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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4319, Sunday July 24, 2011
An excerpt from an article originally featured in New Age
Retailer magazine:
~The Identity of Moment~
An Interview with Eckhart Tolle
by Ray Hemachandra,
Ray Hemachandra: You've written that human beings had to develop
a state of insanity, or madness, as a collective to then be able
to transform evolutionarily and awaken. That parallels what seems
to happen on the individual level, doesn't it? As a child, a
person builds up an egoic sense - the child has a name, has an
"I," has a mind. But then, to awaken, a person needs to
completely transcend that sense of ego.
Why was it necessary for humanity to go through insanity to get
to the point now of potential awakening, and then, on an
individual level, do all people really have to build up an ego
just to tear it down upon awakening?
Eckhart Tolle: On an individual level, you can see how the ego
develops even in a small child. For example, when one child says
to another, "I can do this, I bet you can't"; "My
dad has a bigger car than yours"; or, "My dad is
stronger than yours." Children identify with this or that,
trying to build up a sense of self - a mentally defined sense of
self.
So far for humans it has been the case that ego develops and then
humans are stuck with it for the rest of their lives. On the new
Earth, as the awakened consciousness comes in, I would say the
ego would develop in children and quickly become outgrown when
they reach adulthood. So, the egoic stage will be much more
short-lived, and it will be associated with growing up.
When humans reach their early 20s or mid 20s, they quickly will
go beyond ego. Ego is an immature stage of development for
humans, and that's what it will be recognized as when the
consciousness changes on the planet. Children will develop an ego
and quickly outgrow it. That's very different from developing an
ego and being stuck with it for the rest of your life!
Hemachandra: And collectively?
Tolle: On the collective level, was what has happened necessary?
Yes, because it happened. It happened, so it was part of the
larger totality of what is.
Humanity, it seems, had to go through that developmental stage.
You can say it is an immature stage. Like in an individual with a
mentally defined sense of self that identifies with this or that,
it is not knowing who you are.
Humanity had to go through it. It started with the arising of the
ability to think, which I believe is described in the beginning
of the Bible as the fall. It is the telling of good and evil.
Suddenly, you can differentiate mentally, "This is good, and
this is bad." Humans eat of the tree of the knowledge of
good and bad. Suddenly, they start cutting reality up into bits
and pieces, which is what the thinking mind does.
At first, it wasn't a problem. In fact, it was an enormous step
forward in the evolution of humanity. Although they were not
physically stronger than many animals, quickly through thinking -
which became their most powerful weapon - humans were able to
outwit animals.
Then, thinking grew and grew. For a long time humans probably
were in touch on a deeper level with the depths of their being,
unconsciously so, the same way an animal or a tree is. Gradually,
though, more and more of their identity went into the movement of
thought. They identified more and more with the movement of
thinking.
So, they got cut off from the depths of their being. Their
identity moved into the head. They were defined mentally, and
then they became egoic entities - me - scoped more and more
separate, because the thinking man cuts reality into, "This
is me, this is the other, this is us, this is them." He cuts
everything. So, the egoic entity arose.
Then, after thousands of years, they were trapped in the mind.
So, their greatest weapon had become their greatest trap. It's an
old mythological motif: The thing that gives you power also traps
you.
Hemachandra: Why is now the time for humanity to escape the trap?
Tolle: We are in the final stages of egoic madness. Almost the
whole world is fighting each other. We witnessed the final stages
of egoic madness in the 20th century, and even now it still is
playing itself out. It has not quite come to an end yet. Humanity
had to go through egoic madness, it seems, and then outgrow it.
Although that still is the predominant energy on the planet,
there are now many - more and more - humans who are outgrowing
that stage of development. Humanity is reaching the end of the
evolutionary stage of ego. The closer we get to the end, the more
dysfunctional humanity becomes.
I sometimes give the example of a caterpillar metamorphosing into
a butterfly. For a while, the caterpillar's life works quite
well. And then, suddenly, something goes wrong with the
caterpillar. It cannot move very well anymore. It becomes more
and more dysfunctional as a caterpillar just before the
metamorphosis into a butterfly happens.
