
	Where things are, there's past and there's future.
	That's time.
	We live through memory and anticipation.
	Humans live mainly through memory and anticipation.
	And what they don't realize is the primary importance of the present moment.
	The ultimate sanity, you have to seek that in the present moment rather than looking for it at some future point or in the virtual world.
	The virtual world is a An amplification and an externalization of the egoic mind in many cases.
	The human mind gets amplified there and then you have it there on the screen.
	So, I don't know what your initial question was.
	Let's see if we can get back to that, but it's all connected.
	You once told me that in one of the conversations where I was troubling you, having gotten your phone number by illicit means, that you said you can never be happy in the conceptual mind.
	You are trying to find happy in the conceptual mind.
	And of course the future is ultimately conceptual, the past is conceptual, my identity as an individual, as a male, the narcissus identity.
	I was very taken with your explanation of that myth in the pure pool of unbounded potentiality, the super state of all unconscious possibility, connected perhaps to the limitlessness, a choice is made to identify with form, whether that form is physical or thought form.
	I like that at this point of distinction, separation occurs.
	It reminded me too, as you alluded to, of the fall of humankind.
	Of course, regarded as expulsion from the garden, the garden being a cultivated space where everything is immediately available without requirement.
	or recourse for the external.
	Some people, I suppose they're not of a spiritual persuasion, would seek to say that this mythic memory of the garden is born of our shared individual memory of a uteral life where all of us live initially formless, then single cellular, bi-cellular,
	where we live suspended and all of our needs are met by the great
	eternal mother. And while we're on this sort of somewhat mythic pathway, Eckhart,
	I wondered if I might ask, as I felt you were on the brink of saying it when you talked about horizontal
	dimensionality of the function of the mythic symbol of the crucifix when it comes to enlightenment
	beyond Christ's ascension, is there a personal and relevant message for us in this image system?
	Thank you.
	Bye-bye.
	It's a very profound image.
	and to appreciate it and understand it.
	You don't need to be a Christian to appreciate this deep wisdom embedded in that image.
	So first of all you have, if you came here as an extraterrestrial, well they're probably here already, but and if you saw for the first time that... Don't think I haven't noticed your initials?
	Yes, well, that's true.
	I won't say any more about that.
	So an extraterrestrial, they would be very surprised to see humans worshipping a man.
	It's not just the cross because there's an image of the man crucified on the cross and people are worshipping that image.
	So they would say, how does that make sense?
	What is that?
	So the central image of Christianity is the crucifixion, the man on the cross, which really is an image of suffering.
	The central image of Christianity is an image of suffering.
	In the same way that the central teaching of the Buddha is a teaching of the fact of human suffering called Dukkha, the primordial fact of human existence.
	Buddha taught the primordial fact of human existence is the fact of dukkha.
	Buddha said wherever you go, whatever you do, sooner or later, sooner rather than later, you will encounter some form of suffering.
	Dukkha is a Pali term.
	Pali is a language related to Sanskrit.
	Many Buddhist scriptures are in Pali, as you probably know.
	So Dukkha can also be translated as unsatisfactoriness, unhappiness, misery, whatever.
	You could call it unhappiness in whatever form.
	So Dukkha is suffering.
	The central image of Christianity is also an image of suffering, but it is also an image of The transcendence of suffering, because the crucifixion is the image of suffering, but it also points to the resurrection.
	The cross, then, is ambivalent.
	It has a twofold meaning.
	One, it's a torture instrument.
	It's the cause of human suffering, of this archetypal human, as I call Christ.
	It's the image of... It's a torture instrument.
	But the cross also is a symbol of the divine.
	It's both.
	It's a torture instrument.
	And it's a symbol of the divine.
	In other words, it points to something that perhaps no human would have understood conceptually at the time, that the path of human evolution is the evolution through suffering.
	Eventually, we awaken And we transcend through the experience of suffering.
	Suffering eventually awakens us.
