This was Eckhart Tolle's response to a question on "What is the essence of his teaching". For more details on the interview, please visit this link. Or visit www.eckharttolle.com. Or buy the book "The Power of Now".
Echkart Tolle: The essence, the very foundation, of the teaching is that a different state of consciousness is possible for humans. The state of consciousness that is considered normal and that has been running human history for thousands of years is not the only possible state of consciousness. It's also not the most advanced state possible for humans.
It's nothing new. All the great teachings and teachers have pointed to the fact, since the normal state of consciousness is a state that is extremely deficient, a state that in the ancient teachings has been called suffering. The Buddha called it suffering, Jesus called it a state of sin and illusion, and the Hindus call it a state of illusion.
So, all ancient teachings agree that the normal human state of consciousness is, as I call it, a state of insanity. Anybody can verify this for themselves if they look at human history, 90 percent of which—really, if you look at it objectively—would be called the history of collective insanity, with the enormous amount of suffering inflicted by humans on other humans and on themselves and other species.
The second part of the teaching is that it's possible to enter that state now. Not only is it possible to enter it now, but the only time when you can enter that state of consciousness is in the Now; not needing the future in order to arrive at a projected state of consciousness, but realizing that new state of consciousness one that is free of time.
The main characteristic of the old state of consciousness is that it is dominated by past and future, in other words by time. If you observe the workings of your mind you will see that you're almost never in the present moment. The mind is always engaged in projecting a future, thinking about the future, trying to get to the future or reviving the past.
All ancient teachings agree that the normal human state of consciousness is, as I call it, a state of insanity.
The old state of consciousness is also a state of identification with thought processes. Now what does that mean? To be identified means to derive your sense of self, of who you are from thought movements, to be completely trapped in the mental noise, to have your identity in the mental noise.
Then your whole sense of self is derived from thought, which means an image forms in the head of "who I am," of "that's me," and that image is always ill at ease, even in the people who look very confident. The self image of the Little Me as I call it, a mind-made sense of self or ego, is always ill at ease. This sense of self needs conflict in order to feel that it exists. It cannot tolerate a prolonged period of non-conflict because the Little Me depends for its continuous existence on the feeling of separateness.
It defines itself as "me" and "other," which is not me. So, the more I can be in conflict with the not me the stronger my—ultimately illusory—sense of self becomes. The ego tells you continuously that it wants to get out of conflict. It's looking for happiness, but the ego is constructed in such a way that the state of happiness it says it looks for it cannot afford to find when its very survival depends on conflict.
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