Eckhart Tolle uses a thought experiment — waking up to find everyone shares the same race — to expose how identity built on otherness dissolves the moment its reference point disappears. He frames the individual and collective ego as a stage of human evolution now reaching its end.
Transcript
One morning you wake up and everybody in the entire world is exactly the same race and color as you. Everybody, whatever it is, black, white, brown, whatever. What happened? And suddenly if you had an identity or if if if that was the main part of your identity then suddenly it dissolves because that imaginary world that I just described that you wake up in does not even have a word for race because if there's no other there's no word for it. The ego egoic sense of self is a stage in human evolution that uh has had its function but we approaching the end of the egoic state of evolution. So that we need to now go beyond it because if we don't this ego which I've been talking about the individual ego there's also a collective aspect to the ego. There's there's a collective ego that humans can identify with and there's the individual ego that humans can identify with. The ego uh needs the other to differentiate itself from. It needs its enemies without the other and to emphasize as much as possible the otherness of others. You cannot contain you cannot um sustain your egoic sense of self. the go the ego needs that. So the ego uh let's just give I'll give one or two examples to see how it works. Uh let's say um a certain possession you have then you identify with that you have a what is it a great whatever the great cars are I don't know Ferrari or whatever people like I don't know Ferrari is a great ego car by the way it makes a lot of noise that says look at me meh So if you have Ferrari that can temporarily amplify your ego, imagine a world where everybody at the age of 21 gets the gift of a Ferrari. It suddenly can't fulfill its purpose anymore because there's the other there's no superiority anymore. Um naturally you identify with your body. The body may have a c has a certain color. Brace is something important for many people to identify with. And of course it has its place. Not saying let go completely. What I'm saying is uh if you awaken spiritually it it does not take you over completely. It becomes part of your form identity. That is all that we've been talking about in ego. I call that your form identity. And deeper than that, and we'll get to that is your essence identity. So all this externals is your possessions, achievements, body or race. It's another example. If race is important to you, it may be that's fine. Imagine that. you it's an you could have a you can write a novel about that. It's an imaginary scenario. One morning you wake up and everybody in the entire world is exactly the same race and color as you. Everybody, whatever it is, black, white, brown, whatever. What happened? And suddenly if you had an identity or if if if that was the main part of your identity then suddenly it dissolves because the that imaginary world that I just described that you wake up in does not even have a word for race because if there's no other there's no word for it. If every if if everybody everything in this world were green, you wouldn't have a word for green because there's no differentiation. So the ego needs the other and it's now as far as form identity is concerned, it is something to be honored. I'm not suggesting you should completely reject everything to do with your form identity. It has its place. The physical body has its place. Your race has its place. Your anything external that you have it it there's a place for having things. You have a certain possessions. That's fine. This is the I'd like to suggest another concept that might be a helpful pointer. The what we are talking about here so far we've been talking about mainly about the ego because we need to recognize how it works so that we can go beyond it. We've been talking about the ego. So I sometimes describe that as the surface eye. The eye that ex is on the surface of life. And the surface of life is your physical existence. Your physical entity, all the external so-called external things that surround you, which ultimately are all mental phenomena. We don't even know if there's anything actually out there. They're all mental phenomena. So this in the so-called external world, this is your surface reality. You just your your surface eye. This is the but your surface eye is not just the physical realm. Your surface eye is also the psychological entity of the ego. you the invisible person with its conditioned mental emotional conditioning that also is the surface eye. And so this is what we could describe as the horizontal dimension of reality. the horizontal dimension where life unfolds and you have a form form identity surface eye that has you you have to see recognize it for what it is honor it you're not ultimately you're not your body but you need to give attention to your so physical body look after it and honor whatever there is in on the surface of existence which is all that it's where time operates, past and future, where you do things, where you achieve things, where you acquire new skills. Everything requires time on this horizontal level of reality.