If we look at human history we can see that consciousness has created a world of horror, death, and war, as well as a world filled with moments of peace and romance. So what is the underlying purpose? In his book ‘A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose’ Eckhart Tolle defines consciousness as the very catalyst for the material world which we see in front of our eyes. This idea declares war on the ego and its dualistic nature and, if socially accepted, will change the world as we know it.
Einstein's dilemma
Albert Einstein is not only the most famous scientist of the 20th century (or even human history) but has become a symbol for human intelligence and progress. Einstein’s ideas however did not only want to encapsulate the science world but all of human knowledge; to an extent, all of existence, “A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of consciousness”. So what is this delusion Einstein speaks of? And how can we possibly be the one thing when one doesn’t quench his thirst watching another drink, or smell a flower that isn’t in front of one’s nose, or feel the heat of another’s body without feeling it with one’s own?
In his book, ‘A New Earth’ by Eckhart Tolle this very topic is discussed in the same fashion as Einstein, “the whole comprises all that exists. It is the world or the cosmos. But all things in existence, from microbes to human beings to galaxies, are not really separate things or entities, but form part of a web of interconnected multidimensional processes”. (Eckhart, 166) Initially this idea entails that there is no difference between the person reading this, the computer he or she is using, the person who wrote the article, and the computer that person used to write it. But who is performing that particular action at any particular moment, whether it be writing an article or reading it for instance, is thought to be in command of the action rather than the action itself and that is the crucial mistake- the optical delusion of consciousness that Einstein mentions.
Our senses and reality
We don’t quench our thirst watching someone else drink not because the world is not one but because our mind represents our senses different to the physical reality which cause them, “perception reduces reality to what is accessible to us through the small range of our senses: what we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch” (Eckhart, 166). But as humans deepen their knowledge of the world around them through science and art (which only came to ‘be’ as a direct result of the senses), humans as a whole are beginning to understand the idea of ‘oneness’ better and better. Physics, for example, shows that what we are is just merely condensed vibration that our eye picks up as ‘matter’. The waves that create one’s clothes, one’s body, the dirt one walks on, the galaxy one lives in, and consciousness itself are all created by the same condensed vibration. We are part of the whole because the whole is a part of us. This means that not only are we our greatest friend, we are our greatest enemy as well- everything has its opposite within itself. You cannot harm another without harming yourself because you are the other and the other is you, and in the same vain, you can’t help another without helping yourself.
Conclusion:
When one can only experience him or herself through society, one can only experience life through socially conditioned filters of social character, logic, and language. And if society can only witness itself with an identity that is only reacting in fear to its own mortality all that will be created is a scared world that tries to live on the idea ‘forever’. The religious idea of the ‘ego’ living on after death (whether it be in paradise or eternal torture) is only trying to deal with this fear after all- and for a large chunk of human history this has worked quite well. But this is where Eckhart’s book comes in- what if social character, logic, and language were used to create a world that was not a reaction to fear? A world where the ego is seen for what it is- the imagination of oneself which turns into one great big self-referential loop we act out day in, day out.
