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# Re: First 3 steps- questions-experience-clarification

#### Message 03414 of 3835

- To: BardonPraxis@yahoogroups.com
- Subject: Re: First 3 steps- questions-experience-clarification
- From: "Martin" <martin@...>
- Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:44:02 -0000
- In-reply-to: <cq3h6j+4130@eGroups.com>
- User-agent: eGroups-EW/0.82

    Not wanting to be at risk of banging the Eckhart Tolle drum too
    much, but I thought that this extract might have give another
    perspective on VoM (as a teacher I've come to realize that the more
    ways you can explain a concept, the more chance you have of reaching
    every student... although I am not sure about making the comparison
    between teaching High School Spanish and what Rawn and others do ;-
    ) )

    The following quote is taken from an interview with Eckhart Tolle
    which appears in a book published by Sagewood Press
    titled, "Dialogues With Emerging Spiritual Teachers" by John W.
    Parker.

    Q. It's interesting. When I first read about your "awakening," I was
    reminded of St. John of the Cross and the "Dark Night of the Soul,"
    where it seemed as if you had gone through something very similar.
    But what I heard you say yesterday at the Gathering (2000) is that
    it really isn't necessary?

    A. No.

    Q. The "Dark Night of the Soul" seems to be one way that some
    individuals have managed to have a "shift" in their consciousness. I
    hear you saying that there is another way. What I have experienced
    with other spiritual teachers is that almost to the person, they
    have gone through a similar shift. There has been a "dark night of
    the soul" and then the "shift" takes place. I have yet to find
    someone who has done it the other way, who has actually been able to
    have that realization and not go through "the abyss," and has been
    able to help other individuals realize that it is not absolutely
    necessary.

    A. Yes. One could say that everybody in this world has a spiritual
    teacher. For most people, their losses and disasters represent the
    teacher; their suffering is the teacher. And if they stay with that
    teacher long enough, eventually it will take them to freedom. Maybe
    not in this lifetime. So everybody has a spiritual teacher. But
    a "spiritual teaching" in the narrow sense of the word is there to
    save time and suffering. Without it you would get there anyway, but
    it saves time.

    And every spiritual teaching points to the possibility of the end of
    suffering - Now. It is true that most teachers have had to go
    through the "Dark Night of the Soul," although for one or two it was
    very, very quick. Ramana Maharshi had one brief death experience.
    For J. Krishnamurti, it happened when his brother died. He
    (Krishnamurti) wasn't "free" yet when they discovered him. There was
    great potential in him. But he really became "free" after the death
    of his brother.

    Humankind as a whole has been through such vast suffering that one
    could almost say that every human has suffered enough now. No
    further suffering is necessary. And it is now possible as spiritual
    teachings are coming through with greater intensity, perhaps greater
    than ever before, that many humans will be able to break through
    without any further need for suffering. Otherwise I would not be
    teaching. The very essence of the teaching is the message, "You have
    suffered enough." The Buddha said it. "I teach suffering, and the
    end of suffering," which means, "I show you how suffering arises,"
    which is an important realization - I talked about that yesterday -
    and how you can be free of that. So that is the very purpose of
    spiritual teaching. Jesus says the same, "the Kingdom of Heaven is
    here, Now" accessible to you here and Now.

    Q. In your book The Power of Now: a Guide to Spiritual
    Enlightenment," you mentioned that "enlightenment is simply our
    natural state of 'felt' oneness with Being, and a state of 'feeling-
    realization." Is enlightenment based on feeling rather than
    thinking? Help us understand who feels it and where is it felt.

    A. Yes, well it is certainly closer to feeling than thinking. There
    is no word to describe the state of connectedness with Being. I am
    putting together two words in the book: feeling and realization
    hyphenated. Because there is not a correct word that I can use.
    Language doesn't have a word for that. So I can only use something
    that gets relatively close but that's not it either. Realization
    sounds a little bit as if it were a "mental" thing. "Oh, I know."
    Feeling sounds as if it were an "emotion." But it is not an emotion.
    And it is not a mental recognition of anything. Perhaps the word
    that is closest to it is the realization of stillness, which is when
    the mental noise that we call thinking, subsides - which is
    thinking. There is a gap in the stream of thought, but there is
    absolutely no loss of consciousness. In that "gap" there is full and
    intense consciousness, but it has not taken on form.

    Every thought in consciousness has been born into form, a temporary
    form and then it dies and goes onto another form. You could say the
    whole world is consciousness having taken birth as form, manifesting
    as form temporarily, and then dying which means dissolving as form.
    What always remains is the "essence" of all that exists -
    consciousness itself.

    Now when a form dies, I pointed out earlier it is an external loss;
    it's a great opportunity for the formless, pure consciousness to be
    recognized. The same happens when a thought-stream comes to an end.
    Thought dies. And suddenly that which is beyond thought - you may
    call it pure consciousness - is realized as deep stillness.

    Now the question you may ask and perhaps have asked is, "Who
    realizes the stillness?" If there is no longer the personal entity
    there, who is it that becomes enlightened? (Laughter) One could say
    of course, "nobody becomes "enlightened," because it is the
    dissolving of the illusion of a separate "me," which is not
    anybody's achievement, or anybody's success. It looks as if there
    were a human being becoming enlightened, but that is an external
    appearance. What is really happening is that consciousness has
    withdrawn from its identification with form, and realizes its own
    nature. It is a "Self-realization" of consciousness. Therefore it is
    a cosmic event. What looks like a human being, a person, becoming
    free of suffering and entering a state of deep peace - from an
    external viewpoint - in reality is a cosmic event. Please remember
    that all language is limited so these are just little "pointers."

    Consciousness is withdrawing from the game of form. For millions of
    years as long as the world has been in existence, consciousness has
    been engaged in the play of form, of becoming the "dance" of
    phenomenal universe, "Lila." And then consciousness becomes tired of
    the game (Chuckle).

    Q. It needs a rest.

    A. Yes. But having lost itself, that was part of the game. Having
    lost itself in form, after having lost itself in form, it knows
    itself fully for the first time. Don't take anything I say too
    literally. They are just little pointers because no one can explain
    the universe through making "sounds" or thoughts. So it is far too
    vast to be explained. I'm not explaining the universe. These are
    just tiny hints. It is beyond words, beyond thought. What I am
    saying could almost be treated as a poem, an approximation, just an
    approximation to the Truth.

    Martin

- References:
  - Re: First 3 steps- questions-experience-clarification
    - From: "setiamon" <setiamon@...>

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