Tolle Interview: Ripples on the Surface of Being Rocks!

here's one of my favorite WIE interviews. it's a classic. the podcast is a must-hear.

Ripples on the Surface of Being

An interview with Eckhart Tolle
by Andrew Cohen

Eckhart Tolle

ANDREW COHEN: Eckhart, what is your life like? I've heard that you're a bit of a recluse and that you spend a lot of time in solitude. Is that true?

ECKHART TOLLE: That was true in the past, before my book The Power of Now came out. For many years I was a recluse. But since the publication of the book, my life has changed dramatically. I'm now very much involved in teaching and traveling. And people who knew me before say, “This is amazing. You used to be a hermit and now you are out in the world.” Yet I still feel that inside nothing has changed. I still feel exactly the same as before. There is still a continuous sense of peace, and I am surrendered to the fact that on an external level there's been a total change. So it's actually not true anymore that I am a hermit. Now I'm the opposite of a hermit. This may well be a cycle. It may well be that at some point this will come to an end and I will become a hermit again. But at the moment, I am surrendered to the fact that I'm almost continuously interacting. I do occasionally take time to be alone. That is necessary in between teaching engagements.

AC: Why is it that you need to take time to be alone, and what is it that happens when you take the time to be alone?

ET: When I'm with people, I'm a spiritual teacher. That's the function, but it's not my identity. The moment I'm alone, my deepest joy is to be nobody, to relinquish the function of a teacher. It's a temporary function. Let's say I'm seeing a group of people. The moment they leave me, I'm no longer a spiritual teacher. There's no longer any sense of external identity. I simply go into the stillness more deeply. The place that I love most is the stillness. It's not that the stillness is lost when I talk or when I teach because the words arise out of the stillness. But when people leave me, there is only the stillness left. And I love that so much.

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Re: Tolle Interview: Ripples on the Surface of Being Rocks!

Better still… Save yourself the online eyestrain and read “Ripples on the Surface of Being” in an all-new, graphically enhanced, 15th-anniversary special reprint edition in the new issue of WIE!!!  It won't be on newsstands for a couple of weeks, but subscribers should be getting it any day, and if yo're not a subscriber, you can remedy that situation (and save your soul) by ordering a subscription here.

Yes, I'm biased. 

But it's for a good cause.

Re: Tolle Interview: Ripples on the Surface of Being Rocks!

mmmm…..check the answer below?
AC: What would it mean to get lost in doing?

ET: Theoretically, it would mean that I would continuously travel, teach, and interact with people. Perhaps if that happened, at some point the flow, the stillness, might not be there. I don't know; it may always be there.
An interesting point of view makes me think that ET is frightened of loosing stillness, which is a pity

Re: Tolle Interview: Ripples on the Surface of Being Rocks!

Yeah…Tolle seems to have a rather strong bias toward the “Unmanifested,” as he calls it. Which is great, as far as that goes. 

But can it really be considered “nonduality” if you prefer the formless stillness of the unmanifest dimension to the manifest world of activity and form?  Seems a bit dualistic, doesn't it?

I'd be interested in your thoughts on this, Nile: ”The New Enlightenment” by my teacher (and the founder and editor-in-chief of WIE) Andrew Cohen. 

In Andrew's teachings, awakening to the stillness of the unmanifest Ground of Being is just the beginning–and that stillness doesn't go anywhere if you don't happen to be consciously feeling it at any given moment. How could it?  It's the Absolute.  It's all there ultimately is, whether you're giving attention to it or not in any given moment.  And if every time you look, that stillness is still right there, then what does any of us have to fear from leaping headfirst into a passionate and totally liberated relationship to LIFE in all its glory, here and now–and forever?

Hmm, Mr. Tolle?  :)

Re: Tolle Interview: Ripples on the Surface of Being Rocks!

Hi again Tom,
     I agree that Tolle admits a preference for the “unmanifest” but it did propell him eventually to teach, to share that state and a means of finding it with others. THis is action/compassion, and even if acheiving this state is only a beginning, it helps!
   About Andrew Cohen. I love that his personal enlightenment process (and it is a process not an end state IMHO, pretty sure he'd agree) involves engaging so many people from so many walks of life. This is his great gift to us all in the form it takes through his magazine, WIE.  it is his love child, the fruit of his love for life, learning and engaging with us all.
     I think he does have amazing, innocent chutzpa (ego) to do this as well, to make assertions that his ideas are new. This “New Enligtenment” of his seems like his personal take on the shift that occurred over a thousand years ago when the Mahayana path took form. This shift may not have happened in the school he came from, but occurs in each as they mature on their path. His realization of evolutionary engagement, its like he personalised an awareness (claiming it as his own, new realization) of an always existant reality, that we are the process, and It is Us. The experience of God breathing as you, through you, that your evolution is the evolution of the whole and that as the Whole there is no escape, no transcendence, only deep immanance, that was the teaching of the prajnaparamita, and the wisdom/compassion of the bodhisatva way. (minus the God references of course-God is too personal, too ego-form-like to be used as a concept in Buddhism).
Respectfully and in appreciation,
Tamara

Re: Tolle Interview: Ripples on the Surface of Being Rocks!

