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Hi. Thanks for listening to the Tony Robbins podcast. This is just a quick note about this episode in case you'd rather watch and see the video of this conversation. And that's found@YouTube.com tonyrobbinslive if you'd like to listen, you're in the right place. Okay, here's Tony. Ladies and gentlemen, stand up and give it up for Eckhart. To Eckhart. It's nice to meet you from a distance. I look forward to that being in person sometime soon. I've respected you so much. There's so many people in the spiritual community that are in it for things other than actually the mission. And you've walked this talk and lived this and just a beautiful soul. So thank you for joining us. Another big hand for Eckhart. Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm very happy and honored to be able to make a small contribution to this wonderful event. And as a gentle transition from the high intensity of doing, I'd invite you to not lose this high intensity of energy, but to direct it to an alert awareness of being, the two polarities that are vital to be aware of in life. Doing and being. Now, I remember a few years ago, I was talking to Oprah about Tony Robbins and the good work he's doing. And suddenly the idea came to me. I said, tony is a teacher of doing, but he is not unaware of being. And I teach primarily being, but I'm not unaware of the importance of doing. So perhaps one day we could do an event together and I would take his part. I would teach for half an hour doing, and he could take my part. He would sit in a chair, perhaps wear a little vest like what I usually wear, and he could teach being. Wouldn't that be wonderful? I think Tony likes that idea. I'm in, Eckhart. I'm in. Great. So let's become aware then of this. Perhaps the most vital thing in spiritual life is. Oh, by the way, before I continue, I expect this talk to be a hybrid between a meditation and a talk. I don't know how much of it will be memorable, but that's not important here. Just I don't think you need to refer a lot to your notes or devices that you have. Just there's not much to remember. There is in the Old Testament a very surprising statement early on in the book of Exodus, when Moses asks God, who are you? Or what is your name? And God gives the amazing and mysterious answer, I am that I am. Just sometimes translated as I am what I am, or Sometimes translated as I am who I am. My favorite translation, that is the most accurate one I believe, is I am the I am. And then Moses says, when I talk to my people, so what shall I tell them who sent me to them? And God said, tell them that I am sent you. This is an amazing statement if you realize the deep meaning of it, because it refers not only to the essence identity of the universe, but it refers also to the essence identity of who you are. I very often use the term form identity and essence identity. You have a form identity. Everybody has a form identity, which is first of all the physical form, the body, and then it is the psychological form. That is the psychological makeup, the personality that you are, that the conditioning of your mind, your mental emotional conditioning that creates the. Your psychological form identity. So you as a person are a form identity, physical form and a psychological form. The psychological form, of course, is, is dependent on what happened to you in the past. It's your conditioned by the past. That is the entity, the past, the personal sense of self. Everybody has that. Now, for most people, that's all they have. They derive their entire sense of who they are from a personal sense of self, a historical person, and they talk about themselves. When they say my life, there's a narrative that every human has. And this narrative is the story of my life, me and my life. So people, that is what people think about a lot. They thought, what about my life? And now the interesting fact is everybody's life is, to a greater or lesser degree, problematic. Everybody encounters a succession of challenges in their life, both on a personal level and on a collective level. So there is no end to the succession of challenges that we face in life. We don't realize that the challenges that we face. And challenges is only one name that we use. We could use other words like disruption, loss, tribulation. These challenges, if you are not sufficiently conscious, very easily turn into suffering, into reactivity. The personality reacts and the personality, this should not be happening. There is something wrong with my life because I'm continuously being challenged. When I sort it sort out one, I create something beautiful here. And then always, somehow, something comes into mar it to challenge it, to detract from it, or it no longer satisfies me. And so people then develop a sense of dissatisfaction, believe there's something wrong when things, so to speak, go wrong. Now they go wrong collectively for millions of people, not for the first time, but for quite a while. For many decades in the Western world, collectively, we've been relatively okay. Everybody had their personal tribulations and sufferings, yes, but collectively we've been okay since the second half of the 20th century. So challenges come in easily, turns into suffering because the personal sense of self reacts and it is dependent on its state of being of what's external condition. It is determined by external conditions. So when you're not sufficiently conscious, the external condition determines your inner state of consciousness. An angry person makes you angry, something, some loss in your life, and you begin to feel despondent. So there's a reactivity. You are not free because your inner state is completely dependent on external conditions. That is part of the. When you only know yourself as a form identity, that's almost inevitable. It always happens. And we don't realize that challenges have an important function in the evolution of consciousness. They are absolutely vital because it is the challenges of life that force you to generate more consciousness. That can manifest in many ways. You can generate more energy. Start with a physical level. When you're being challenged physically, something, let's put it like this. If you want to have a stronger body, if you want to improve your body, what do you have to do? You have to make life difficult for the body. How do you do that? You start jogging. At first it's quite an effort. You go weightlifting, it's an enormous effort. At first there is a gap between what the body is able to do and what you're demanding of the body. So you're making life difficult for the body. And then something happens. There is a. Suddenly there is a demand for more energy. And then suddenly you experience an influx of enhanced energy. But it only comes. It does. It would not have come if you had stayed on your couch. It had not come if you had stayed in your physical comfort zone. Because you took the body out of the physical comfort zone. The demand for influx of new and heightened energy came. And then suddenly you experience a heightened sense of aliveness as you're jogging. But there was a gap. So that was the gap of discomfort. And that operates on all levels. So when you experience loss or disruption of your life, whatever level, the only way