	And the Buddha, when he talked about Dukkha, he also added, he said literally, I teach suffering and the end of suffering.
	Which means, he was saying, I show you how suffering arises, Ultimately, how the human mind creates it.
	I show you how suffering arises and I show you how it can be transcended.
	So the crucifixion is suffering and the transcendence of suffering.
	But there would be no awakening, spiritual awakening, if it weren't for the suffering that precedes it.
	That is the path on all levels.
	The existence of every life form is precarious.
	Every life form, as soon as it manifests into this existence, It encounters limitations.
	It encounters danger.
	Life is always precarious.
	And so even a blade of grass has a struggle.
	It has to come up through the soil.
	I heard some gardeners, when they plant seeds or something, they sometimes when the first The plant first sprouts.
	They put more soil on top of it.
	They say that... I talked to a gardener who did that.
	I said, why are you putting more soil on top of this thing that's already sprouting?
	He said, then they have to struggle and then they become stronger.
	When they finally emerge, they are a stronger plant through the struggle.
	The struggle attracts more energy, more life energy.
	And so this is why humans never evolve in their comfort zone.
	No human has ever achieved deep insights or in evolutionary terms, no human has ever Um, experienced a deeper awakening in their comfort zone.
	Sitting on the sofa, they're drinking their beer, watching Netflix.
	It's so great.
	Whatever their comfort zone is.
	Lying on the beach.
	It's great.
	People think One day I will achieve this.
	I'm going to move to Hawaii or to Bali and then I will have made it.
	I'll lie on the beach.
	Or they might think when I have enough money I can go to a beautiful spa and out there I will be pampered.
	Purest food.
	I will get massages every day and then I can actually dedicate my life to spiritual awakening.
	Those will be the ideal conditions for spiritual awakening.
	Yeah, I wish I had the money to do that, they say.
	But of course, the opposite is true.
	In their comfort zone, they would not awaken at all.
	They would gradually go to sleep, so to speak.
	And the ideal situation for your awakening is The very limitations you experience in your life at this moment in your life.
	That is your ideal situation.
	Some imagined comfort zone.
	Amazing.
	All right, I've got some questions.
	Firstly, to your point there about the precondition of suffering as the natural environment for enlightenment, it came to me the idea of Marcus Aurelius in this reified position as an emperor and indeed a philosopher king, presumably able to achieve a degree of comfort due to his authority and power and yet living in that place of stoic wisdom.
	I'd like to also add to this, because I know that I have to ask all my questions at once because I know I might not be speaking for a while after this, like there's the Marcus Aurelius in a reified position argument, then I want to add to that the idea of Epicureanism, the idea that Pleasure and hedonism can lead to some unbounded state.
	Is this not an ascetic model that is about the denial of pleasure and the denial of the body?
	Where do you place sex and sexuality on that spectra?
	But firstly, and I'd like you to cover all of this if you would, and you've still got a bit of question about the war left over from about half hour ago that's just warming on the stove for you in a Tupperware box to answer in a moment.
	And I'd also like to add that I want to talk to you about undifferentiated states because you used when talking about the sapling seedling metaphor that struggle attract you said, attracts more energy and I wonder where this
	attraction is from and where this attraction is going to. I also would like to recount a
	personal story if I may, Eckhart, that recently after doing a show late at night, which
	required of me that I be absolutely present in the moment in order for me to deliver what I was
	required to deliver. I had to function at a high state. After this, I was in this state afterwards.
	Another time when I was troubling you on the phone, you said to me, the minute you're not on the... you said the minute you leave the stage, you said you are no longer that person and that experience is over and you have lost that concept.
	Well, not so for me.
	I live in the velocity and momentum of that moment and still the next day after not sleeping well because my body wants to stay awake, it wants action, it wants...
	Essentially, if I may say, coitus and procreation.
	And the next morning when I wake up, I still feel I'm still in it.
	I'm still in it, but it's sort of glorious.
