I have been listening to the talks of Mr. Eckhart Tolle a lot over YouTube. I find his way of speaking as also the content mesmerizing, very appealing, and best of all, calming. I used to find a similar peace in listening to BK Shivani as well.
Tolle's idea of oneness of spirit is ever so relaxing. It
puts to rest all the complaints and egocentric thoughts of anger, jealousy,
like and dislike towards other human beings to rest in a jiffy. Think about it,
if you and the others, if you and the people whom you are surrounded by are
just different manifestations of the same energy, at different levels of
consciousness- there is really no ‘You”, ‘me, ‘him', ‘he’d, etc. We are all in
energies in various states, forms, however, one may like to perceive it,
manifested in the now. Once these thoughts sink in, the mind calms down,
anxiety dissipates and people seem a lot closer to us, each one feels like the
self. Loving becomes easier because loving or liking oneself is never hard, the
tendency to compare oneself with others and thereby to feel less or more than
them automatically wanes – the understanding that they are just you in another
form. Whether we may realize it or not, we as humans tend to forgive ourselves
and ignore our own weaknesses in an oblivious absent-minded way and highlight
in our minds the same about others. Most of it a by-product of learned behavior
and an overactive mind.
The experience of now as Tolle talks at length about and of
“pain body" are such beautiful ideas. When I identified my self-defeating
thoughts, ideas and the “poor me" as my pain body ( perhaps Tolle's word
for Sanskar ), as my “pain body" taking over and stand and watch it
consuming me, my self reveling in it, it gives a deep sense of relief, a
release from guilt, a burden lifted off one's shoulder. Combined with it the
fleeting experience of Now and of being in the moment and life seems simple,
not a tangle of problems which it’s not meant to be. The mind needs to learn to
be in a state of empty space as against being in a state of constant thought,
the plague of the human mind, source of all disease and conflict. Seeing the
now for what it is, stripped of thoughts – those emerging from the ‘pain body’,
those stemming from one’s ego, those from events associated with the past and
those which relate to the future. Rid of all these thoughts, of constant
evaluation of the content of the moment, the now is probably very light in
nature and probably worth living it. A life made-up of only such “nows"
would indeed be a life full of happiness and lightness.
Not sure how far my understanding is from the actual concept
propounded by the Gurus but these theories are already helping me live lighter
and more content.
By
Anuradha Govil Kulkarni
Karlsruhe, Germany