you can become free of reactivity and become free of ultimately suffering that it otherwise would entail is to grow in consciousness. So when things go wrong in your life, the only answer is, are you able to grow in consciousness? Are you able to transcend the historical person, the idea who you are, the form identity? And the only way able to do that is the. The. The loss of the tribulation awakens in you the need to go deeper into yourself so that you are no Longer trapped in the conditioned sense of identity. And this going deeper puts you in touch with the what I call your essence identity. And the essence identity is the transcendent dimension of consciousness. Who you are beyond the person. And that awareness of this essence identity is ultimately what spiritual awakening is when you first become aware of it. And then the possibility arises that you become rooted in your essence identity. Now, where do you find, where and how do you find your essence identity? It's not just as a concept, it's relatively meaningless. And you cannot understand what essence identity is by examining the concept. Your form identity is connected with your life situation. Your life situation unfolds in time. Your whole past has brought you to this moment. Your life situation will unfold in the so called future. Your life situation and your form identity go together. Everybody not only has a form identity, you also have a life situation right now. And whether for you this life situation is relatively pleasant at the moment, or whether it is highly problematic, it varies from person to person. So life situation involves your health, it involves your finances, it involves your relationship, it involves your work situation, your home situation. All these things make up your life situation. Now, most people's attention is continuously and only absorbed by their life situation. So that's what occupies their attention continuously. And your life situation is more often than not problematic. So large. Millions of people actually unconsciously consider their life to be a problem to be solved. They derived their entire sense of identity from the problems that continuously rise in their lives, their life situation. So, and where do these problems exist? If you look around in order to take people from being completely absorbed by their life situation, which ultimately is the stream of continuous thinking that you cannot get out of, that their life situation is represented by a continuous stream of unconscious thinking. Unconscious thinking means you are not aware of the voice in your head because the voice in your head has taken possession of you so completely that you are 100% identified with it. In other words, you believe in every thought that comes into your head. You are every thought that comes into your head. That is the state of being spiritually unconscious. Even if you have two PhDs, it makes no difference. You are then spiritually ignorant. You might be highly educated, but it is not unusual for people to be highly educated, but otherwise be totally ignorant. It is spiritual terms. So your spirit to be spiritually unconscious, to be unconscious is to be completely identified with a stream of thinking in your head. And you call it my life and there's no end to the problems of my life. You look for some kind of ultimate solution. Yes, it's wonderful to take action, it's wonderful to improve your life here and there. But continuously the challenges come and you always look to the next moment for some kind of fulfillment, some kind of completion. And although it is wonderful to make plans and to have a purpose in your life, it's absolutely necessary. But if that's all there is, if your entire sense of who you are is absorbed by your form, identity and your life situation, which is one problem after another, as Churchill called Churchill. When Churchill talked about history, he said it's one damn thing after another. And everybody's personal history is really also continuous. Problems, challenges. And when the challenges become great, there's great loss or disruption of your normal way of life or some kind of tribulation. Then suffering arises, suffering increases and the next. Also what arises is the possibility of going deeper and realizing who you are beyond the narrative of your mind, the unconscious voice in the head, the thought processes that never stop to realize who you are. Beyond the story of me, me and my story. It's that is a mind made sense of self that constitutes most people's sense of identity. This is very important to realize. They derive their entire sense of self of who they are from a narrative, a story they tell themselves and others in their mind. It's your past mostly, and then you project from there into the so called future. So that's all there is for most people. And because they have not found anything else, they live only in this dimension which I call the horizontal dimension of life. The horizontal dimension of life, of course, state you have past and future. You have the movement from past to present to future. The horizontal dimension of life. They have not realized the vertical dimension, which is the entry point into your essence, identity, which you could say it's a symbol if not the cross. The cross is the horizontal dimension and the intersection of the horizontal dimension with the vertical dimension. A human being needs to be rooted in the vertical dimension. And this is where we are going now. A human being needs to be rooted in the vertical dimension in order to have a fruitful life in the horizontal dimension. And a non frustrating life and a productive life and a creative life in the horizontal dimension. Which of course is necessary and needs to be acknowledged and honored. But you cannot be a fully functioning human being if the horizontal dimension is all there is. If you know nothing else except the horizontal dimension in your life, then you're always. There's always some future moment that's going to be more important than this one. So where do we find the vertical dimension? The Horizontal dimension, your life situation, that is where it exists. Your life situation exists on the horizontal dimension, lives in time. And a question that I sometimes ask people who are burdened by their life situation, which is millions and millions of people on this planet carry an enormous burden around with them and they call it my life. And it's hard and it's difficult. Yes, there are external difficulties that cannot be disputed. But to carry your own self as a burden in life is a terrible fate. You carry the burden of yourself, an unhappy self. This is the state of suffering that the Buddha talked of. You carry the burden of an unhappy self with occasional interludes of short lived happiness. You have to have a great meal or you have sex, or you just fall in love and it doesn't last that long. So to live with this burden of an unhappy self is dreadful. But what is that unhappy self? It's a mental, emotional structure that's created by the past. It's a mind made sense of self. But you call it my life. My life is so hard. Let me tell you about my life. Do you want to hear about my life? And I'm sure it's far worse than yours. That's very common story. I'm not talking about myself, it's just an example. So people