	And as I drove to work the next day, when I see the bins, the garbage left out, you know, the garbage cans, which are like wheelie bins in this country, when I see them, I see them in a sort of a joyful state, like saintly, like it's Disney versions of trash cans, like they make me laugh.
	I see them as funny, as if they're talking to one another.
	And when I see the pigeons on a wire, it amuses me.
	And I notice how close it is, this sense of the vibrant table.
	What will it be in five years?
	What is five years?
	So I suppose I'm asking to you about these routes to enlightenment.
	First that Marcus Aurelius tag, reified position, how did he experience the struggle to come up with this sort of Stoic philosophy that he's a significant part of.
	What do you say about Epicureanism and the role of pleasure and is it not Like, because, you know, what about in Tantra, in the Vedas, where they say, just go crazy, man, and live it all out.
	And what do you think also about these transcendent states that are achieved through psychedelics, or whether or not they can be accessed, I'm guessing you say they do, whether or not you've ever taken any psychedelics, and if you understand what I'm saying about how close this is to a type of insanity.
	We talk about awakening, but isn't there a kind of danger in there, because obviously I'm very familiar with your personal awakening, but so that's just...
	Some questions, Eckhart Tolle.
	Yes, well, there are many questions and ultimately probably boils down to one question.
	Every human is longing unconsciously, mostly unconsciously, longing for self-transcendence.
	They somehow feel that they are not comfortable with themselves.
	They're not comfortable in their own skin.
	There's always in the background and sometimes in the foreground, there's a sense of something missing, something not quite right, or I haven't arrived yet.
	I haven't really started to live yet.
	I'm waiting to start out living.
	Some people reach the age of 60 and they're still waiting to start living.
	And then finally they say, oh, when I retire, then I'll start living.
	No, you won't.
	So there's a longing for self-transcendence.
	And then they may seek self-transcendence in certain experiences.
	And certain experiences can give them a taste or a glimpse of temporary self-transcendence.
	For example, You could say alcohol.
	You drink, you take a few, a whiskey or whatever you drink and what does it do?
	You have the first one and you begin to feel, let's say this, you're a normal anxious person stressed, anxious, you've had a rough day, and your mind says, come on, you deserve a treat, get the bottle, and the mind, even if you have a problem with alcohol, the mind will convince you, okay, just one more, what else do I have in my life?
	Let's go, come on, do it!
	And so, what is that?
	Just water, Eckhart.
	Nearly 20 years, one day at a time, just water.
	But it definitely was triggered by your description of that whisky.
	Oh, that's great.
	So then what that does is, because all the anxiety was your mind continuously creating Anxious states, by thinking anxious thoughts and creating anxious emotions.
	So that's a burden of the self, living with myself, this problematic self.
	After the first drink, mind activity slows down a little bit.
	And you go, oh, it feels a little better.
	You begin to feel it.
	Then the second one makes you feel even better.
	And then you suddenly, maybe you haven't smiled all day, and then suddenly you go, oh, life isn't so bad, is it?
	It's actually Quite nice.
	Why is it suddenly a little better?
	Because the mind is slowing down even more.
	And so this does not happen in every case.
	There are some people, but that's another story I don't want to go into right now, some people actually become angry and aggressive when they drink.
	That's another story.
	But many, many people experience an ease. Life suddenly feels easier, more pleasant.
	And then some people start moving or dancing or singing.
	It's a moment where they're becoming free of this problematic self.
	And then they think, oh, if I had two or three, then another two, if I had another two or three, I would feel even better.
	But unfortunately, that does not happen, because if they drink even more, gradually they are moving towards complete unconsciousness.
	And so there is self-transcendence.
	That's only one example.
	Self-transcendence is also other drugs, like the stuff that people smoke.
	It's legal here now.
	So you have this dried plant that for a long time was illegal.
	I mean, it's a bit absurd, people carrying in their pockets leaves of a dried plant and then they get arrested for carrying leaves of a dried plant.
