Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo by A. S. Dalal

Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo

A. S. Dalal, a philosopher, psychotherapist, long-time devotee of Sri Aurobindo and inmate of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, provides here an in depth investigation and discussion of the similarities and differences between the teachings of Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo. Although nearly one-hundred years separate these two great spiritual teachers, who come out of disparate disciplines (Buddhist and Hindu), the author discovers an underling essence and truth which deepens and strengthens his own spiritual convictions and understandings. Through out his long life, the author has been exposed to multiple disciplines and the process of exploring Eckhart has brought him new insights and a greater integration that comes only when one expands beyond the narrow confines of the mind which can and too often do grow around any single discipline. This book provides a great opportunity for any seeker to push the limits of his own understanding and to reinvigorate his own quest.

Book Details

Author: A. S. Dalal
Print Length: 172
Publisher: Stone Hill Foundation
Contributors: Blindshiva
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English

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Contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Publisher’s Note
• 1. Eckhart Comes to Me
• 2. Interview with Eckhart Pondicherry, India — February 2002
• 3. Questions and Answers at Esalen
• 4. Sri Aurobindo on the Witness Consciousness
• 5. The Teachings of Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo1 — Some Comparisons
• 6. Postscript: Emerging Insights
• Appendix I
• Appendix II
• Appendix III
• Note on Eckhart Tolle
• Note on Sri Aurobindo
• Note on the Mother
• About the Author

Sample

Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo

My inner quest had begun, as it does to some extent with most seekers, with an intellectual need to understand myself, the nature of reality, and the purpose of life. This intellectual need had been well met by Theosophy. So, when I came in contact with Sri Aurobindo, it was his practical teachings on yoga rather than his philosophical writings to which I was particularly drawn. However, his philosophical writings, which I felt to be charged with the vibrations of a spiritual consciousness and which gave me an intuitive feeling that they were based on spiritual experience, made an impression that was deeper than that of Theosophy and gave me a greater understanding than what I had gained in Theosophy of the nature of the soul and its evolution, and of the laws of karma and reincarnation. I feel that the deep impact Sri Aurobindo’s philosophical teaching tends to have is due to its not being a product of mental theorizing but having its source in the state of silence beyond the mind. As Sri Aurobindo wrote in 1933: “Since 1908 when I got the silence, I never think with my head or brain — it is always in the wideness generally above the head that the thoughts occur.”

It is certainly not because of any need for a greater philosophical understanding of things that I have been drawn to Eckhart in recent years. In the first place, that need had already been amply met by Theosophy and by Sri Aurobindo. Secondly, Eckhart does not offer a system of philosophy. As he states, a spiritual teaching is not a philosophy or a cosmology; it does not seek to explain the nature of the universe but to help one in accessing a state of consciousness beyond that of the mind. Many of Eckhart’s talks, in fact, typically open with a disclaimer that the talk does not purport to give new “information” or theory that may provide food for thought. The power of his words lies not so much in their informational content as in the “high-energy frequency of Presence which they carry.”