live, they walk around with an unhappy sense of self. And often you hear, oh, I wish my life had gone a different way. I wish this hadn't have happened. I would have imagined my life so very differently when I was 20. I thought I had so many plans and so on. An unhappy sense of self. How do you realize the ultimate unreality of that kind of sense of self? The ultimate unreality of what the Buddha called the self and what Jesus also called the self. What Jesus said, amazingly, deny thyself. What does that mean, deny thyself? It cannot possibly mean. How can you, if yourself is real, that self, it would be absurd to deny it. How you can deny yourself, it doesn't make sense. And very few people, I believe in the churches, actually understand what he's talking about. Deny thyself. Well, what he's saying is exactly the same that what the Buddha is saying. Recognize the ultimate unreality of your usual sense of self. That's deny thyself means recognize that in ultimate terms, your person, your, your exclusively personalized sense of self is ultimately not real. So that's the meaning of it cannot have any other meaning. Because if it's real, it's absurd to deny something that is real. So Jesus is saying exactly the same as The Buddha. And then there is the possibility, the Buddha said to find the end of suffering. And Jesus talked about to find the kingdom of heaven that is within you. They are all. They are pointing to the transcendent dimension of who you are that is always already there, that does not need to be achieved. Recognizing this transcendent dimension to who you are is not an achievement. You cannot achieve it. Because if you want to achieve, this could call itself realization or whatever you want to call it. If you want to achieve it, you will not achieve it because you've already put it into the future. Because any achievement, you need future to achieve anything, even to achieve, to make a cup of tea, you need future. So if you want to achieve enlightenment or self recognition, or the awakening, the great awakening, that's your. You have already created an obstacle, the wanting to achieve it. So instead of an achievement, it is a recognition. It is a realization of something that is already and has always been within you, but it has always been overlooked. It's already the dimension, the essence dimension, which is exactly what the words of God pointed to. That is also the. The essence dimension of God is the I am the ultimate, I am, and we're going there now. So it's not an achievement, it's a recognition or a realization. So how do you arrive at this realization? Sometimes when people complain to me about their problems and the difficulties of their life, which undoubtedly are true on level of their life situation, I ask them, well, okay, I see that all that is happening in your life, but what problem do you have right now? What is the problem that you have in this moment? Now this is a strange question. And usually people don't know what I mean because they still refer to some future moment. Well, I don't know how to pay my rent, where am I going to live? What's going to happen to me? What about this and that? Tomorrow I have to see a lawyer about that. I have to. What about my investments? What about my whatever? No, that's all some future moment in your mind. What problem do you have in the only time there ever is, which is the present moment. The only place where your life ever exists is in the present moment. There is never anything other than this moment your entire life unfolds in. And as this moment you can intellectually you can agree agree with that statement. But still it hasn't touched you deeply enough. You have to have this deep realization that this moment is inseparable from life. There's only ever this moment. Whatever happened in the past, it happened in the present. Moment and you remember it in this present moment. Whatever will happen in the future will not happen in the future. Nothing has ever happened in the future and nobody has ever encountered the future. The most intrepid explorer has never encountered. No intrepid explorer has ever encountered the future. Because the moment the so called future comes, it's the present moment. There's never anything other than the present moment. Your entire life is always and never will be anything other than the present moment. But to realize this in the, in the depths of your being is very different from intellectually thinking about it. So you have your life situation which unfolds in time. And what I call your life is always now. And it is vital to differentiate between your life situation. Yes, you honor it, you acknowledge it, and you do what you can to improve it. No doubt about it. But you need to know the difference between your life situation and your life. Yes, your life situation has its place, but let it not consume you. What is vital is what this vertical dimension is. Your life. And your life is always and only now. So dealing with your life situation is fine. Often you have to take action. The question is, is it consuming you so completely that you are losing yourself in it, that it fuels your thinking continuously and it preoccupies you and it keeps you awake at night and it creates an enormous amount of suffering and many things you think about not, not even going to happen. But your life situation, it. It is not enough. No matter how conscientious you are and how hard you try to have a well functioning, ordered life, it's never enough. Why is it never enough? Because you have ignored the vertical dimension. Your life. There's only a life situation. Your life is now and only ever now. And ultimately this sounds a little strange perhaps in ultimate terms, past and future do not exist except as thoughts in your mind. Isn't that an interesting realization? And I don't think anybody could actually prove that this is not true or even argue with it. The past does not exist except as a thought in your mind. And future does not exist except as a thought in your mind. Or yes, we need them to function on this level of reality. But there is something else. If you do not find this something else, no matter how hard you try, you will not experience your life as satisfying. You will not experience ultimate satisfaction in your life. Situations will always fall short of expectations or they will no longer satisfy. There's always something that goes wrong. It lie becomes very frustrating if not leading to despair. There is a wonderful book in the Old Testament, I believe it's called Ecclesiastes, which was written by a person who had reached this point of the ultimate state of frustration with life. How this book got into Bible, I don't know, but it's great literature. But it's really, it's. It's not a. This person had not found yet God within. So it starts with the famous statement, vanity of vanities. All is vanity. That's the famous first lines of the book of Ecclesiastes. And translated of course, to the older meaning of vanity in modern terminology it means vanity is pointlessness. It's all so utterly pointless because this man who wrote that book, he had achieved so much. He had achieved wealth and yet achieved knowledge. And it did nothing satisfied him. So he started this book by saying, it's all so pointless. And so that's great literature. But