Eckhart Tolle distinguishes the 'historical person', built from personal and collective conditioning, from the underlying dimension of consciousness that is not dependent on the past. He notes that constant absorption in thought is the normal state for most humans, and that substance use often functions as momentary release from the prison of the mind.
Transcript
Your attention is being absorbed by thought. That's a normal state for millions of humans. And the only relief they get is when they get too tired to think. So one way to look at yourself uh is to see that there's there's two of you. Let's put it like this. It's not the ultimate truth. says in two, but it's a helpful perspective for the time being to see that there's there's two of you or we could say two dimensions to who you are. There's two two of you. One is the historical person with a I'm saying historical because who you are as a historical person is dependent on the past. uh your past, your personal past and the past of your collective. Whatever background you grew up in, your nation, the collective includes your nation or your religion. belief systems and so on associated with your belief systems, your nation. The collective is also uh part the agenda is also part of the the collective and uh the past your personal past of course childhood and and so on. Uh so they make up the historical person. So your identity as a historical person depends on the past. What you think and how you think is dependent on the past. And so that's that's that is the surface I I meaning the pronoun the first person of the verb to be. And for most people the historical person is all they know. They know themselves as the historical person with all the good and bad things that make up their past history and the and the conditioning the mental emotional conditioning. So for most people that's all there is. They relate to themselves as this historical person and to everybody else also as historical persons. And as you awaken, you realize that in addition to the historical person and not just not in addition, but more fundamentally, there's a deeper dimension to who you are. And I sometimes call that the deep eye. Very different from the historical eye. The deep eye is the timeless being that you are. Most people don't know that that even exists. It's a dimension that is closed to them or obscured. or they are completely just simply unaware of it because the historical person has so many things to think about and to do and to experience. Uh they get so absorbed in their thoughts and their experiences and the demands that the world makes upon them that they one could say simply they overlook they overlook the deep eye which in a way is always is always there underneath the historical person. So the things that continuously absorb your attention uh and make you overlook that deeper dimension that is a deep eye. are obviously the things of this world. The demands made upon you, including the devices that we have invented to distract you even more. Uh but fundamentally it all comes down to your mind, your thinking which absorbs your conscious attention. So for those who are completely unawwake, unconscious, spiritually speaking, the entire consciousness is sucked up by the addictive stream of thinking. And even the things of this world that make demands upon you ultimately you experience them as mind formations. It all ultimately comes down to that your attention is being absorbed by thought. That's a normal state for millions of humans. And the only relief they get is when they get too tired to think just before they drop off to sleep or when they take some kind of substance, it slows down their thinking. And so that's where there's why there's a lot of addiction to substances. One of the main reasons or the main reason is that they offer you momentary release from the prison of your mind.