This Month's Guest Article:  

Reflections On Eckhart Tolle's Concept Of The Pain-Body

by Saleem Rana

First, there is the field of complete consciousness. This then expresses itself in an organic form.  From here it loses itself in organizing the physical environment around it.
It begins to split into mind, and mind then splits into ego, and ego then believes itself the origin of consciousness.

As ego, arising from thoughts of limitations, fractures itself against obstacles, it develops what Eckhart Tolle calls the pain-body. The pain-body then becomes an unconscious entity within. It seeks to feed on pain to survive. It makes a person feel pain and it causes this person to inflict pain on others. After the pain-body strikes out, it tends to propagate. Soon armies are formed and war propagated. Mind itself now works in service to the pain-body.

The past two world wars are an expression of the pain-body in complete domination.
Release from the pain-body comes from observing the mind; observing how it takes a feeling, becomes identified completely with it, and thinks and acts out that feeling.
This witnessing is separation from the pain-body, disidentifying from it. When this happens, the light of awareness begins to dissolve the pain. One sees this shadow entity for what it is, an accumulation of past hurts, an expression of renegade life-force particles.

Witnessing is recognizing the self to be other than egoic mental and emotional turbulence. It is a return to recognition of the awareness that propagates thinking, which is a small part of consciousness.

Witnessing is placing the conscious in the moment and observing it express itself through mentation.

Recognizing oneself as the author of mind and not the outcome of mind removes the automation that goes along with a belief in determinism, which in turn arises because of the belief that mind arises out of matter.

This is the movement referred to as spirituality, and it is a movement toward wholeness.
Spirituality itself can be confusing because of the elaborate expressions on what it is; but, in its essence, it is an attempt to return to wholeness.

Wholeness, it will be discovered, can't be fragmented. Wholeness is a return to identification with the origin of creation; a return to contemplation of the field of consciousness itself; a return to what is referred to as God, Beingness, or Spirit.

Our journey in life is a journey toward freedom, identifying with what it real, which arises from pure subjectivity, the implicate order. Our entrapment in the explicate order is by virtue of unconsciousness about the pain-body.

About the Author
Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago and now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have inspired over ten thousand people from around the world. Discover how to create a remarkable life  Copyright 2005 Saleem Rana.

Who Is  Eckhart Tolle?

Tolle was born Ulrich Tolle in Germany. He lived with his father in Spain from about the age of 13 (around 1961) until he moved to England in his early 20s (around 1970).

Tolle did not attend formal schooling after the age of 13, but rather took language and other courses. He attended night school to fulfill the entrance requirements to attend university in England.

He was educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge.

At the age of 29, Tolle experienced what he considered a spiritual transformation that marked the beginning of his function as a counselor and spiritual teacher.[1]

Since 1996 Tolle has lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Teachings

Tolle claims to have had a radical spiritual awakening at the age of 29 after suffering long periods of depression. His non-fiction bestseller "The Power of Now" emphasizes the importance of being aware of the present moment as a way of not being lost in thought.

In his view, the present is the gateway to a heightened sense of peace. He states that "being in the now" brings about an awareness that is beyond the mind, an awareness which helps in transcending "the pain-body" that is created by the identification of the mind and ego with the body.

His later book "A New Earth" further explores the structure of the human ego and how this acts to distract people from their present experience of the world.

 He also wrote "Stillness Speaks" and "Practicing the Power of Now".

What Is your View On Eckhart Tolle and His Teachings?