Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks and Shri Mataji's Thoughtless Awareness are in perfect harmony

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STILLNESS SPEAKS

A book designed for meditative reading

 

The essence of Eckhart Tolle's message is easy to grasp: If we

connect to the stillness within, we move beyond our active minds and

emotions and discover great depths of lasting peace, contentment, and

serenity. With his bestselling first book, The Power of Now, his

message has reached millions of people worldwide. Now, in his much

anticipated new book, Tolle gives us the essence of his teaching in

short, simple pieces that anyone can easily understand.

 

Stillness Speaks is organized into ten chapters whose subjects range

from " Beyond the Thinking Mind " to " Suffering and the End of

Suffering. " Each chapter is a mosaic of individual entries, concise

and complete in themselves, but profoundly transformative when read

as a whole.

 

Eckhart Tolle understands the spiritual needs of our time. He draws

from the essence of all spiritual traditions, expressing these truths

in startlingly fresh new ways. The result is a book that is

paradoxically both ancient and contemporary, filled with timely and

powerful messages. Stillness Speaks can be no less than an awakening

for readers willing to give the words a chance to work their quiet

magic.

 

Eckhart Tolle is a contemporary spiritual teacher who is not aligned

with any particular religion or tradition. In his writing and

seminars, he conveys a simple yet profound message with the timeless

and uncomplicated clarity of the ancient spiritual masters: There is

a way out of suffering and into peace. Eckhart travels extensively,

taking his teachings throughout the world. He lives in Vancouver,

British Columbia.

 

 

Extracts from Stillness Speaks

 

The transformation of human consciousness is no longer a luxury, so

to speak, available only to a few isolated individuals, but a

necessity if humankind is not to destroy itself.

 

At the present time, the dysfunction of the old consciousness and the

arising of the new are both accelerating. Paradoxically, things are

getting worse and better at the same time, although the worse is more

apparent because it makes so much `noise'.

 

The book Stillness Speaks, of course, uses words that in the act of

reading become thoughts in your mind. But those are not ordinary

thoughts – repetitive, noisy, self-serving, clamouring for attention.

Just like every true spiritual teacher, just like the ancient sutras,

the thoughts within this book don't say, `'Look at me',' but `'Look

beyond me'.' Because the thoughts came out of stillness, they have

power – the power to take you back into the same stillness from which

they arose. That stillness is also inner peace, and that stillness

and peace is the essence of your Being. It is inner stillness that

will save and transform the world.

 

Silence and stillness

 

When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with

yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the

world.

 

Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from

stillness. This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

Stillness is your essential nature. What is stillness? The inner

space or awareness in which the words on this page are being

perceived and become thoughts. Without the awareness, there would be

no perception, no thoughts, no world.

 

You are that awareness, disguised as a person.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

The equivalent of external noise is the inner noise of thinking. The

equivalent of external silence is inner stillness.

 

Whenever there is some silence around you – listen to it. That means

just notice it. Pay attention to it. Listening to silence awakens the

dimension of stillness within yourself, because it is only through

stillness that you can be aware of silence.

 

See that in the moment of noticing the silence around you, you are

not thinking. You are aware, but not thinking.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

When you become aware of silence, immediately there is that state of

inner still alertness. You are present. You have stepped out of

thousands of years of collective human conditioning.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it.

How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach

you stillness.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

When you look at a tree and perceive its stillness, you become still

yourself. You connect with it at a very deep level. You feel a

oneness with whatever you perceive in and through stillness. Feeling

the oneness of yourself with all things is true love.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

Silence is helpful, but you don't need it in order to find stillness.

Even when there is noise, you can be aware of the stillness

underneath the noise, of the space in which the noise arises. That is

the inner space of pure awareness, consciousness itself.

 

You can become aware of awareness as the background to all your sense

perceptions, all your thinking. Becoming aware of awareness is the

arising of inner stillness.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

Any disturbing noise can be as helpful as silence. How? By dropping

your inner resistance to the noise, by allowing it to be as it is,

this acceptance also takes you into that realm of inner peace that is

stillness.

 

Whenever you deeply accept this moment as it is - no matter what form

it takes - you are still, you are at peace.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

Pay attention to the gap - the gap between two thoughts, the brief,

silent space between words in a conversation, between the notes of a

piano or flute, or the gap between the in-breath and the out-breath.

 

When you pay attention to those gaps, awareness of `'something'

becomes - just awareness. The formless dimension of pure

consciousness arises from within you and replaces identification with

form.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity

and solutions to problems are found.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

Is stillness just the absence of noise and content? No, it is

intelligence itself - the underlying consciousness out of which every

form is born. And how could that be separate from who you are?

 

The form that you think you are came out of that and is being

sustained by it.

 

It is the essence of all galaxies and blades of grass; of all

flowers, trees, birds, and all other forms.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

Stillness is the only thing in this world that has no form. But then,

it is not really a thing, and it is not of this world.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

When you look at a tree or a human being in stillness, who is

looking? Something deeper than the person. Consciousness is looking

at its creation.

 

In the Bible, it says that God created the world and saw that it was

good. That is what you see when you look from stillness without

thought.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

Do you need more knowledge? Is more information going to save the

world, or faster computers, more scientific or intellectual analysis?

Is it not wisdom that humanity needs most at this time?

 

But what is wisdom and where is it to be found? Wisdom comes with the

ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed.

Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual

intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.

 

 

www.eckharttolle.com/stillness_speaks