Back on Remembrance Day you may remember Vince Exley gave us a reflection on Eckhart Tolle which did generate a goodly number of page views on our website. He returns today with extracts he's selected for us from the introduction to Eckhart Tolle's book "A New Earth". In his covering note Vince explains that Tolle "doesn't believe the earth will survive this century without radical change in the world's collective consciousness". To introduce the subject matter of reflection Vince has also included some preliminary thoughts from Fr. Richard Rohr.

From Richard Rohr…

What word of hope does the Church have to offer the world? The world is tired of our ideas and theologies. It's tired of our lazy church services. It's no longer going to believe ideas, but it will believe love. It will believe life that is given and received.

God is not calling us into our heads. Yet we've lived in our heads so long, the world no longer listens to us. I don't need your words, the world says to us. I don't need your sermons. I want life. And I want life more abundantly.

What word of hope do we have to offer to the millions of workers in the world who see no meaning in their life? What word of hope do we have for all the women who bear children and, day after day, say, "What is the meaning of this life?"

For most people in the world the question is not, "Is there a life on the other side of death?" It is, rather, "is there life on this side of death?" Until we Christians give evidence that there is life on this side of death, the world does not need to believe our dogmas and giant churches. It doesn't need our words of hell. It needs our promise of heaven.

What we have to offer, and what the world needs, is a Spirituality that leads to God here and NOW.

By contemplation we mean the deliberate seeking of God through a willingness to detach from the passing self, the tyranny of emotions, the addiction to self-image and the false promises of this world. Contemplation is the "divine therapy" and the perennial clearinghouse for the soul. …Richard Rohr

Excerpts rom the introduction to Eckhart Tolle's book:
The New Earth and Our Inherited Dysfunction…

If we look more deeply into humanity's ancient religions and spiritual traditions, we will find that underneath the many surface differences there are core insights that most of them agree on. The words they use to describe those insights differ, yet they all point to a fundamental truth. This truth is the realization that the "normal" state of mind of most human beings contains a strong element of what we might call dysfunction or even madness.

According to Christian teachings, the normal collective state of humanity is one of "original sin" Sin is a word that has been greatly misunderstood and misinterpreted. Literally translated from the ancient Greek in which the New Testament was written, to sin means to miss the mark, as an archer who misses the target, so to sin means to miss the point of human existence. It means to live unskilfully, blindly, and thus to suffer and cause suffering. Again the term, stripped of its cultural baggage and misinterpretations, points to the dysfunction inherent in the human condition.

The human mind is highly intelligent. Yet its very intelligence is tainted by madness. Science and technology have magnified the destructive impact that the dysfunction of the human mind has upon the planet, other life forms, and upon humans themselves. That is why the history of the twentieth century is where that dysfunction, that collective insanity, can be most clearly recognized. A further factor is that this dysfunction is actually intensifying and accelerating.

By the end of the twentieth century, the number of people who died a violent death at the hands of their fellow humans would rise to more than one hundred million. They died not only through wars between nations, but also through exterminations and genocide, such as the murder of twenty million "class enemies, spies, and traitors" in the Soviet Union under Stalin or the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. They also died in countless smaller internal conflicts, such as the Spanish civil war or during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia when a quarter of that country's population was murdered.

We only need to watch the daily news on television to realize that the madness has not abated, that it is continuing into the twenty first century. In Iraq alone since the invasion over one million Iraqis have been killed

Another aspect of the collective dysfunction of the human mind is the unprecedented damage that humans are inflicting on other life forms and the planet itself the destruction of oxygen producing forests and other plant and animal life; the poisoning of rivers, oceans, and air. Driven by greed, ignorant of their connectedness to the whole, humans persist in behaviour that, if continued unchecked can only result in their own destruction.

You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness.

The history of Communism, originally inspired by noble ideals, clearly illustrates what happens when people attempt to change external reality create a new earth without any prior change in their inner reality, their state of consciousness. They make plans without taking into account the blueprint for dysfunction that every human being carries within: the ego.

The greatest achievement of humanity is not its works of art, science, or technology, but the recognition of its own dysfunction, its own madness. In the distant past, this recognition already came to a few individuals, Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu. To recognize one's own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence. A new dimension of consciousness had begun to emerge on the planet, a first tentative flowering. Those rare individuals then spoke to their contemporaries. They spoke of sin, of suffering, of delusion. They said, "Look how you live. See what you are doing, the suffering you create." They then pointed to the possibility of awakening from the collective nightmare, of "normal" human existence. They showed the way. The world was not yet ready for them, and yet they were a vital and necessary part of human awakening. Inevitably, they were mostly misunderstood by their contemporaries, as well as by subsequent generations. Their teachings, although both simple and powerful, became distorted and misinterpreted, in some cases even as they were recorded in writing by their disciples. Over the centuries, many things were added that had nothing to do with the original teachings, but were reflections of a fundamental misunderstanding.

