Eckhart Tolle reflects on death as the moment when the inhabiting consciousness that organised every cell of the body departs — the body then quickly returning to its constituent atoms. He uses the question to point past anthropomorphic concepts of God to a sacred presence pervading ordinary perception.
Transcript
Every cell of the body has part partakes of that intelligence and it's all it's all organized coordinated continuously until one day this vast intelligence that is the invisible you uh decides to depart and then it goes It's still you for a while. This this another we may go on to that some other time. Don't have or when you're dead you'll find out anyway. Uh uh uh so when when it's the time has come this the this beautiful consciousness that in the inh the the the inhabiting presence that made this body possible and held all the atoms and molecules together in an as an intelligent highly intelligent organism. At some point something happens and this thing departs and then the body is still there but not for long. All the atoms and molecules say what are we doing here? We don't need to be here anymore. Let's go somewhere else. And they go and then a few bones are left and that's it. And the bones survive a thousand years. but nothing much and so it's the body then quickly dissolves into nothingness. Uh so the the presence is gone and we call it death. So God then I don't use that word very much because the moment you say God it creates an image in your mind of an entity a finite entity because the word is kind of encapsulated God and traditionally we have I not anymore more perhaps we've gone beyond that but for a long time we everybody in the Christian tradition everybody thought of God as an old man with a beard you can still see him in the cyine chapel in the Vatican it's a guy with a beard and goes and and then and traditionally been regarded it as a kind of um uh controlling father figure, the ultimate father figure. And uh that is very limiting and that's why many people these days find it hard to be to believe in God because they say this can't be right. They say because if it's God, God must be omnipotent and omniscient which means he can do anything and he knows everything. And so and they say because if he doesn't if he cannot do anything doesn't know everything then he's not God. And and then the next step is they say um look at all the suffering in this world the dread all the dreadful things that happen in this world. I if there is a God, God must be omnipotent. And if God if there is an omnipotent God who does not who who allows all this suffering to happen, then it's not God because then they say my morals are higher than these guys because then because I wouldn't allow all this suffering to happen if I were so therefore I would be superior. And then the next step you say therefore there is no god. Okay. Uh and as far as this childlike image is concerned they may be right. Not as god not as a controlling father figure somewhere and who doesn't do his job. There is a a more open uh way of looking at not just thinking about looking at and sensing and perceiving the this allervasive intelligence that as I see it is an emanation of this one unnameable able source of all life that we call God. There isn't like the sun emanates light. God and God does not exist as such because exist means to X means out to stand out. God is not an entity in space and time. God is cannot be known or understood. It would be absurd to try to know or understand but I'm trying anyway. But the this unnameable source of all life emanates into the light of God is consciousness. It emanates into this world of space and time where gradually the world is God is a awakening into this world and and continuously incarnating into this world and it this is the world of space and time and here gradually the the universe is undergoing a gradual awakening process. God itself is beyond space and time doesn't go undergo any process but it sends God sends out or by the way I find it very hard to call God he because you're limited already it is also difficult and she is also limits it so we uh maybe one day I'm going to ask God what are your pronouns and uh and then God will come up perhaps with a good very good pronoun but so far we don't have one. Uh so there's an and this if you can sense if your mind becomes still there's a stillness in you then you can there's a presence that you become aware of that is within and without. Especially if you're in a out in nature or in a still in a quiet room, you can sense that you are there's not just the stillness within you into presence. The presence is within and without in this room. We could sense if if you're still enough for a moment, you can sense that you the space of this room is also a presence, an invisible presence. So when you're really present, then you notice I reluctantly use that word that presence is sacred. There's a sacred presence that pervades this world.