>>audience: Hi.

>>Rich Fernandez : Welcome. I'm Rich Fernandez from the Learning and Development Team here

at Google. So about six months ago we wrote a letter to Eckhart Tolle inviting him to

come here to Google. "Eckhart, dude, come to Google," we said.

[laughter]

Well, something along those lines. We make some of the world's most valued and most used

technology. We aspire to do epic stuff and to make a difference in the world. And yet

even as we create this dazzling technology, we wanna be sure to pay attention to our own

inner technology. We wanna ask ourselves the searching and far ranging questions about

how we're getting on in the world. As we optimize our technology how can we 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 go at it with great pace and 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.

Amidst 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 being,

how we can each experience a great sense of clarity, peace, and the joy of being alive.

So we're very lucky that Eckhart accepted our invitation and said yes to come here today.

He knows our ethos that 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 first render the necessary

transformation within ourselves.

So Eckhart is here today to assist and suggest with some things for us to consider.

Eckhart Tolle has written bestselling books including The Power of Now and A New Earth

and they've sold millions of copies worldwide and have been translated into 33 languages.

He's widely regarded as one of the foremost teachers on the subject of wisdom and conscious

living.

Joining Eckhart in conversation today is our Vice President of Product, Bradley Horowitz.

Now when we proposed to Bradley that he might engage in a dialog with Eckhart as part of

this tech talk he was really excited which makes sense because Bradley's cool like that.

[laughter]

Bradley also helped create Google+, Google Apps, and Google+ which we all love.

So without further ado please join me in welcoming Eckhart Tolle and Bradley Horowitz as they

discuss what it means to live with meaning, purpose, and wisdom in the digital age.

[applause]

>>Eckhart Tolle: Thank you.

[applause]

>>Bradley Horowitz: So on behalf of Google and all the many Googlers here and those tuning

in from our overflow rooms, welcome it's great to have you here. And it's very special to

have you here. I understand that you don't often visit corporations and so this has been

a journey we've taken together over the course of the day.

Eckhart had a moment to meet with some of us earlier and we found that really valuable.

And one of the things we discussed this morning was wisdom and the difference between information

and wisdom. Google has a mission to organize the world's information and I think if you

think about the hierarchy there's signal and data and information and knowledge and at

the very top of the pyramid is wisdom. And I wondered if you could comment a little bit

on what you understand to be the difference between information and wisdom.

>>Eckhart Tolle: Good question. Let's kind of set that aside for just one moment –

>>Bradley Horowitz: Let's do that.

>>Eckhart Tolle: to say how happy I am to be here, how impressed I am by what I have

seen, and by the people who work here, and the general energy field in the company. And

if you have come, the many young people here, if you've come straight from college then

I'm sure you don't know how lucky you are until --

[laughter]

you start working for another company.

[laughter]

>>Bradley Horowitz: [laughs]

>>Eckhart Tolle: Perhaps everybody who works here one would, as they would say in India

"You must have very good Karma to be working here."

openness of people that's reflected in the structure of the company, the way things are

arranged, the little rooms that you have for quietness, for meditation, the cafeterias

and all that is just beyond belief so --

I also experience an openness in the people who work here and far less ego because many

companies are still predominately run by very big egos. I'm not saying that everybody here's

entirely free of ego yet, but --

[laughter]

much less so than in many other places. So it's wonderful to be here and if my book sales

ever decline and I need a job --

[laughter]

I hope you will, you probably won't but --

[laughter]

because first of all I have no computer skills --

[laughter]

and secondly I'm too old --

[laughter]

since the average age here is probably about 30.

So your question was important?

[laughter]

I remember it, I remember it.

>>Bradley Horowitz: I don't. [laughs]

>>Eckhart Tolle: [laughs]

[laughter]

Knowledge, information, and wisdom, how do they relate?

Of course with the technological revolution, information revolution, digital revolution,

whatever you call it there's an enormous amount of knowledge available to everybody. Almost

the whole of the world's knowledge and there's the interconnectedness between people and

so on --

that's all very good of course to have all that accessible to you. There's a danger though

that you get drowned in 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 the place of peace,

inner peace, or stillness; the 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'd like to just talk briefly about that, that really we're talking about the core of

what spirituality means. Spirituality is not having a particular belief structure, is not

subscribing to a particular set of thoughts. Spirituality is discovering, a dimension within

yourself, that is we can either say deeper or higher than the continuous movement of

thinking.

And of course all this information and knowledge is experienced in you as thought. So the thinking

mind has always been active for many thousands of years in humans but now it's even more

active than before because it get energized by the incredible increase in input. Before

all you had was simple, the 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's 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 experience

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.

All spiritual teachings point to the possibility of finding something in you that is deeper

than thinking; a space, a stillness that's always there.