This “New Enligtenment” of his seems like his personal take on the shift that occurred over a thousand years ago when the Mahayana path took form

The experience of God breathing as you, through you, that your evolution is the evolution of the whole and that as the Whole there is no escape, no transcendence, only deep immanance, that was the teaching of the prajnaparamita, and the wisdom/compassion of the bodhisatva way … 

 …. let god be god within you - silence within - laughter without - and forever a smile on your face for the benefit of others !

Re: Tolle Interview: Ripples on the Surface of Being Rocks!

The point I was trying to make about the article quote was that if ET fears he will miss the stillness, he is therefore attached to it, and is therefore still suffering Karma and Duckha.

To qoute the Dhammapada:

Verse 32
The monk delighting in heedfulness,
seeing danger in heedlessness
- incapable of falling back -
stands right on the verge
of Unbinding.

it's the incapable of falling back bit that doesnt fit with what ET fears, I suppose its about having faith in the unmanifest and once you have faith, you cant fall back.

I have just started reading Andrew Cohen, the article you point to makes complete sense. Just need the realisation now.

Re: Tolle Interview: Ripples on the Surface of Being Rocks!

Hmmm.  Maybe you fellas are right.  Hard to know what another is frightened of without observing the reaction yourself and even then who knows.  Perhaps the man has a proclivity toward Stillness like I do toward Mexican food.  Some are do-ers, some are be-ers, and some of us eat Mexican food.  I don't mean to be flippant.  I just couldn't come up with a better comparison.  I would have said Spiral Dynamics or Vipassana if they were relative to me.

I certainly don't know Tolle's evolutionary status but he's done plenty with his teaching to further the effort of conscious participation in the evolutionary process.  In my humble estimation Tolle is doing a fine job describing the evolutionary impetus of Being within the Manifest.  He does so in plain prose to a vast audience that seems able to digest it.  He is moving millions toward a broader context. 

Maybe he isn't non-dualistic but he's certainly closed the gap some for many readers.

I love what little of Mr. Cohen's work I've read.  He certainly places more emphasis on the evolutionary process than Tolle but Tolle too describes the Stillness as always being present.  Tolle was describing a what if scenario in his answer not a what is one. Sometimes the answer simply suits the question.

The New Enlightenment article is rather brilliant and completely relevant - again in my humble if not narcissistic estimation.

Peace fellas

Re: Tolle Interview: Ripples on the Surface of Being Rocks!

Some people believe you must leave the world to attain enlightenment and some say you must stay in the world. I was taken out of the world and put into a smaller world. In this smaller world there were a few hundred and of them 64 lived in my house. After 30 days I had figured out that all 64 of them were sick. In their individual peculiar way they were sick. Then I heard a small voice say, “There are 65 men in here.”
‘Wow’, I thought, ‘I am in here too, and not by mistake! What is wrong with me?’ I could not see what was wrong with me but I could see what was wrong with others. One day I was listening to two men talking and the one man said something I thought was stupid and I said to myself, ‘That’s stupid!’ I then heard a small voice say, “Have you ever said that?” I closed my eyes and right away I seen myself saying the same stupid thing to my family in the past. This was the starting point when I began to see others as a refection of myself, and I started learning who I am, by learning who I am not. Everyone wants to learn but everyone does not know they need to unlearn. The smaller world I was put in was an Arkansas state prison. I was there for only 26 months. In that short time I learned that I had been in prison all my life but I was not aware of it. I learned the reason I was not aware of being in prison was because nobody knows that this so called life that we think we live, is really an illusion; and everyone has their own. When we practice what we learn we learn more to practice. I know that it is hard to believe a man without education or a degree in something could be a child of GOD, but I am. The things that I have learned are just out of this world and I have written about them in my book, Inside Out. For more information visit my website, www.beyouinsideout.com
Have a good day,
Your Friend, Don

Re: Tolle Interview: Ripples on the Surface of Being Rocks!

Just quickly i like what Tamara said and Michael repeated,

“The experience of God breathing as you, through you, that your evolution is the evolution of the whole and that as the Whole there is no escape, no transcendence, only deep immanance, that was the teaching of the prajnaparamita, and the wisdom/compassion of the bodhisatva way. (minus the God references of course-God is too personal, too ego-form-like to be used as a concept in Buddhism).” And there is book by Pema chondron on the wisdom of no Escape and even after awakening you “Chop wood” and “Carry water” albeit do it from a different state of consciousness…call it calm, still, peaceful whatever.

 Again many people interpret that as this physical, planetary or human reality is all there is. Now that is a limitation. Even physics is talking about many dimensions. You do not go anywhere or ascend this reality (within consciousness and another reality ) without self-realization and understanding why you are here in the first place.

Don, thankyou for sharing your story and writing the book. I have volunteered in women's prison for a few months and more engaged with hospice work now. I would pass your site and book to the chaplain here. Also you can post in the Shambhala path of Social engagement pod here.

Re: Tolle Interview: Ripples on the Surface of Being Rocks!

thank you Ekhart Tolle