	Anyway, so you smoke.
	I tried it, I don't know if I told you, I tried it once because people asking me what's it like, is it the same as meditation?
	I said I have to try it.
	So we were in Amsterdam in a hotel and of course that's the ideal place to try, well it was at the time, nowadays it's available elsewhere too.
	So I tried it and I could see it did something to my mind.
	I could feel a dulling, a kind of dulling of my mind.
	It was not as... I would not want to repeat it because my normal state is so much more pleasant.
	Then I can see why for people who are burdened by this anxious mind or the problem-making mind, the egoic mind, they experience a moment of release.
	It gives them a glimpse of becoming a bit free of the me, this always anxious or always regretting this or looking, fearing this.
	All the fear and anxiety subsides for a while.
	So it's another glimpse of self-transcendence.
	But again, if you go further, that route, you again move towards unconsciousness.
	Yes, it can be.
	I also experimented.
	No, I didn't experiment.
	I took it once.
	Acid, LSD, because people asked me, isn't this the same as meditation?
	I couldn't answer the questions.
	I had to try it.
	So I took some and that was years ago.
	People experience in different ways.
	But what I experienced was an enormous intensification of sensory experience.
	Like everything was, every sense was amplified.
	Like the sense of smell, the sense of touch, the visual sense, looking at an object.
	You could see, I could see walls in the room pulsating with energy.
	And I can see how what it does, it completely removes the thinking mind, and what's left is a pure experiencing of it.
	The pure sensory experience.
	It removes the thinking.
	In that sense, it has certain similarities with the state of presence or the conscious, very conscious state of spiritual presence.
	Because in spiritual presence also the mind is still, but consciousness remains.
	The difference between all these things where people seek self-transcendence through drugs or alcohol or even sexual, the intense sexual pleasure will also stop your mind temporarily.
	Not for too long.
	Well, it depends.
	Eckhart!
	I expect better from you!
	I hope it's not like when you're answering questions, like, oh god, when's the orgasm?
	Goes on for hours!
	The difference is, when you indulge in those things that give you temporary relief from yourself, you're moving below thought.
	The thinking dimension is where most people live.
	Yeah.
	The voice in the head talks, talks, talks, interprets, judges, criticizes, etc., etc., etc.
	That's the thinking dimension.
	You can become free of that mind created self, which is the ego, By moving below thinking.
	So certain drugs can help you move below thinking.
	Also you can experience it when you are just about to go to sleep.
	There's a moment when you're half awake still and half asleep.
	And in that moment you can sense The nature of sleep is a sweetness that pulls you.
	It pulls you.
	And there's nothing left of your problems because you've fallen below thinking.
	And you suddenly feel so good as you're moving towards sleep.
	It feels so good.
	Ah!
	And then you disappear into sleep.
	You have moved below thinking.
	But that's spiritually speaking, there are some similarities with that,
	which gives you things that give you a glimpse of self transcendence and spiritually awakening,
	you rise above thinking.
	But there are some similarities between the two states and the drug induced temporary glimpses that people have
	can be helpful if you don't get addicted Some people have started their spiritual life by taking acid once or twice or three times and then they started doing meditation and then they didn't need that anymore.
	The ultimate solution is not for us in falling below thinking.
	We cannot regress to that.
	The animals also live in a pre-thinking stage, in a pre-egoic stage.
	The dog has no self-image.
	It hasn't arrived at that stage yet.
	That's why the dog is happy.
	I've never met a dog that has a problem with body image or problem with self-esteem.
	Even the ugliest dog is fine.
	He has no secondary image through which it lives.
	That's why the dogs are quite happy.
	They don't have a self.
	But we can't go back there.
	Our destiny is the next stage of human evolution.
	is not to let go of thinking completely, no, thought is the most wonderful tool that there is, but not to seek an identity through the movement of thought.