Eckhart Tolle www.eckhartolle.com

And so religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion. They became ideologies; belief systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense of self. Through them, they could make themselves "right" and others "wrong" and thus define their identity through their enemies, the "others," the "non believers" or "wrong believers" who not infrequently they saw themselves Justified in killing. Man made "God" in his own image. The eternal, the infinite, and unnameable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as "my god" or "our god."

What is the role of the established religions in the arising of the new consciousness? Many people are already aware of the difference between spirituality and religion. They realize that having a belief system a set of thoughts that you regard as the absolute truth does not make you spiritual no matter what the nature of those beliefs is. In fact, the more you make your thoughts (beliefs) into your identity, the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within yourself. Many "religious" people are stuck at that level. They equate truth with thought, and as they are completely identified with thought (their mind), they claim to be in sole possession of the truth in an unconscious attempt to protect their identity. They don't realize the limitations of thought. Unless you believe (think) exactly as they do, you are wrong in their eyes, and in the not too distant past, they would have felt Justified in killing you for that. And some still do, even now.

The new spirituality, the transformation of consciousness, is arising to a large extent outside of the structures of the existing institutionalised religions. There were always pockets of spirituality even in mind dominated religions, although the institutionalised hierarchies felt threatened by them and often tried to suppress them. A large scale opening of spirituality outside of the religious structures is an entirely new development. In the past, this would have been inconceivable, especially in the West, the most mind dominated of all cultures, where the Christian church had a virtual franchise on spirituality You couldn't just stand up and give a spiritual talk or publish a spiritual book unless you were sanctioned by the church, and if you were not, they would quickly silence you. But now, even within certain churches and religions, there are signs of change.

Partly as a result of the spiritual teachings that have arisen outside the established religions, but also due to an influx of the ancient Eastern wisdom teachings, a growing number of followers of traditional religions are able to let go of identification with form, dogma, and rigid belief systems and discover the original depth that is hidden within their own spiritual tradition at the same time as they discover the depth within themselves. They realize that how "spiritual" you are has nothing to do with what you believe but everything to do with your state of consciousness. This, in turn, determines how you act in the world and interact with others.

Those unable to look beyond form become even more deeply entrenched in their beliefs, that is to say, in their mind. We are witnessing not only an unprecedented influx of consciousness at this time but also an entrenchment and intensification of the ego. Some religious institutions will be open to the new consciousness; others will harden their doctrinal positions and become part of all those other manmade structures through which the collective ego will defend itself and "fight back." Some churches, sects, cults, or religious movements are basically collective egoic entities, as rigidly identified with their mental positions as the followers of any political ideology that is closed to any alternative interpretation of reality,

But the ego is destined to dissolve, and all its ossified structures, whether they be religious or other institutions, corporations, or governments, will disintegrate from within, no matter how deeply entrenched they appear to be. The most rigid structures, the most impervious to change, will collapse first. This has already happened in the case of Soviet Communism. How deeply entrenched, how solid and monolithic it appeared, and yet within a few years, it disintegrated from within. No one foresaw this. All were taken by surprise. There are many more such surprises in store us.

But there's a shift happening in humanity, a shift in consciousness, happening now because it has to happen now. Because if it doesn't happen now, mankind probably won't survive. The dysfunction of the human mind and its condition is becoming more and more intolerable to the planet, and to humanity. People can't live with themselves much longer. The planet cannot live with humans much longer! The dysfunction has become so magnified through technology.

Whereas before, a human could kill a few hundred with a sword---if he was a warrior--- now, the same dysfunction is magnified. So we have the weaponry, destruction of the planet, pollution, destruction of forests, countless manifestations of humans using their intelligence in the service of the dysfunction, the madness. It's a strange juxtaposition. Humans are intelligent, but if you look at history or even watch TV, they're also incredibly stupid.

Look at what's happening in the Middle East with the eternal insane conflict between Israel and Palestine. We can see how each faction is totally convinced that their mental position is the correct one. Each faction sees itself as the victim of the other.

