THE VOICE IN THE HEAD
(A New
Earth, Eckhart Tolle)
That first glimpse of awareness came to me when I was a first-year
student at the University of London. I would take the tube (subway)
twice a week to go to the university library, usually around nine
o'clock in the morning, toward the end of the rush hour. One time a
woman in her early thirties sat opposite me. I had seen her before
a few times on that train. One could not help but notice her.
Although the train was full, the seats on either side of her were
unoccupied, the reason being, no doubt, that she appeared to be
quite insane. She looked extremely tense and talked to herself
incessantly in a loud and angry voice. She was so absorbed in her
thoughts that she was totally unaware, it seemed, of other people
or her surroundings. Her head was facing downward and slightly to
the left, as if she were addressing someone sitting in the empty
seat next to her. Although I don't remember the precise content,
her monologue went something like this: "And then she said to me...
so I said to her you are a liar how dare you accuse me of... when
you are the one who has always taken advantage of me I trusted
you.... you betrayed my trust..." There was the angry tone in her
voice of someone who has been wronged, who needs to defend her
position lest she become annihilated.
As the train approached Tottenham Court Road Station, she stood up
and walked toward the door with still no break in the stream of
words coming out of her mouth. That was my stop too, so I got off
behind her. At street level, she began to walk toward Bedford
Square, still engaged in her imaginary dialogue, she still angrily
accusing and asserting her position. My curiosity aroused, I
decided to follow her as long as she was walking in the same
general direction I had to go in. Although engrossed in her
imaginary dialogue, she seemed to know where she was going. Soon we
were within sight of the imposing structure of Senate House, a
1930s high-rise, the university's central administrative building
and library. I was shocked. Was it possible that we were going to
the same place? Yes, that's where she was heading. Was she a
teacher, a student, an office worker, a librarian? Maybe she was
some psychologist's research project. I never knew the answer. I
walked twenty steps behind her, and by the time I entered the
building (which ironically was the location of the headquarters of
the "Mind Police" in the film version of George Orwell's novel,
1984), she had already been swallowed up by one of the
elevators.
I was somewhat taken aback by what I had just witnessed. A mature
first-year student at twenty-five, I saw myself as an intellectual
in the making, and I was convinced that all the answers to the
dilemmas of human existence could be found through the intellect,
that is to say, by thinking. I didn't realize yet that thinking
without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence. I looked
upon the professors as sages who had all the answers and upon the
university as the temple of knowledge. How could an insane person
like her be part of this?
I was still thinking about her when I was in the men's room prior
to entering the library. As I was washing my, I thought: I hope I
don’t end up like her. The man next to me looked briefly in my
direction, and I suddenly was shocked when I realized that I hadn't
just thought those words, but mumbled them aloud. "Oh my God, I'm
already like her," I thought. Wasn't my mind as incessantly active
as hers? There were only minor differences between us. The
predominant underlying emotion behind her thinking seemed to be
anger. In my case, it was mostly anxiety. She thought out loud, I
thought-mostly-in my head. If she was mad, then everyone was mad,
including myself. There were differences in degree only.
For a moment, I was able to stand back from my own mind and see it
from a deeper perspective, as it were. There was a brief shift from
thinking to awareness. I was still in the men's room, but alone
now, looking at my face in the mirror. At that moment of detachment
from my mind. I laughed out loud. It may have sounded insane, but
it was the laughter of sanity, the laughter of the big-bellied
Buddha. "Life isn't as serious as my mind makes it out to be."
That's what the laughter seemed to be saying. But it was only a
glimpse, very quickly to be forgotten. I would spend the next three
years in anxiety and depression, completely identified with my
mind. I had to get close to suicide before awareness returned, and
then it was much more than a glimpse. I became free of compulsive
thinking and of the false, mind-made I.
The above incident not only gave me a first glimpse of awareness,
it also planted the first doubt as to the absolute validity of the
human intellect. A few months later, something tragic happened that
made my doubt grow. On a Monday morning, we arrived for a lecture
to be given by a professor whose mind I admired greatly, only to be
told that sadly he had committed suicide sometime during the
weekend by shooting himself. I was stunned. He was a highly
respected teacher and seemed to have all the answers. However, I
could as yet see no alternative to the cultivation of thought. I
didn't realize yet that thinking is only a tiny aspect of the
consciousness that we are, nor did I know anything about the ego,
let alone being able to detect within myself.
Nice article. Thanks for sharing. :)
