Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo

For a statement of Sri Aurobindo's teaching, see
Appendix I: Sri Aurobindo's Teaching and Method of Practice.

Ego, Self, and Being

Eckhart Tolle alludes to a Zen Master who, when asked about Buddhism, summed up its essence in four words: "No self, no problems." The self, Buddhism teaches, is an illusion and the cause of all suffering. Eckhart, too, regards the illusion of self as the "core error" of the ordinary consciousness and begins the majority of his talks with themes dealing with the nature of the ordinary consciousness and the problematic self. The Buddhist view of Reality as Non-Being or Void (Shunya), devoid of self, also is found in Eckhart who often refers to the Reality as No-thing. Like Sri Aurobindo, Eckhart more often speaks of Reality in terms of Being rather than Non-Being.² "Being is your deepest self," says Eckhart; Being is "the ever-present I am that is

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beyond name and form."³ The self with name and form—the ego—is a substitute for the true self that is "rooted in Being."

Though Eckhart's experience of Being is that of an impersonal Reality—as is the Buddhist concept of Non-Being—Eckhart, unlike Buddhism, speaks of the Reality as endowed with personal attributes such as Intelligence, Love, and Benevolence, and as the power that operates in the universe, and which has an impetus to manifest Itself by an evolution of consciousness. Such a concept of Being is quite close to Sri Aurobindo's concept of the Divine, the Supreme Being. But whereas Eckhart speaks of Being as an impersonal Unmanifest, Sri Aurobindo's experience of the Divine is that of the Supreme Being who is beyond both the personal and the impersonal. As he states: "beyond the avyaktam [the Unmanifest] ... is the Supreme, the Purushottama [Supreme divine Person] of the Gita, the Para Purusha [Supreme Person] of the Upanishads."⁴ Speaking about "the personal truth and Presence" of the Purushottama of the Gita, Sri Aurobindo writes:

It is no abstract Absolute of the philosopher, no indifferent impersonal Presence or ineffable Silence intolerant of all relations. ... It is a Master of our works, a Friend and Lover of our soul, an intimate Spirit of our life, an indwelling and over dwelling Lord of all our personal and impersonal self and nature . .. .⁵

In Eckhart's view, the false egoic self is due to an identification of oneself with the mind. Though Eckhart speaks of the bodily and emotional aspects of the egoic self, he regards the ego as primarily the mind-identified self What conceals the real self, he says, is the constant noise made by the mind with which we are identified. Sri Aurobindo, on the other hand, draws clear distinctions among the

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physical, vital,⁶ and mental aspects of the ego, and, as will be explained a little later in this chapter, views the egoic self of most human beings as primarily a vital rather than a mental ego. From Sri Aurobindo's viewpoint, the thickest veil that hides the true self in most human beings is the vital ego constituted by instinctual impulses, desires, and emotions.

Another significant difference between the perspectives of Eckhart and Sri Aurobindo lies in their views of the true self. Eckhart's view of the true self, that which is "rooted in Being," is similar to the Eastern concept of Atma, the Universal Self. Sri Aurobindo expresses the same view in somewhat different words. The Self, he says, is identical with Brahman, supreme Existence or Being; Self is the subjective aspect of Being. But besides Atma, the Universal Self, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the true individual self, the real "I," Jivatma, spoken of figuratively in the Gita as "an eternal portion of the Divine." He explains:

By Jivatma we mean the individual self. Essentially it is one self with all others, but in the multiplicity of the Divine⁷ it is the individual self, an individual centre of the universe—and it sees everything in itself or itself in everything or both together according to its state of consciousness and point of view."⁸

The self, Atman is in its nature either transcendent or universal (Paramatma, Atma). When it individualises and becomes a central being, it is then the Jivatman. The Jivatman feels his oneness with the universal but at the same time his central separateness as a portion of the Divine."⁹

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The individual soul is the spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal porrion of the Divine, but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his manifestation of the Many."¹⁰

This persistent soul-existence is the real Individuality which stands behind the constant mutations of the thing we call our personality. It is not a limited ego but a thing in itself infinite; it is in truth the Infinite itself consenting from one plane of its being to reflect itself in a perpetual soul-experience. ... We are nor a mere mass of changing mind-stuff, life-stuff, body-stuff taking different forms of mind and life and body from birth to birth, so that at no rime is there any real self or conscious reason of existence behind ail the flux or none except that Quiescent who cares for none of these things. There is a real and stable power of our being behind the constant mutation of our mental, vital and physical personality, and this we have to know and preserve in order that the Infinite may manifest Himself through it according to His will in whatever range and for whatever purpose of His eternal cosmic activity."¹¹

The Jivatma is not born; it stands above personal evolution, and so does not change or evolve. What comes down into birth and grows in the evolution from life to life, supporting the physical, vital, and mental nature, is the psychic being (Gr. psukhé, soul), representative of Jivatma.

In Eckhart's teaching, as in Buddhism, the notion of a personal self is completely illusory; there is nothing like a true self of the individual. The "innermost I" that Eckhart speaks of is nor an individual self (Jivatma) but the one Universal Self (Atma). Therefore, someone familiar with the dominant Hindu thought, as found in the Gita, is apt to notice that Eckhart's teaching does not include one of the prominent Hindu themes, namely, the growth of the individual self,

the Jivatma, from life to life until its liberation through union (yoga) with the Universal Self.

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