that realization of pointlessness could be the beginning of the realization of your essence identity, which is inseparable from the present moment. So in order to realize your essence identity, your attention needs to come into the present moment. Now what does that mean? It means your attention is no longer completely absorbed by the thought processes in your mind. So your attention comes into the present moment. For example, now, often it means first of all that you become more aware of your sense perceptions, your surroundings. There's a heightened sense of alertness. You perceive things more acutely, seeing, hearing and whatever other senses. And so your attention moves from thought based into alertness directed towards sense perceptions. You become used and you might see or hear or touch things that otherwise you had not been aware of if you're anywhere. Often the first step, but it's only the first step, the first step into present moment awareness, which is the vertical dimension, which is the opening of your essence identity. The first one is quite often sense perceptions. And this is for many people. It's also already a small waking up. What do they wake up from? They wake up from the dream of unconscious thinking and the entire sense of self that was bound up with unconscious thinking. The narrative of me, the story of me. Okay, look at the sky. Give it your complete attention. And there's a moment of complete attention. In that moment of complete attention, there's only the sense perception and the awareness behind the sense perception. So it starts with the sense perception that's already. And you see, you will probably see beauty or hear beautiful things that before you are not aware of. And you might see beauty in the most insignificant things when you're really present with them. Suddenly you can hold something up. Wow. When you look at a tree and For a moment, you're just aware of it and you're really looking. You're not labeling it. That's the important thing. It is possible to look at a tree or flower or the sky without compulsively, immediately labeling it. People don't even know that this is possible. Why don't they teach at school that it is entirely possible, and not only entirely possible, but absolutely necessary to be able to develop the ability to look at the world, engaged with the world with your sense perceptions, quite often without compulsively labeling it. But just be aware of it, notice it, give it attention that brings you that there's a present moment. And you notice suddenly that you live in a world that is. That is alive. There are amazing life forms all around you. You overlook them continuously. When you are only completely absorbed in the thought processes. You overlook the miracle of life that continuously unfolds around you. Even in a. In a plant. The trees I have. I'm lucky to have trees. When I look out of my window and I often. I sit here sometimes before 15 minutes and just look at the trees. It's so wonderful. And the sky, the trees. Your present moment. But sense perception is only the entry point, miraculous as it is. And then you're not only aware of the sense perception. And now we come to the vital next step in present moment awareness, which is a vertical dimension. This is. Oh, this is so miraculous. You become aware not only of what you see or hear or touch or smell. Not only that you're also aware of yourself, but not the historical self, not the conditioned self, not the person. You're becoming aware of yourself as the underlying presence or the. What you could call it the underlying consciousness, conscious presence, that makes the sense perception possible. So there is a. You can sense a presence that is inseparable from who you are. And it is this presence of consciousness, we could call it the light of consciousness, that enables you to perceive, but it also enables you to think. But right now you're not thinking. You're only aware of yourself as a presence. And this is. At first, the mind might say, well, what does it mean? That's another thought. A thought trying to understand presence. Thinking cannot understand presence. So you become present. And what is left of you. Let's say you look at the sky or you look at the plant, whatever it may be. And then you become aware of the one who is looking. The one who is looking. And that one cannot be defined. That one has no real attributes that could talk about. The one who is looking is the underlying. I Am all you know. You could then even close your eyes and no longer look at the sky or the. Or the tree or whatever you were looking at. And. And what remains is a sense of beingness or presence, which has no attributes as such. You cannot define it conceptually. And all you know then is that you are. And that is the meaning of I am. That I am. Because that is not only the essence identity of you. It is the essence identity of the universe itself, the underlying I am. And if. If you can go there at first you just have it as a glimpse. A glimpse of you as presence instead of you as a person. But they're not ultimately separate. One could compare it to you as a person. You are a ripple on the surface of the ocean. And then the ripple that's on the surface of the ocean becomes aware of that. It is more fundamentally the ocean. Wouldn't that be an amazing awakening for the ripple that before thought it was separate from every other ripple and wasn't even aware of the ocean. All it could see other threatening ripples and fell in love and out of love with a few more ripples, but never knew itself as more than a ripple. And then the ripple on the surface of the ocean becomes aware of the ocean. And it is inseparable from the ocean. In this analogy, the ocean is consciousness itself. It is universal consciousness. It's the. And then it. After a while you develop the ability to. To continuously be aware of this even while you are. Even when you begin to think again, you're no longer totally absorbed in your thinking. You can actually think more effectively when you are rooted in what we could call the unconditioned consciousness, which is what it is. You could also call it an inner stillness. There are many terms you can use. It just pointers and the ultimate the. The ultimate the. I am the fandom. And then you can be rooted in there. And then you can look around. First you practice it with sense perception. When you become aware of yourself, it also affects your body. You can begin to feel every cell of the body almost that the entire body is pervaded by a sense of aliveness. But that is no longer the body. It's something deeper than the body. It's the intelligence that holds all the atoms and molecules of the body together. And the organizing principle behind the material world, the invisible organizing principle behind the cosmos. And this organizing principle behind the cosmos is consciousness itself. And you become aware. An entry point into this realization can be the re. Awareness of what I call the inner body. To sense that your body is Pervaded with a sense of aliveness. But that aliveness is not the visible body. It is the invisible that gives life to the body. And that essentially is you. That is who you are, that is your essence, identity. That is the I am that I am. Or that is as Jesus called it, the light of the