	Now Subi has joined us to pass on some of the questions of our audience, and my proposal Subi, having now spent considerable time speaking with Eckhart Tolle over the course of my life, not enough but enough to make this observation, perhaps we could find like 10 questions, ask all of them, And then Eckhart Tolle could answer all of them in his answer, because otherwise if we ask them individually, unless Eckhart Tolle says that Eckhart Tolle is leaving, we will be here indefinitely.
	I have got about ten, so I can read through them.
	I think that will work.
	Eckhart, do you think that will work?
	If Subhi reads ten questions, and the people that have asked the questions, and then your answer must answer all of them, please.
	Oh, that's great.
	I've never tried that before.
	That's a good idea.
	Let's try it.
	Okay, so et3local asks, I hope Eckhart talks about the pain body.
	Chris West asks, if we all evolve through struggle, are you still evolving Eckhart?
	Do you still struggle or have you reached a place beyond struggle?
	Maui asks, how do you handle inescapable situations?
	How do you stay present and positive when you are literally in the hands of one who wishes you harm?
	I'm getting all of this.
	Encopte asks, I'm in chronic physical pain.
	How do I manage my relationships with others in a way my pain does not take center stage in my relationships as suffering, our suffering?
	Kitty Ren asks, how about global meditations?
	Do you think they make an impact and why?
	Blessed Old Bird asks, what is your sole purpose?
	She also commented, well they also commented earlier saying that they knew a friend who shaved his dog and the dog acted embarrassed.
	It was a dog which had very thick coat The dog became self-conscious.
	That's good.
	This is a breakthrough question.
	And maybe one more, and then I will summarise these enquiries for Eckhart into one question.
	Yeah.
	Hetty Hope asks, how can we, in our day every day, increase positive spiritual force to awaken each other to understand greed and hatred in ourselves?
	Okay, so Eckhart, it seems like the ten questions in one that you will be answering is about the pain body, about the concept of struggle, your personal struggle when you find yourself literally trapped in the wrong hands.
	Does global meditation work?
	What about chronic physical pain?
	What is your sole purpose?
	And can we awaken each other?
	Go Eckhart!
	These are all wonderful questions.
	So the, of course, ultimately the answer to all these questions needs to point to a state of consciousness that you need to bring to whatever life situation you find yourself in.
	The state of consciousness that You need to bring to your life situation rather than being at the mercy of your life situation, whatever is happening to you in your lifetime, whether it's internally as your pain body, pain body is the term I use,
	to talk about the accumulation of painful emotions, often going back to childhood.
	So there's an accumulation in human beings of painful emotion that sometimes is dormant and other times comes up, uses your mind, indulges in drama with other people by feeding on it.
	And again, the answer to that is stay present with it.
	Be the observer of your mind and the observer of your emotions.
	Realize you are not the emotion.
	You don't say, I am angry.
	Say, there's anger in me.
	That may seem like a very insignificant difference of just the use of words, but it's more than that.
	If you say, I am angry, you and the anger, you're identified with emotion, which means you are lost in it.
	It has you, you don't have it.
	And the same with thinking.
	So, there's anger in me, or I can feel the anger, implies that there is an observing presence.
	And that's the solution, that there you are free.
	from being trapped in the anger.
	The anger may still be there for a while.
	Sometimes the anger is even helpful if you have to be very careful.
	It can be a very powerful energy.
	There may be certain situations where anger Can be briefly applied and it can be helpful, but you need to stay conscious so that it doesn't draw you in.
	It's better, of course, to deal with situations in other ways than anger.
	Mostly anger is very unconscious.
	So stay conscious.
	Stay conscious.
	Don't be drawn into the reactivity and so on.
	Every Am I still evolving was another question.
	And again, who am I?
	It's the same.
	We all come to this.
	Every answer comes back to the same central point.
	Who am I in essence?
	Temporarily, I'm a person with a name.
	I am a spiritual teacher.
	When the teaching happens, it's a conceptual identity.
	I don't carry around a conceptual identity when I'm not in the actual teaching situation.
