This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »
Eckhart Tolle talks to the GOOGLE organization about "Knowledge, information, WISDOM, and how they relate .
I doubt Eckhart will appear at TED so I post this here. ( Note: there is no $profit$ in doing this)
Eckhart Tolle on Living with Meaning, Purpose, and Wisdom in the Digital Age
Spiritual teacher and Power of Now author Eckhart Tolle visited Google headquarters last week to give a talk entitled "Living with Meaning, Purpose and Wisdom in the Digital Age". In this 90-minute conversation with Google's Bradley Horowitz, Tolle talks about technology and the Internet. While he feels no technology is good or evil in itself, Tolle is concerned that our digital age is ramping up the "doing" and "thinking" mind at the expense of paying attention to "being" in the present moment. He provides many helpful suggestions to take time out for "being" for anyone that spends a lot of time at the computer and on the internet. At the end of the talk he fields questions from Google employees. This talk is available on streaming video through YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE1dWwoJPU0
Eckhart Tolle on Living with Meaning, Purpose, and Wisdom in the Digital Age
Ed Schulte 50+
Eckardt; while the technology is quite miraculous and in itself is neither good nor bad. The, I've only recently in the last 2 or 3 years started using it I came to a very late, I still haven't developed an addiction to it, as many people have.
There is an incredible possibility here with the technology and there is also a great danger with that technology. It could lead to contribute to the awakening and an example of that is our gathering here which people can apparently see on the screen. So this is just one example of how this technology can contribute juice writing vital message, the goes far beyond any ideology, or anything like that same thing I did with the work with Opera years ago for the 1st time, “the webinar” as they call it. They went out and the 1st time the whole system broke down because so many people tuned in! And secondly get started to work. So there are incredible possibilities for also human beings to connect to one another, well that's another topic, really if they are connecting as human beings but also the fact that the the flow of information it is no longer monopolized by the powerful few, corporations, but everybody can participate in that free flow of information, having already led to all these things, the “Arab Spring”…. and all those things which of been happening recently. All that is potentially good.
The danger of course is, and this again connects with what I was talking about earlier, that you get more and more inundated with information, with knowledge, with mine stuff so you more and more lose a deeper sense of connectedness with being, with presence, that deeper level which I talked about just now, and that would then it lead to an increasing confusion in your mind inability, really, to create anything new anymore… you'd be just trapped in continually increasing ‘mental noise.’
Ed Schulte 50+
Bradley: Now I am not sure I have any more questions! ..Laughter… But we will press on.
I wanted to ask you about the work we do at Google, and if you look at any given webpage it is almost a model of the mind. There is all of these jumping off points you can jump to this point of that point or Hawaii vacation! You can jump around so easily and in fact the product I work on ‘Google plus’ allows me not only to examine the contents of my own life but all of these people's minds in a flood of information coming at me and I'm wondering if the real reason why you have chosen to come to Google today is because we are actively working against you? ....Laughter....and you have come to help us get over that.
But more seriously, do you think there is a place for technology and how do you make sense of the work that we are doing, and how it impacts people's attention in relation to what you just described, sort of transcending the mind and going to a deeper place?
Ed Schulte 50+
If you're totally in thinking you can't feel that, or you don't feel alive in “the upper story of the house” …your head….. the entire house…. you don't inhabit then.
So you begin to inhabit the entire body.
This becomes party at experience of the present moment.
So sense perception, yes…..and there is an aliveness even to artificial light, of course you might say, “I prefer Sun light.” Ok, me too, but there is a beauty and an aliveness even to artificial light.
And there's a beauty and aliveness that is usually overlooked that is in the texture of this arm chair here, or whatever you're wearing, and certainly the flowers.
And suddenly you become aware of that….and that is not all yet were just going into the present moment!
So you have that …(which is the) externals, and you suddenly appreciate the aliveness of all the things around you!!!
Other people have to take LSD to get there!!! >>>Laughter
Ed Schulte 50+
Before, all you had was simple sensory input in your immediate surroundings, then later came books, so you have the added input of that and then gradually came the mass media and now, this incredible revolution of information technology, computers and so on.
So, it energizes that, movement of thought, that is taking place in every human, which in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, it only becomes a bad thing and self-destructive thing, if that is all you experience inside you, in your consciousness. If all you ever experiences is that, I call it sometimes, “mental noise”, then you…. begin to derive your identity from the thoughts in your head what the thoughts tell you about yourself…. and you are trapped in that identity that is based on identification with thinking. 11:05**
All spiritual teachings point to the possibility of finding something in you that is deeper than thinking. The “space”, the “stillness”, that is always there.
And the information, excessive information, you can only successfully deal with that, if you have a balance in your consciousness, between using your mind to absorb information, to put out new information, to work on the information that you have taken in, input, if you have a balance between that and something that is deeper than thought in you.