world. He said, you are the light of the world. Isn't that what amazing to realization? I am the light of the world. What does that mean? What is the light of the world? The light of the world is consciousness, the consciousness of the world. And what is that consciousness? We can go more deeply into that, but we don't have another two or three hours. That just a little bit here as I see it, it may make sense to you or not. It's an intuitive realization that consciousness that you are is like can be compared to light that emanates from the sun. The sun continuously emanates light. And the consciousness that you are could be is a ray of that light. And that. And what is the sun is the source of all life, traditionally called God. That does not exist in has no. Does not exist in space or time. It is in a transcendent dimension. Not in space or time. But from the transcendent dimension emanates into this world, the light of the source. And it manifests in billions of life forms and briefly manifests in disguises itself in continuous forms. And there's a process in this dimension, there's an evolutionary process where gradually the entire universe is becoming more conscious. It is the universe is engage in a process of awakening. And you are part of this process of awakening. And this moment of us talking here, sitting here, this moment is far more than people listening to a speaker. That's only the surface reality. This moment is already a manifestation of the awakening universe of which you are an inseparable part. So the consciousness is the essence of the universe. It emanates into this universe from God. God is like the sun, but of course far transcends sun. And it emanates. Now the question arises, Is the ray of sunlight separate from the sun? No, it's not. The ray of sunlight is still eternally connected to the sun. But would the ray of sun then be correct in stating I am the sun? Sun, yes and no. The ray of sunlight. Yes, it is. In its essence it's part of the sun, but it's not the sun. The sun is vast and would immediately consume you. So in the same way for you saying I am God is ultimately perhaps true. But I would not recommend that you say it because it's not. It's not. It depends how you look at it. The essence of who you are is inseparable from God, which is the light of consciousness. And that's all you need to know. And in yourself. This is such an amazing realization that there is this transcendent dimension to whom you are that is infinitely more real than the person. And that's. This is consciousness itself. And consciousness itself is very interesting. If you look again at the mythological account of the creation of the world in the beginning of the Bible, you might notice that before God creates the sun and the celestial body, before he creates the sun and the. It's a mythological account. I'm not saying it's literally true, but there's great wisdom in there. Before he creates the sun and the earth, God says, let there be light. Before the sun, let there be light. This is the great. The ultimate statement for the creation of the universe is the statement, let there be light. So it's not the physical light that the sun. It is the light of consciousness. In that moment, God begins to emanate. This is the creation of the universe, the light of consciousness. And then gradually the awakening process begins. Wow. I'm trying to talk about something that is totally impossible to talk about, and yet I'm doing it. So these are only. I cannot explain the universe. It's absurd to even attempt it. But it's a. It's an approximation. It's a little bit like this. Jesus always used parables. It's a little. This is a little bit like that. A little bit like that, yes. And then something in you recognizes the truth of it as if you had always known it. And so the truth of it, the truth of the universe is the truth of who you are. And that is the essence of who you are, where you are, inseparable from what. And that is what. The truth will make you free, said Jesus. What does that mean? It is the truth of who you are that will make you free. You're no longer dependent on external conditions and the conditioning of the person that you are here temporarily. I don't understand that. This is almost still. It's not widely known what I'm talking about. Why isn't it widely known? It's the most vital knowledge. It's not even knowledge. It's a knowing. The most vital knowing for every human being to realize that. But we are on our way. So it is happening. We may. We may be experienced a regressive movement for a little while. It's. Many people seem to be going a Little bit insane these days, but that's fine. It's part of regressive movements are part of the evolutionary process also. There's nothing to be feared. And now, before I finish, the realization of this is also the end of fear in its many manifestations. Fear as nervousness, fear as anxiety, fear as panic, fear transforming into anger and all kinds of other negative emotions. This is also the end of fear because the ripple on the surface of the ocean that is very fearful because he only knows the surface of the ocean. Of course, you would be fearful as a little thing in this vastness. But the moment the ripple recognizes that it is also the ocean and more fundamentally, the ocean, the fear goes because the ripple realizes it cannot die. But at the same time, it's not only that the ripple recognizes itself as the ocean, but the ocean recognizes itself through this recognition of the ripple. If there had not been a ripple and its deluded senses, sense of separate self, the ocean perhaps would not have realized its own identity. And so this is why I'm saying this is an awakening universe and it's such a wonderful adventure to be part of that. And humans go through life with just completely blinded by their narrow person, personal identity. They don't realize how what a wonderful adventure it is. It transcends everything else in your life. So vertical and horizontal essence, dimension. This is all vital knowledge that one day will be taught at school as subject number one. It's the wisdom of how to live life, how to be. What could be more important than that? I will stop here because in here we have time. Eckhart, can we have a few questions? Questions from the audience? Yes, sure. Wonderful. Here we go. Eckhart, thank you for this incredible gift. In the present moment, I feel like an I am in training. You said something beautiful. You said step one was seeing the world without compulsively labeling. And you gave the example of being in nature, seeing the tree. The way I interpret it, you see a tree, but maybe your brain doesn't say tree. Can you share a little bit more about that? Seeing the world without compulsively labeling. And maybe some examples of how to start to immerse yourself to help condition the brain to do that. Thank you. Very wonderful question. Thank you so much. Yes. Ultimately, what it means, and you can experiment with that, is you acquire the ability. Let's just use what is, for most people, the predominant sense which is seeing, rti vision. It could be other senses too. You can acquire the ability. And this is only now with reference to sense perception. But it's with reference to everything else too. To look at something and you experience a cessation of