	I don't carry around in my head a conceptual identity of myself as a spiritual teacher.
	Nor do I carry around in my head an identity of myself even as a person of a particular age or gender or whatever.
	I am consciousness.
	I'm the animating presence behind form.
	The mind is still.
	I know that I'm consciousness, but not conceptually.
	Am I still evolving?
	I don't know.
	Probably.
	Consciousness is... I don't know all the answers.
	I only know the answers in a situation when they're actually truly needed.
	And sometimes not knowing is the most powerful state to be in.
	Not always thinking.
	You need to interpret immediately.
	You need to interpret every situation, every person.
	Practice being in the state of not knowing and in the state of openness, innocent openness, like a child, but more than that.
	Jesus said, if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, You must be like a little child.
	If you're not like a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.
	What does that mean?
	It means the child is pre-conceptual.
	It hasn't started thinking yet.
	Have you looked into the eyes of, let's say, a one-year-old or six-month-old babies and when they look at you, they go like, There's not a thought in their head, it's just pure consciousness running through their eyes, you can see.
	And people, when they look into the eyes of the baby, they feel, oh, they feel love.
	Even people who have a big ego can sometimes have a glimpse of freedom because they can sense the baby is not judging them.
	The baby is just, they connect with consciousness.
	And it's a wonderful thing.
	It is love.
	The love is there when you don't judge.
	And so, when I can look at you, Russell, and yes, there's a personality there.
	Actually, your personality is quite entertaining and pleasant, so I can enjoy you on the level of personality, but I can also sense that behind the personality, there is a presence, there is a consciousness.
	And that consciousness that I can sense behind your personality, One with my consciousness.
	There isn't your consciousness and mine.
	We are both manifestations of the one animating presence that pervades the entire universe.
	And that recognition is love.
	But not the emotional love.
	It's a deeper thing.
	Yes, yes.
	So that's, and again, presence.
	Every answer eventually to the question, eventually, one way or another, leads back to the state of presence or the state of awareness.
	That's the answer to every question, ultimately.
	And the solution to every dilemma is to To be rooted in that state of awareness.
	And then you can begin to use your mind in a much more constructive way.
	You can use your mind to create things, to manifest things.
	But there's no longer self-seeking in your mind.
	Looking for yourself anymore in some narrative.
	Of course, the story of your life, you really remember it, but that is no longer the main part of your identity.
	You have found a deeper identity.
	Jesus, one of my most favorite My favorite parables of Jesus talks about a man who is building a house on the sand.
	He's building a house and then the floods come and the storms come and the house is swept away because it's built on the sand.
	And then there's a man who, before building the house, he digs deep Until he reaches the rock, the foundation.
	And when he reaches the rock, he builds the house on the rock.
	And the storms come and the floods come and the house is not swept away.
	And so Jesus said, everybody who listens to my teaching and lives it, He or she is the one who digs deep and builds this house on the rock.
	And when the life comes at you, the challenges of life come at you, the turbulent events in your personal life and in our collective life, you are rooted in this inner state of awareness, which is the vertical dimension, And there you are at peace even while the world is in turmoil.
	And not only are you passively at peace while the world is in turmoil, you can also make a conscious contribution to make the world a more conscious place.
	In whatever way you act upon the world through other human beings or actions you take, The way you communicate with other human beings is done in a conscious manner rather than in a reactive manner.
	We are going through a period of increasing insanity collectively.
	It's like an illness, collective illness, mental illness that's overtaken a significant section of humanity.
	Sometimes this happens.
	People go Not only individuals, but also collectives.
	They go through periods of insanity.
	And this is what we're moving into now, an area of great turbulence.
	So the parable of Jesus really becomes very relevant now, because the storms and the floods are coming, both maybe literally and metaphorically.
	The storms and floods are coming, and they will come into your life also.
	And that's fine.
	We are being challenged to wake up so that the egoic consciousness can be transcended and we can move on to the next stage of human evolution.
