The Voice in the Head
The 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 rush hour. One time a woman in her early thirties sat opposite me. I had seen her before a few times on that train. Once 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 was 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 when I trusted you and you betrayed my trust . . . “ There as the angry tone in her voice of someone who has been wronged, who needs to defend her position lest she become annihilated.
Eckhart Tolle
from A New Earth; Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
To be continued . . .