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Eckhart Tolle: Essential Teachings

What The World Needs Is Wisdom

Eckhart Tolle: Essential Teachings

Oprah

Society & Culture

4.64.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this podcast, Eckhart talks about the life-changing wisdom we acquire when we stop

compulsive thinking. He says wisdom is very different from intelligence and that true wisdom arises from a place beyond the kind of intelligence that is generated by the mind. Eckhart explains that even though thinking is a necessary function, we’re too dependent on it. He says most of us learn at an early age to memorize, dissect and label everything. Eckhart explains this fragmented sense of knowing robs us of a more profound understanding of the world and stops us from honoring what is sacred. He says wisdom cannot be measured by IQ tests and that the world will not be saved by more knowledge. Instead, he reveals that what the world truly needs is wisdom.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

What the world needs is wisdom.

0:03.0

In this podcast, Eckhart talks about the life-changing wisdom we acquired when we stopped compulsive thinking.

0:11.0

He says wisdom is very different from intelligence and that true wisdom arises from a place beyond the kind of intelligence that's generated by the mind.

0:20.0

Eckhart explains that even though thinking is a necessary function, we're too dependent on it.

0:25.0

He says most of us learn at an early age to memorize, dissect, and label everything.

0:32.0

Eckhart explains that this fragmented sense of knowing robs us of a more profound understanding of the world and stops us from honoring what is sacred.

0:43.0

Eckhart says wisdom cannot be measured by IQ tests and that the world will not be saved by more knowledge.

0:50.0

Instead, he reveals that what the world truly needs is wisdom.

0:57.0

So, you experience the world either through the conditioned mind or through the awareness behind it.

1:11.0

And this is why I need to mention another important spiritual practice, especially while you're here, but hopefully also when you leave here after the retreat for the rest of your life.

1:23.0

The spiritual practice of perceiving the world around you directly through awareness, instead of through the mental faculty of compulsive naming, interpreting, and so on, which is quite normal for many people.

1:48.0

The moment they perceive something, they call it something, classify it, name it.

1:54.0

But the spiritual practice is to perceive something visually through visual perception, auditory perception, or other perceptions.

2:06.0

And be so present that the perception arises in the space of awareness, the light of consciousness, in the light of consciousness, whatever it is that you see or hear, or feel, or touch or taste or smell, that you are the awareness for the perception.

2:27.0

For example, you look at a flower, let go of needing to name it, relate it to something, wanting something from it, remembering something that reminds you of something, this or that.

2:43.0

And what is it called? I must know all these things can be helpful and are sometimes necessary, of course, to be able to manipulate concepts is necessary in this world.

2:54.0

But I'm not teaching the manipulation of concepts, because you already, everyone is master of manipulation of concepts already.

3:02.0

That's not what I need to teach about here. The teaching, if you want to even call it that, is not to be trapped in conceptualization.

3:13.0

To transcend also means you no longer use it. The ability to use it is actually enhanced when there is a deeper dimension.

3:22.0

So you're not trapped in conceptualization, and when you don't want it, you let it go. And there's a deeper connectedness to whatever it is that you are perceiving, for example, the flower.

3:37.0

Or many other beautiful things in nature, it's the kind of desert, but the desert is intensely alive. And so you're looking at something, and you hold the perception, let go of the compulsive naming, and then there's a deeper knowing you can know this flower without calling it anything, but at a non-conceptual level, that's awareness.

4:03.0

You become the light of consciousness rather than a person, there's a shift.

...

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