Terrorists are not the only ones who are unconscious. The United States manufactures an enormous amount of totally senseless weaponry. Biological, chemical. They manufacture the most fiendish weapons---if they ever used them it would be hell on earth. Why are they working on this? They are intelligent scientists, thousands of them, the Government itself sponsors it. What is the purpose in creating such weapons if the use of such weapons would create hell on earth? Haven't they got enough weapons already? So it applies; "they know not what they do." You can see human unconsciousness in so many forms. You can see it very clearly in the terrorists. Sometimes it's easier to see the madness in others---but we also have to see it in ourselves.

The way out of the madness is to recognize thought as just thought. To see your own stream of thinking, to see that no thought can encapsulate the entire truth in any situation. You have to step out of thought to see that. To become the awareness outside of thought. Some people are driven out of thought through suffering; others can step out of thought because they see that thought is dysfunctional. So we see then that terrorists that inflict suffering on innocent people, kills thousands, blows himself up---how is it that he cannot see what he is doing?

Responding to a radical crisis that threatens our very survival this is humanity's challenge now. The dysfunction of the egoic human mind recognized thousands of years ago by the ancient wisdom teachers and now magnified through science and technology, is for the first time threatening the survival of the planet. Until very recently, the transformation of human consciousness also pointed to by the ancient teachers was no more than a possibility, realized by a few rare individuals here and there, irrespective of cultural or religious background. A wide spread flowering of human consciousness did not happen because it was not yet imperative.

A significant portion of the earth's population will soon recognize, if they haven't already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. A still relatively small but rapidly growing percentage of humanity is already experiencing within themselves the break up of the old egoic mind patterns and the emergence of a new dimension of consciousness.

What is arising now is not a new belief system, a new religion, spiritual ideology, or mythology we are coming to the end not only of mythologies but also of ideologies and belief systems. The change goes deeper than the content of your mind, deeper than your thoughts. In fact, at the heart of the new consciousness lies the transcendence of thought, the newfound ability of rising above thought, of realizing a dimension within yourself that is infinitely more vast than thought. You then no longer derive your identity, your sense of who you are, from the incessant stream of thinking that in the old consciousness you take to be yourself. What a liberation to realize that the "voice in my head" is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that. The awareness that is prior to thought, the space in which the thought or the emotion or sense perception happens.

The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly. By misuse, I mean that people, who have never even glimpsed at the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or, they argue against it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as "My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false," or Nietzsche's famous statement "God is dead."

Spirituality is too simple it doesn't need clerics. It is the democratising of religion. We imagine God as being elsewhere but He is within us.

The mind is our enemy. 90% of human thought is repetitive. Neural grooves are created in our brains. These thoughts become stupider and stupider.

Photo: "Freedom" by Vibor Lisjak, Croatia, stock.xchng

We need to be present in the NOW. This will lead us to live in God's presence all the time. Then you see the beauty of the world.

We must stop playing the worthiness game. God doesn't love us because we deserve it — He loves us because he is LOVE. The mind can never create a loving world.

The opposite of faith isn't doubt it is worry caused by the ego. Christ always states that the past = forgiveness and future = not to worry. Being present in the now from a Christian perspective is not just a psychological technique.

Ego is no more than this: identification with form, which primarily means thought forms. If evil has any reality and it has a relative, not an absolute, reality this is also its definition: complete identification with form physical forms, thought forms, emotional forms. This results in a total unawareness of my connectedness with the whole, my intrinsic oneness with every "other" as well as with the Source. This forgetfulness is original sin, suffering, and delusion. When this delusion of utter separateness underlies and governs whatever I think, say, and do, what kind of world do I create? To find the answer to this, observe how humans relate to each other, read a history book, or watch the news on television tonight.

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re creating fundamentally the same world, the same evils, and the same dysfunction.

The inspiration for the title of this book came from a Bible prophecy that seems more applicable now than at any other time in human history. It occurs in both the Old and the New Testament and speaks of the collapse of the existing world order and the arising of "a new heaven and a new earth." We need to understand here that heaven is not a location but refers to the inner realm of consciousness. This is the esoteric meaning of the word, and this is also its meaning in the teachings of Jesus.

Earth, on the other hand, is the outer manifestation in form, which is always a reflection of the inner. Collective human consciousness and life on our planet are intrinsically connected. "A new heaven" is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and "a new earth" is its reflection in the physical realm.

Eckhart Tolle

IMAGE SOURCES: Click on the image to go to the original source. The image used in the main headline was adapted from an image by claudmey, "Earth reflection" on stock.xchng. The background image "Freedom" to accompany the line "We need to be present in the NOW!" was taken by Vibor Lisjak and also sourced from stock.xchng.

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