thinking. This is the most vital thing to find in yourself. The ability to be conscious without thought, even if only for three few seconds. And the mind might say, oh no, I can't do that, because that's thought talking. And obviously thought cannot do it because it's a cessation of thought. So you, you look at something and your mind is not commenting whatsoever. You can practice this anywhere. You can sit right here, you can sit here, you can look around the room, or you can look at one single thing and not call it anything. You can. Or you can take in the totality of this, the room where you are, and you look around and you're very alert, very conscious, but you notice there's a stillness in the background, that you experiment with that. So what, what then happens? I call that you rise above thinking. This is not to be confused with falling below thinking. And in both cases you, you achieve some kind of self transcendence because the self that we are talking about here is the mind based sense of self. Now people are longing for self transcendence unconsciously. They want to be free of the burden of themselves. And many go to drugs. So you can go to alcohol. And if you drink enough, you have one glass of whiskey, you feel a little better because your mind isn't that active anymore perhaps, and you have another one and you think, ah, it's so nice to be alive. And then you have another and you start singing. You. There's a little bit of self transcendence for many people there too. But you are moving towards unconsciousness. So in order, the same thing happens. Just as you go to sleep, you're in bed and you're very, very tired and you're too tired to think about your problems anymore. You can't think about them. And there's a delicious moment when you are halfway towards sleep and you feel it's so. The sweetness of sleep is so wonderful and you can feel it there. Oh, for a moment you have achieved self transcendence, but you have fallen below thought. What we are talking about here is the opposite. You could say there is an alertness that arises when you are, for example, looking at something and not mentally labeling it, in fact having no thought about it at all. And this alertness is a state of presence. And in the state of presence you have not fallen below thought, you have risen above thought. And that is the most vital thing for humans to develop this ability so that they are no longer Completely trapped in the movement and the gravitational pull of, of unconscious thinking. Unconscious thinking means thinking that you are completely identified with. Unconscious thinking means thinking from which you derive your sense of identity. So you then the shift that happens is you no longer derive your sense of identity from thinking. You derive your sense of identity from presence, consciousness itself. And that's the shift. That is also obviously what the Buddha talked about, what Jesus talked about. Jesus said, talked about what is mistranslated in the Gospels as repentance. The Greek term is metanoia. Metanoia, which is translated as repentance, is a shift, a complete turnaround. It is a shift in consciousness. And so that's what the ancient, the Hindu teachers talk about. In Advaita and other Hindu schools, they say there are four states of consciousness. There is dreamless sleep. This is ancient Hindu teachings. There is dreamless sleep, there is a dream state, there's a wakeful state. Those are the three normal states of consciousness. But then there's a possibility of what they Sanskrit is called turiya. Turiya means the fourth state of consciousness. And this is exactly, this is pure awareness, pure consciousness, pure presence. That is the fourth state of consciousness. That is the next step in human evolution. And it starts with a simple thing like looking at something and not compulsively labeling it. So you can. There's nothing wrong with labor. Sometimes you need the labels, but many other times you don't need the labels. The labels imprison you and limit you. But you do not lose your ability to use labels. Of course, you can continue to use labels. Another little example you can go into when, when I go to Europe, I always love going into the ancient medieval cathedrals. And you can experience. These are magnificent places of vast. The interior is just wonderful creations. You go inside. There are two ways you can experience that. You can experience the cathedral through conceptual knowing. For example, you can hire a little recording. You put it in your ear and it is a little guide that guides you through the cathedral. It takes half an hour. So it explains everything. This is that it was done this, this time. This is conceptual knowledge. There's nothing wrong with that. But have you really experienced the cathedral this way? Not really, because your mind is full of concepts. The other way, experience. The cathedral is through non conceptual experiencing, just aware, presence. So you walk in there and you look and you go, wow. There's a sense of. You're overwhelmed by this beauty, but you're not your very little mind activity. So you're taking it in completely and you've truly Truly experienced it. You experience the essence of the cathedral. Now, I'm not saying that's the only way. Ideally you have both. So ideally you are not, you know, things, but you're not consumed by your conceptual knowledge. So if you go to a cathedral, one day you can go in and hire the little thing that guides you, you, the recording that guides you through it. And the next day you go in and let go of that completely, or the other way around, and then the two can come together. And again, we could call this coming together of being and doing, because the thinking is doing also. Doing is not only external, every thinking is doing, so you're doing the thinking. So here too you bring together the doing and the being. And that is the ultimate human state to have had to be to reconcile those dimensions, the horizontal and the vertical. So we are going towards developing this, the ability to have just pure awareness when we want it, when we like it. Pure, just purely, just be conscious. The greatest thing that I have ever. People ask me, what. What is the greatest thing that you have achieved in your life? And I sometimes say, well, it's not an achievement at all, but it's a discovery. And my greatest achievement, which really is discovery. I don't need to think when I don't want to think. That's what a liberation. Because I experienced the first many decades of my life burdened by my own thoughts, burdened by my mind created identity, and then to this burden to have lifted. And you're suddenly you're free not to think, but you're not falling below thinking, you're above thinking. That is the next step in human evolution. But it's here now. Thank you. Hi, thank you so much. Once you have this awareness of the vertical and the horizontal, that intersection of life, of living in that space, can you go deeper and talk more about that existing on both planes at the same time every day and interacting in that space with other people who may be living only in one. Very good. Yes, that's a very important question. Thank you. And you mentioned a special difficulty which is other people. Because other people usually make your life difficult. Not talking