Ed Schulte 50+
a "milestone" yes but also a stepping stone.....and a very important shift is involved in it.....a shift away from an identification of something often called "spirituality" to one called just plain and simply called "creativity"
Even....and I should probably better as it as EVEN, Sir Ken Robertson ( of TED affiliation) has had a sit down chat with Eckhart ( a brief clip is available free on the Tolle web site) on the subject of "Creativity" Robertson takes the "passion" approach were as Exkhart suggests "creativity" come in from a ...lets just say...."higher dimention"...and he is obviously VERY right about that.
Yuri Gomez
Google guys approaching to spirituality is a milestone for tech innovators. :l
Ed Schulte 50+
is a very valuable asset to any area of growth in consciousness so I am going to keep posting clips
this from the intro
As we optimize our technology .. we hope can also optimize our lives, so that we can be our best selves
All of this is a lot easier said than done we operate in a hyper connected world, always on and we have got it with great intensity.
The urgent question of the day is how we can take an intelligent approach to our work, and our lives, with all of the demands of our time and attention. Amid this flood of information, how can we discern …”the signal from the noise” . In order to access and act, on what is most essential to each of us?
Eckhart Tolle, takes a refreshingly contemporary approach to the question of what it means to live a meaningful and inspired life. And with great intelligence.
And in so doing, how we can each experience a great sense of clarity, peace and joy of being alive.
Ed Schulte 50+
And the information, excessive information, you can only successfully deal with that, if you have a balance in your consciousness, between using your mind to absorb information, to put out new information, to work on the information that you have taken in, input, if you have a balance between that and something that is deeper than thought in you.
And really, instead of giving you new knowledge here, I don't want to do that, because I don't want to add to the knowledge that you're taking in any way, it is probably far more than you ever need, so instead of giving you more knowledge here, I would like to suggest that you experience it 1st firsthand in yourself, that “place”, of …..I call it sometimes a “presents,” where you are
alert,
conscious,
but not thinking.
And every creative person has some access to that realm, if you have a truly creative insight, you have to go to that ‘place’ that is deeper than analytical thinking.
And analytical thinking itself, or processing information, is not creative. So to even to find a new creative solution to a problem in your life requires some creative insight, if it is a problem in your work situation, or your personal life or something you need to build or do and you come to a dead end, or you want to create something, whatever it is, a work of art, or a new system for the computer, you need to go to the place where creativity arises. And every humans, who is creative, has some access to that inner knowledge, even if they don’t know it.
natasha nikulina 50+
Ed Schulte 50+
Yes this is an truly a significent event having Eckhart speak to an Organization such as the GOOGLE employees in such depth. One can tell by the atmosphere in the room(s) there was a high degree of consciousness flowing there.
Perhaps a sign of more to come.
natasha nikulina 50+
If you ask me, has the tide turned, most certainly I will say : YES !
Eckhart and Google are this change, alongside with God knows how many other changes,
big and small :)
The Tide has Turned !
Ed Schulte 50+
So we're very lucky that Eckardt accepted our invitation and said “yes!” to come and share with us at Google today. He knows our ethos, he knows we have a profound interest in being our best selves and doing meaningful and inspired work. We seek to change the world for the better and he understands that we understand that in order to transform the world we must 1st render the necessary transformation within ourselves.
So, Eckhart is here today to assist and suggest with some ‘things’ for us to consider.
Ed Schulte 50+
I am just going to keep posting sections of the talk here ...feel free to pass on to other sites you prefer
Eckardt; knowledge, information, and wisdom how do they relate?
Of course with the technological revolution, information revolution, the digital revolution whatever you call it, there is a enormous amount of knowledge available to everybody. At almost the whole of the world’s knowledge and then there is the interconnectedness between people and so on, that is all very good of course, to have all that accessible to you, there is a danger that you will be drowned in too much information…
Too much information and too much knowledge…. and by “drowned” I mean that the mind gets bombarded with an excess of input …..and, therefore, you miss something that is essential for a Human life to be truly fulfilled …and that is ….a place of peace, inner peace, or ‘stillness’, a place that one could describe as the ‘source’, of all intelligence, that many people don't actually don’t even realize exists within them.
So I would like to just talk briefly about that, really we are talking about the core of what “spirituality” means.
• Spirituality is not having a particular belief structure….
• It is not about subscribing to a particular set of thoughts,
• Spirituality is discovering the dimension within yourself that is, we can either say ‘deeper’ or ‘higher’, than the continuous movement of thinking.
And of course all is this information and knowledge is experienced in you as thought. So the thinking mind is always active for many thousands of years in humans, but now it is even more active than before, because it gets energized by the incredible increase in input.