	The crisis point is also a great opportunity for moving out of the egoic state.
	It's been around for thousands of years and it had its function.
	It's fine.
	But coming to an end now, it's self-destructing.
	The ego is about to self-destruct.
	And so we will experience a great reset, but not in the way it's been planned by certain groups or organizations.
	They will be very surprised.
	It will be a very different reset from the one that they may be planning.
	Yes.
	I see, Eckhart, now the significance of individual awakening and the impact that it can have
	on a culture, particularly as it is evident that there is a unitary force of some kind
	unfolding, unravelling, even as we speak, and that our individual foundation, having
	a foundation on the permanent rather than the impermanent, temporal and ever-shifting,
	will be a great asset as these transitions continue to occur.
	And to your point earlier, Eckhart, this is precisely why I believe I've been drawn again,
	as I was once earlier in my life, into the concept of activism and critiquing power structures,
	because the function of our channel is to...
	Articulate the connection between individual awakening, collective action and our ability when unified to challenge current power systems and create new systems based on this true foundation.
	So I'm so grateful to you for helping me once again see these connections, see the importance of presence.
	See the importance of awareness, that my function is to remain present, to learn to observe my emotions as they come up, to observe my patterns that play out, be they behavioral or neurological or whatever magnetic field is below the observable level of my apparent individual beingness.
	I always say, as I've said again today, that I find you the easiest instantiation of the spiritual, that I find it makes sense to me, the way you communicate it.
	And I'm very grateful to you for that, Eckhart.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, Russell.
	So, your function is to, yes, to question many of these seemingly very unconscious or absurd things that are happening in the world.
	the narratives that are being created that are sometimes quite insane but you question it without malice, without demonizing any group of people and that's very important because if you see insanity manifesting in certain humans or groups of humans If you demonize them, then you become drawn into the same state of conscience that they are in.
	As Nietzsche, the famous saying, I think Nietzsche said, if you gaze into the abyss for long enough, the abyss gazes back into you.
	Or if you fight monsters, be careful that you don't turn into a monster yourself by fighting monsters.
	You are quite successful in that, so I appreciate that.
	My mission is somewhat different.
	I don't, very rarely, maybe never actually questions, specific things that I see as a manifestation of irrational, totally irrational thinking or even insanity.
	It's a little bit like a good psychologist or psychiatrist, I believe, if they are with a patient who believes in some delusion, let's say they believe that They are Napoleon.
	A good psychiatrist or psychotherapist would not say, no, obviously you are not Napoleon, because you would immediately lose connection with that person.
	The novelty to say, yes, you're right, you are, that would be wrong too, to say, yes, you're Napoleon, of course you're Napoleon.
	No, that's wrong too.
	All a good psychotherapist would do is Be in that state of openness, perhaps ask questions and listen.
	Don't deny their reality because then they will no longer communicate with you.
	And that my function in this world is to be a midwife for the arising of awareness in human beings.
	And even if a human being is completely deluded in some kind of mental, some kind of totally deluded identity, For example, I would not question their identity because then I lose contact.
	There's no possibility for helping them to awaken into awareness out of that.
	So I would simply listen and ask questions perhaps.
	Then there's a possibility that awareness may arise.
	So that they're no longer trapped in dysfunctional or completely irrational thought processes, mental patterns.
	Then there's the possibility of awakening.
	But that's me because I'm a midwife for the arising of awareness.
	And you are doing it in a more, not in such a direct way.
	You're addressing individual instances of madness.
	Well, we don't know whether it's madness or... There's always the eternal question, all the things that humans, that are happening in the world now, what politicians are doing, what the media are doing, the eternal question that arises, are they evil or malevolent or are they just very stupid?
	There are two theories you can have.
	Let's, I mean, look at things that happened, like the whole thing, just countless examples.
	Iraq, invasion of Iraq, the whole story of Afghanistan, just Is there some evil plot behind it all?
	That's what many people believe.
	They say it's all been planned.
