Eckhart Tolle uses 'unconscious' in its spiritual sense — complete identification with the compulsive stream of thought — and traces how this fuels both individual suffering and the collective ego's appetite for enemies. He calls the resulting sense of self an illusion sustained by mind-stuff.
Transcript
For still millions of humans on the planet, that is still their daily reality. That their sense of identity, who they are, is derived from the narrative in their minds. And that's an amazing dysfunction because it creates enormous amount of suffering that is actually unnecessary. But humans do the opposite. If if you are unconscious, unconscious, by the way, I'm going to use that word quite often probably tonight. Unconscious does not mean the convention conventional meaning of unconscious as you know is. So when I talk about unconscious humans, I'm not talking about the but they all unconscious in a spiritual sense means completely identified with the compulsive incessant thought processes in your heads. Identify it with every thought that comes into your head. Now what does it mean when I say identify? Identify means it's to do with identity. It's to do with who you are. It's to do with your sense of self. So when you identify with a thought, the thought has you in its grip to such an extent that every thought has a sense of self in it. So you derive your sense of self of who you are. your sense of self, you derive it from the voice in the head. And that is for still millions of humans on the planet, that is still their daily reality. That their sense of identity, who they are, is derived from the narrative in their minds. And that's an amazing dysfunction because it creates enormous amount of suffering that is actually unnecessary. The identity that is rooted in thought is always one that is deficient. It's you feel you're never enough and this moment is never enough. There's al always a great sense of something something is lacking in my life. and what it is that's lacking in your life. Everybody, every human who is identified with their mind has that sense of there's something vital that's lacking in my life. That's there's something not here that should be here. And what it is varies from person to person, but it is an underlying structure in the what I call the egoic the egoic mind. So ego in the sense that we use it here is the sense of self that is completely identified with thought. And as I mentioned the the tendency of thought of the egoic self which is the the mindmade sense of self which is an image of who you are consisting of certain stories you tell yourself in your mind and you call it my life. My life that's very problematic on the level of the story of my life. There's nobody in this room whose life on the level of the the so-called my life narrative that's not problematic. It's heavily problematic. My my life is not easy. Let me tell you about it if you're willing to listen and then you can tell me about yours. I'm sure it's not as bad as mine, but I'll listen. So everybody carries around a conceptual self that they call my life. And the moments when you're happy, really happy with your life, usually don't last that long. It is more normal to be to a greater or lesser degree unhappy with your life. If you're happy today or right now, just wait a little because things will change because humans get continuously challenged by situations and then you'll become unhappy again. So the the voice in the head, the compulsion tends to dwell on things that are not good rather than things that are good. Why does it do that? There's so much more to think about when it complains than about something good. Yesterday's sunset that was so let's say you saw a sunset yesterday. It was so magnificent and in the moment of see it freed you for a moment from the voice in the head because you just went wow and you felt more intensely alive suddenly. Why? You didn't feel intensely alive because of the sunset. Although it seems that way. You felt intense in life because you were so overwhelmed by the beauty of it that for a moment your thinking subsided and something else arose and that and that something else was presence or awareness and you went and that you in that moment you felt more intensely alive than you would normally do. Wow. And then of course you on the the next day you can say uh that was such a wonderful sunset. I felt so alive. But apart from that the mind cannot do very much with it. The mind compare that to complaining about the person who offended you yesterday. How much the mind can do with that and how it can get in there and amplify the story and and fantasize what's go what you could have said and will say the next time and people in general are so unpleasant and you don't really want to be here with people anymore and why and all kinds of things. So it's hard on the good things the so-called the mind can't do do that much with it. It tends to dwell on the the negative and the egoic self, the mindmade self gets stronger when it can complain about something and when when it can make something into an adversary or an enemy. It loves that because it feels stronger in its sense of self. People do that. There's also such a thing as a collective ego. Nations, groups, entities, collective entities, they love their enemies. They love to make enemies because then it defines your sense of self more than you feel more yourself. It's all illusion. It's all mind stuff.