to you personally, but in general the. Because most people will probably still be completely absorbed in their mind made sense of self, their mind made identity. That is the case. So it's. Every human encounter is important that you get your priorities right. Whenever you communicate with another human being, whether it's somebody you just meet casually in an interview, just as an interaction, you buy something or whatever, or you meet somebody briefly or somebody who you work with or in your family. It's very easy the moment you start talking to somebody, it's very easy to completely get. Even if initially you were very present, but this person then suddenly question something that you say. And it's very easily you get drawn back into complete mind identification. This happens very easily when people have conflicting opinions. And so with conflicting opinions, if you are completely identified with your mental position, then somebody else holds a completely different mental position and you are completely identified with it, which means this is the egoic sense of self. And that's very easy to happen when somebody. You engage in a. In a com, even a conversation you start if you're not present enough, you get drawn back into complete identification with your mental position. And then unfortunately, what happens because you identified that word means yourself, your sense of self is bound up with your opinion or your viewpoint or your mental position. That's the important thing. Now anybody who questions this then or attacks it in some way, this is then perceived in the illusory state of identification with mental positions or thinking. It's perceived as an attack on yourself unconsciously because your whole sense of self is an attack. So it's very easy for this to happen. And then you've become defensive or aggressive. Whatever reaction you have, because you're no longer. It's no longer about your opinion or viewpoint that you're talking about. It's about your sense of self. And this is how people make others into enemies because they have different viewpoints or positions. When you are conscious enough, you can still have your viewpoints and mental positions, but there's behind it, there's a sense of presence. And then this is a spiritual practice. When you discuss something with somebody, you can make it into a spiritual practice so that stay conscious while you're engaged in conversation or discussion. Stay conscious while you listen to when you go. Especially difficult, by the way, people with whom you share a lot of past. It's very difficult to get out of these patterns, these reactive patterns. I don't know what Thanksgiving is coming up soon. Then traditionally families get together and then often they go through the same kind of talk as they do every year. You go to your. The same people who criticize you or do this are the same comments. And it's very hard where there's a lot of past to bring enough presence so you don't fall back into the old reactive patterns, defensiveness or aggression or withdrawal, so that it's a to realize, get your priorities right. That in any human interaction, the most important element, apart from what it is that you're talking about is the state of conscious, your state of consciousness to stay as present as you can. Let's say you're on the telephone, you're talking to somebody who is difficult. And are you able to realize the most important thing in any situation is the state of consciousness with which I approach or face the situation, not the actual interaction. So make that primary. So it's every, it's continuous presence bracket. Many times you will fail initially which people will draw you back in. You may remember Ram Dass has used to say, if you think you're so enlightened, go and spend two weeks with your parents because that will give you, that will give you a good reflection of where you are at as far as state of consciousness is concerned. If you can stay present there. Because the tendency is of course you might have, maybe you have very conscious presence, but most people don't. Parents are not that conscious. And these are the old mental, emotional patterns that arise very easily there. So these are great tests. A great test for where you are at in the evolution of your consciousness is you look at your interactions with human beings. That gives you reflection how much conflict is there in your interaction with human beings. And then you need to be honest and look at it and see it always. It always. It takes two to be in conflict with another human being. So you always look at that and this can give you a wonderful reflection, a better reflection than some people say I'd rather be undisturbed, go on a retreat where nobody disturbs me. I want to get enlightened and I want the best possible conditions for the. My awakening. And the best possible conditions are nobody disturbs me. I need peace and sun for my meditation. You could feel quite good after a while because everything nobody's disturbing you go back into the world and you get immediately challenged, usually by other humans. So the as you may. I don't know if you know the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. He said hell is other people. He was of course completely. He was identified very much with his egoic sense of self. And if you're very completely identified with your going sense of self, the hell is other people are usually experienced as very difficult to deal with. Why are there so many, so many difficult people in this world? And for many people, the main, the main source of suffering in their lives in many cases is relationships and other people. But we learn through that. So the other other people give you a reflection of your state of consciousness of where you are at and to the greatest freedom. The moment you realize you can meet another human being who may be unconscious, which means identified with your mind. But he or she does not drag you into unconsciousness. You can stay present. That's an enormous. You're no longer dependent on another person's state of consciousness. You begin to experience freedom. And so you. And then you can be still present with a very unconscious person. And it's challenging, but. And then you grow in consciousness. And the wonderful thing is I remember after I experienced a shift in consciousness, I always had a resentment towards my father with certain things he did. And so. And suddenly I met my father again after going through this shift and there was no longer any resentment. He still had the same patterns of behavior, but there was no longer. I no longer demanded that he should behave differently. I realized he couldn't behave differently because no human being can manifest behavior that is beyond their level of consciousness. And to demand that some human beings should manifest behavior that's beyond their level of consciousness just makes you suffer and produces unwarily very unnecessary antagonism with the present moment. And in the present moment humans are. Many humans, you counter, are relatively unconscious. But that doesn't mean in their essence they are not. They have the same essence that you have now. The wonderful thing is when you're no longer identified with the conditioned mind, thoughts you can kind of sense when you meet another human. Sometimes