I am very privileged to have got an opportunity to attend the program “Eckhart Tolle School of Awakening”. I read his book “A New Earth” 11 years back. It completely shifted my thinking, or so to say, my association with thinking. It helped me recognise the ego and its all pervading nature. It’s undoubtedly the most influential book I ever have read that talks about metaphysics.
I never thought I would get an opportunity to directly interact with Eckhart and receive his invaluable Teachings first hand! The process of transformation is called Awakening and the state to which it is supposed to lead is the state of Presence, the state of Stillness, the state of Being.
Again mathematically speaking, the process of Awakening is like Optimisation problem, or to put in other words, it is essentially iterative. With the limited number of iterations (moments, lifetime) we have got, the process, however, does not guarantee convergence (State of Presence). We may or may not reach our own optimum (local optimum) within those iterations. However every single being goes through this process knowingly or even unknowingly.
Another motivation behind equating the Awakening with optimisation is that both of them stop at local optimum. Simply because, Global optimum is just impossible to attain in most of the problems. Similarly, everyone attains his equilibrium which is a unique point (a vector of qualities). Rama, Krishna, Jesus, and all the great Avatars or messengers, basically embody a unique yet very different set of qualities. And yet they all are a kind of Global Optima. On the other hand the mere mortals like us, attain our unique local optimum and resonate happily ever with that one which is our HCF! We call it Bliss!
As it’s a futile exercise to find the common denominator (HCF) of prime numbers, it is also equally futile to find the similarities amongst these Gods or God heads. We all are unique. And this time as well, as is the case with my all wonderments expressed in my previous blogs, I am fascinated by the passion or fondness with which people like to apply clustering techniques to find common structures. If they are serious, they will end up finding Him (God) only and as the only common structure. Indeed an impossible and more importantly, a futile fondness to cluster beings in the high dimensional space of qualities!
We are also prime members, if not numbers, of this Universe and therefore the only HCF we have is 1. Perhaps that could be why we refer to that state as Oneness! Some people term this 1 as Brahman, the essential substrate. Some people see God in every being. Some call it Consciousness. And likewise. These all terms point to that HCF which is the Highest (above all), Common (present in everything) and the only Factor (cause) that is there.
Coming back to the “School of Awakening” program, we can think of it as another algorithm which is very special that speeds up the optimisation to a great extent. I am very happy to be with all of the participants and extremely grateful to that author of algorithm called Eckhart Tolle, who undoubtedly dwells happily in his own optimum!
Reinvent The Self! 