Eckhart Tolle describes how to experience pure consciousness by withdrawing attention from objects. Focus on space, breath, stillness, or silence between sounds, and consciousness becomes aware of itself. This state of Being, he says, is what ancient traditions call self-realization.
All that remains is consciousness that is conscious of itself, and that's the realization of Being, of I Am. Consciousness is no longer conscious of something in that moment because there is nothing. Consciousness is conscious of itself. So normally your consciousness is content, you're always conscious of something, that's normal. You're not only conscious of something, a thought, a sense perception, a feeling, a memory which is a thought, you're not only always conscious of something, you are Identified with that thing that you are conscious of. Every thought that you are conscious of, you are identified with it, but you're never conscious of nothing because you think that doesn't make sense. And now we're introducing this little practice where you pay attention to the vastness of space, or you pay attention to— The breath. Stillness or silence around you, not the noise. You pay attention to the silence. Certain types of music you can do it too. I recommend the Japanese flute, bamboo flute, shakuhachi. The shakuhachi flute is a beautiful, very, very simple instrument, and the great masters of shakuhachi, they play this music You can sense very easily the silences, the stillness between the sounds. So there you pay more attention to this silence than to the sounds. And then, so when you pay attention to that, you become aware, now conscious, not of something, because there's nothing there in the silence, Or in the space, and when there's consciousness and the object is withdrawn that normally is associated with consciousness, the object is withdrawn, all that remains is consciousness that is conscious of itself. And that's the realization of Being, of I Am. Consciousness is no longer conscious of something in that moment because there is nothing. Consciousness is conscious of itself. That sounds a little weird, but that's how it is. And that, in ancient traditions, Like in India, it's called self-realization, and that self-realization is not the fictitious mind-made self, it is the formless self, it is the deep I. Isn't that amazing?
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