it's easier humans with with whom you do not share a lot of past, just humans you just meet. You go to a supermarket, check out counter, and there's a brief interaction and you're looking at that human. And there's always. When you. When you can sense the essence of who you are as presence, you can sense it in the other. The beingness of the so called other. And that's a beautiful thing. When you recognize that same essence, that the same consciousness that is in you is the same consciousness that is the essence of the so called other. And that recognition brings about an end of the sense of separation between yourself and the other. It's some of you, there's a brief moment of connectedness or oneness. And that brief moment of oneness. Of course empathy arises through that. The ability to have empathy, the ability to have compassion. But ultimately what arises when you recognize the other is ultimately not other, but it's a sensing that is the true meaning of love. Not the egoic love that says I want you, I must have you. Don't you dare leave me. Not that kind of love, but the true love is really ultimately the recognition, the recognition of the other as yourself. That Is. And it's not an intellectual thing. It's. You can. You can sense the presence of the other and your presence as one presence, that's. That transforms every relationship. Yes. Some humans will still make it difficult for you to have that realization. And so there may be some very obnoxious humans with whom you still can't do it. That's okay. You might have to remove yourself some. Some you might not be able to do it. That's fine. But it's a. It's a gradual. It's a gradual process, a gradual realization. So human interaction is great spiritual practice. I highly recommend it. So thank you. Thank you. Hi, how are you? I read your book at a very strong moment in my life and it totally changed my life. So that was like 15 years ago. But my question is, what's the role the pain body plays in our ability to become present and to see the other person as love and to see each other as one? That I am that. What's the role the pain body plays? Thank you. Thank you. Now, to answer that, because not everybody may be familiar with the term that I use, pain body, just very briefly use the term pain body to speak of accumulated emotional energy that lives in you from the past. That is painful experiences you've had in your childhood especially, they leave residues of unresolved emotional pain, often unrecognized emotional pain. Because some children who suffer need to cut themselves off from painful emotions. So the painful emotion, that's the old. For a child, that's the right thing to do. It's to cut in order not to suffer too much. They cut themselves off from painful emotions, but it remains, it lingers in you. And emotion is a form of energy. Obviously everything is energy. So you have an emotional field of suffering in you. And other things may contribute to it. Other traumatic events in your life or abuse and all kinds of things can contribute to the pain body that lives in you. And I regard it as an almost an autonomous entity, semi autonomous entity that lives in you as a little gremlin being that lives in you. And the pain body sometimes is dormant and sometimes it gets triggered, often in relationships. And then it rises up into your mind and the emotion floods the mind. You don't know it's emotion from the past. Painful emotion then floods your mind and creates. It controls your thinking and reactive patterns. And then normally in relationships, you're suddenly involved in huge drama. And in many relationships they periodically have to go through their drama when one partner triggers the pain body of the other. And the pain body Feeds on drama, which it feeds on the experience of further pain. It's the vibration, vibrational frequency that it lives on is emotion, dramatic painful emotions. It wants the drama in order to replenish itself. This is how I look at it. And this often happens in relationships. People go through their pain body episodes and then it subsides and then it comes back. So pain body is old emotion in you that sometimes takes you over and sometimes is only in the background. And that of course, when you're completely identified with it, it becomes part of your ego structure. It's part of who you are as an egoic sense of self. It's identification. Anything that you identify with, which means derive your sense of self from, is part of the ego. So when you identify with this emotion, then it takes you over. The important thing is when you encounter a pain body in another human being and you can sometimes in when you start living together with somebody, there comes a moment when you're very surprised that suddenly this person gets taken over by this very dark, destructive emotions. And whoever, let's say you have married the person and you haven't lived together before, what did I do? Who is this person that I married? Suddenly this person becomes this very aggressive or dark being. So it's been taken over by the pain body. The important thing is to recognize it for what it is. It's not who that person essentially is. So it's not so that compassion comes in when you recognize that it's their old pain talking through them, speaking through them. And the important thing is not to be yourself, not to be taken over by it in yourself so that you don't contribute to the Spain body episodes. So you need to be. When you're with a human being who is suddenly taken over by their pain body, you need to be extremely alert. Like really you don't, it's not, you don't cut it, you can't cut yourself off from it, but just a lot press very alert and so that you don't go into negative emotional reaction. It's not, you're not suppressing it. Alertness is not suppression, you're just very alert. If you have a partner and your partner is conscious enough to be talking about this, sharing this with you, then when you're both conscious, in other words, not during a pain body answer, talk about the moments of drama you have in your relationship periodically when you get really worked up emotionally, it's very, very likely that it's the pain body. And give yourself, give the other permission to point out to you when it happens and ask could this be your pain body to help the other to stay conscious when it arises? This is dangerous territory. It's not easy. But the moment the pain body arises, if it's already taken you over, it's already too late. When you say to the other who has already been completely. The mind has already been taken over, say, could this be your pain body? You will not get an answer from that person. You will get an answer from the pain body and it won't be pleasant. So. And of course the pain body will accuse you with having the pain body. It's not me, look. So you need to be really. It's a very delicate matter. If both cooperate, you can go beyond being forced to act out the pain body relatively quickly. But if both are conscious enough to participate in this, it's a. I don't want to go too long. But just the very, very. You need to be really. It's one of the great challenges that is the emotional aspect of the human ego. Very challenging. But ultimately it's part of the. The deepening of presence that you need. The challenge is deep in you.