Question: Most spiritual traditions have a
strong emphasis on morality. What role does morality play in your
teachings?
Eckhart Tolle: The main aim of this
teaching is to transcend the Ego, the Ego being a false sense of self, a
false sense of identity. Morality is important in many traditional
teachings because those teachings have not gone beyond Ego, so they
still function within the framework of the Ego.
If you live in a
society that is inhabited by Egos, you need certain external rules of
behavior and regulations so that there is not absolute chaos. What you
need then is commandments, or laws that need to be in place so that
the Ego does not create absolute chaos in the world. The emphasis of
this teaching is to transcend the Ego so that a different state of
consciousness arises, we call it “presence”.
Once this state
of consciousness operates, external rules and regulations are not
really needed anymore, because a knowing of what is right and wrong
arises from within you, and you are no longer able to inflict suffering
on others because the illusion of absolute separateness between who
you are and who another human being is, has disappeared. You are no
longer trapped in that illusion, so you know that ultimately, whatever
you are doing to another, you are doing to yourself. Most
importantly, there is love as the recognition of the other as yourself –
the recognition of oneness. Once that is the basis of your life, you
don’t need rules or regulations anymore because that arises directly
and spontaneously from within you.
One could say that all you
need to do is to be in that state of love, which is not conventional
love, but the recognition of non-separation, recognition of the
ultimate Oneness of all beings. Once that is there, then the right
conduct flows naturally from within you. You don’t need to memorize
the commandments anymore to tell you what’s right and wrong. The
emphasis of this teaching is transcending the Ego, and once that’s
done, morality arises from within. The emphasis of this teaching is not
on morality because that comes as really the effect of the
transformation. It is the effect of the inner transformation. The
emphasis of this teaching is not on morality, but on something deeper,
out of which true morality flows.
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