	They've been planning it all along.
	That's one way of looking at it.
	My way of... I would be more inclined to say... Well, to be polite, one could say they're very unconscious.
	But to be more blunt, I would say they're just plain stupid.
	What they do makes so little sense, and it's so absurd, it can only be... But what kind of stupid is that?
	Because these people, they all have their university degrees, I suppose.
	Most of these politicians and media people, they have their university degrees.
	So it's not necessarily stupid in the sense of not intelligent enough.
	There's a deeper stupid than that and that's a complete lack of wisdom.
	Wisdom is what we need and wisdom arises out of awareness.
	Wisdom is not We do not arrive at wisdom through improving conceptual thinking or knowledge.
	More knowledge doesn't give you more wisdom.
	To be able to think conceptually in a better way doesn't give you more wisdom.
	Wisdom transcends that.
	Wisdom is a deeper intelligence that arises out of awareness, that can look at the totality of a situation and see what the right course of action is, rather than attack just one thing and think that's what we need to do there.
	How we've dealt with the pandemic is an example of that.
	Just attacking this one thing, complete disregard of secondary consequences that may be far worse than the original problem.
	Economic consequences, psychological consequences, completely unawareness, lack of wisdom, complete lack of wisdom.
	What humanity needs desperately is wisdom, not an increase of what conventionally we call intelligence.
	That has its place too, but intelligence without wisdom is actually dangerous.
	Very dangerous.
	It becomes destructive and self-destructive.
	So that's unfortunately where we are.
	All the weapon systems, biological warfare and all these nuclear weapons require great intelligence to make these things.
	Obviously, the people who make a nuclear weapon need to be really intelligent.
	But where's the wisdom?
	Wisdom is lacking.
	Wisdom is a word that you don't actually hear very much these days because people don't talk about it.
	But it's the one thing that will save us.
	And you can't separate wisdom from awareness.
	It arises out of awareness.
	So that's where we need to go.
	So when I say stupid, I don't mean necessarily low IQ, because they might have a high IQ and still do totally stupid things and be totally identified with this egoic self, called personal ego and collective ego.
	So, yes, I don't exclude.
	Obviously, there are interest groups and so on behind the scenes that try to manipulate events.
	No doubt that is true.
	But I don't believe that everything has been planned.
	They just don't... Jesus said on the cross, I love that saying, forgive them for they know not what they do.
	They know not what they do.
	In other words, they are completely unconscious.
	They know not what they do and that's how I see it.
	Eckhart, thank you so much.
	That's such a beautiful appraisal and analysis of our contemporary situation.
	I'm so grateful to you once again for sharing your wisdom, your awareness, your presence.
	It's always a pleasure to have you here and I hope that I'll get to spend time with you again soon.
	Thank you, Eckhart.
	Thank you, Russell.
	Great to be with you again.
	Thank you.
	Well, thanks all of you for joining me for this fantastic conversation with Eckhart Tolle.
	We do a conversation exactly like this every week.
	Well, not exactly like this.
	Sometimes it's with a spiritual leader like Eckhart Tolle.
	Next time, in fact, we're going to be talking to Jordan Peterson.
	So imagine that, going from Eckhart Tolle ...to Jordan Peterson via George Orwell.
	What is the significance of spiritual awakening?
	What is the significance of educating yourself?
	What is the significance of ensuring that you are educated enough to confront power?
	This week with Books with Brad, we're going to conclude our reading of 1984.
	Later in the week, we're talking to economist Jeffrey Sachs.
	Him.
	We're talking to him this week, and in Subcutaneous next week, we're talking to Jordan Pearson, and I'm very keen to talk to him about spirituality, morality, Christianity, the nature of love, the nature of God, and the obligations we have as individuals and as a collective.
	But you will be able to ask him your questions as well if you are a member of Stay Free AF.
	See you next time for Subcutaneous, and join us over at Stay Free AF.
	There's a link in the description.
	Stay free.

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