That is what is happening to humans now. We had to go through an
evolutionary stage. We are getting very close to the end of that
stage. In fact, for many humans the end already has come. And,
so, the dysfunction becomes more apparent.
Hemachandra: Do you see the awakening happening equally around
the globe, or does it vary globally?
Tolle: It varies enormously. Some groups and individuals still
are immersed totally in the egoic consciousness. Others already
are free or in the process of stepping out of ego. The arising of
the new consciousness already has started for many people. They
are not yet recognizable as groups, but they are here and there.
I come into contact with people like that all the time because of
the work I do. So, I sometimes get a distorted view of how
quickly humans are evolving, because I meet many people who are
evolving beyond ego. Then I have to switch on the TV to realize,
"Oh, no, it is not happening to everybody yet." But it
is happening.
I cannot make predictions. There are many things that are still
uncertain and that probably nobody knows, because so many factors
determine what form the transformation of consciousness on our
planet takes.
For example, there is the possibility of very major upheavals -
geographic, climatic upheavals. There are some indications this
is happening already. They are part of the upheaval that is
happening inside human beings: the shift of one state of
consciousness - the breakdown of one state of consciousness - and
the arising of a new state of consciousness. It is an enormous
evolutionary event.
It seems we are witnessing more and more catastrophic natural
events on the planet: hurricanes, earthquakes, tidal waves, and
so on. To me, inner and outer are so strongly linked that any
collective change that happens within human beings, within the
human psyche, inevitably will be reflected externally in what
happens on the whole planet.
So, the upheavals are reflecting the inner upheavals and the
breaking down of the old egoic consciousness, which also
manifests as increasing madness in what the egoically possessed
humans do. There are governments and nations that still are
egoically possessed. What they do becomes more and more mad.
Terrorism is an example of that extreme madness. People blow
themselves up just to kill others. Unconscious reaction to
terrorism is equal madness.
Hemachandra: In your book A New Earth, published in 2005, you
write, "Evolve or die." What makes this time in human
history so fertile and foreboding?
Tolle: With the egoic consciousness having become so
dysfunctional, and now having at our disposal all these enormous
technologies and scientific advances, if nothing changes the ego
will use those things - as it already has been doing - and will
amplify the technology that we now have. The scientific advances,
to a large extent, will be used in the service of the ego, and
they will become more and more destructive.
So, the egoic madness, or dysfunction, becomes enormously
amplified by the science and technology we all have developed. We
would destroy ourselves and the planet now if no change happens,
because of the amplification of the egoic state through science
and technology.
It first happened with the First World War of the 20th century.
For the first time, humans had all these weapons that didn't
exist before. They had submarines. They had machine guns. They
had poison gas. They had flamethrowers. Now, we have developed
infinitely more sophisticated weapons of destruction, but that
was the first time it happened. The destructiveness of that war
was unimaginable. Ten million killed.
No one could actually remember why it all started. One person got
assassinated by some madman in Yugoslavia or somewhere, and then
10 million humans killed each other. I don't know whether to
laugh or to weep. It's tragic.
Already, in that war, we can see the destructiveness of the egoic
consciousness with advanced technology. Humans were totally
horrified: "What have we done?" But, of course, it
continued. Soon, the next world war came with mass exterminations
and so on.
That is why it has to change now. If we don't change, if the
egoic consciousness continues, I don't believe that humanity as a
species can survive, or at least human civilization can survive,
for another hundred years.
It is quite possible even that the planet would no longer be able
to sustain human life. Probably, the planet eventually would
regenerate and produce some other life form. Consciousness would
flow into some other life form and express itself through that,
whatever that would be.
So, in the end, it's all fine, no matter what happens. But I
believe from what I can see there is a good chance the shift will
happen in humanity before it is too late.
Shawn Gallaway - I Choose Love:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wPhiS_7hyM