And the informational, excess of 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 anyway, it's far more than you ever need.

So instead of giving you knowledge here I'd like to suggest that you experience at first

hand in yourself that place of, I call it sometimes a presence, 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. Analytic

thinking itself or processing information is not creative. So even to find a creative,

a new solution to a problem in your life requires some creative insight. So whether it's a problem

in your work situation or your personal life or something that you need to build or do

and you have 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, I don't the expressions for that, you need to

go to the place where creativity arises. And every human who brings, who is creative has

some access to that even if they don't know it.

But it's not only the, it's not only the place where creativity arises, it's also the place

that gives sanity to your life to find a place of stillness, peace, aliveness, where you're

not burdened by most, a lot of the time, unnecessary mental noise. So when you do start thinking

again it actually can be more productive.

So where is that place? How do you find that place? If it's there in everyone how do I

realize that within myself? That's really the question.

I can just suggest to you three or four entry points into that state of consciousness and

after I've done that we can carry on the conversation. [laughs]

[laughter]

A very simple entry point, and this is why my first book is called The Power of Now,

is the realization that your entire life consists of the present moment and only the present

moment ever.

Now most people perhaps they in some abstract way they know that but they cannot sense or

feel the truth of that and I'd like to invite you to actually sense and feel the truth of

what I'm saying which not, even if there's a great philosopher here he cannot possibly

argue, he or she cannot argue with this statement that whatever you experience ever is present

moment. Your entire life unfolds in the present moment; that's all you ever have.

Most people don't live as if this were true they don't, they live as if the opposite almost

were true, as if the future moment were more important always than the next one. And that,

that happens because of excessive identification with thinking because usually the thoughts

are about the next thing, the next and the next or what could happen or might happen.

So if you can just come to this realization, "Well, this is all I ever have and ever experienced

is this moment this is undoubtedly true, there is nothing else ever," and at that moment

when you fully realize that you can only realize that an alertness arises in you. "Wow." You

become alert to one could almost call it the presence of the power of this moment, the

power of life itself in this present moment which consists of, yes it consists of sense

perceptions --

it also consists of, well, let's look what is this present moment? This present moment

is this room, what we perceive here visually, what we see, hear, , the lights, the totality

of the room. So let's become alert so that we can really perceive that and be on to that

to which we perceive in this room. Is there anything else about, that we could call the

present moment?

Well, if you look deeply enough, yes, there is also the inner energy field in your body

that you can actually feel, that you're alive in your legs, your arms, your feet. It's also

part of the present moment to sense the energy field that pervades the physical body that's

also something you can feel.

So there's external sense perceptions and there's the feeling the aliveness inside your

body. And if you're totally in thinking you can't feel that at all; you don't feel alive

you're only alive in the upper story of the house, your head. The entire house you don't

inhabit then. [chuckles] So you inhabit, you begin to inhabit the entire body. This becomes

part of your experience of the present moment so sense perceptions yes.

And there is an aliveness even to artificial light 'cause you might say, "I prefer sunlight

okay, me too, but there's a beauty and aliveness even to artificial light. And there's a beauty

and aliveness that is usually overlooked that's in the texture of this chair here or whatever

you're wearing and certainly the flowers.

And suddenly you become aware of that and that's not all yet we're just going into the

present moment. So you have that externals and you suddenly appreciate the aliveness

of all the things that surround you.

Other people have to take acids to get there.

[laughter]

So you don't need that.

[laughter]

You know with acid people sometimes they look at a teapot and they say, "Wow --

[laughter]

oh my God."

[laughter]

But you don't need to do that just be present and then you appreciate the beauty even of

a mass-produced teapot.

[laughter]

If it's handmade and hand painted even nicer, but even a mass-produced teapot has a presence

there, it's there and it's an alive energy field. Every physicist will tell you it's

not a dead teapot, its molecules and atoms in continuous movement.

Everything is vitally alive and you miss that if you're totally trapped in the mental noise

all the time, taking in information. Present moment, sense perceptions. So the inner energy

field of the body and then what else is there to the present moment?

Okay then you have to go become really alert and the next thing that you notice about the

present moment is really the deeper level of the present moment it's not something that

arises in your consciousness as does the table and this room and even the inner energy field

of the body. These are all things, objects that arise in your consciousness but if you

go deeper even into the present moment what you encounter is the most incredible secret

of human life which is you encounter the fact that --

at the bottom of it all you are conscious.

There is the presence that you are without which you couldn't perceive anything; you

couldn't perceive this room and you couldn't feel the body without that consciousness that

you essentially are which Jesus by the way called the light of the world. He said to

his Disciples, "You are the light of the world." And these Disciples were not special people

they were fishermen so certainly He wasn't telling them that they are VIPs.