I'm considering reading this book and was wondering whether anyone from JWD has already read it and would like to share their thoughts on it. Being ever-the-skeptic, I'm intrigued by a philosophy that appears to embrace reality and the here-and-now, but I'm wary of the New-Age-y-sounding-ness of it as well. What do "believers" think of the book? Have any fellow non-theists read it and want to share their opinions?
Here's a brief synopsis from Eckhart Tolle's website promoting the book (naturally, he wants us to buy it and read it)
"The One Thing”
by Eckhart Tolle
In the Gospel story of Mary and Martha, Jesus says to Martha, “You are anxious and troubled about many things, but only one thing is needful.” (Luke 10:41)
As I was writing A New Earth, people would sometimes ask me, “What is the new book about?” And invariably, my answer would be, “I only ever write or speak about one thing.” What is that one thing? Spiritual awakening. Can a person be awakened spiritually by a book? Yes, if three conditions are met:
Firstly, there must be a readiness on the part of the reader, an openness, a receptivity to spiritual truth, which is to say, a readiness to awaken. For the first time in history of humanity, large numbers of people have reached that point of readiness, which explains why millions have responded so deeply to The Power of Now.
Secondly, the text must have transformative power. This means the words must have come out of the awakened consciousness rather than the accumulated knowledge of a person’s mind. Only then will a text be charged with that power, a power that goes far beyond the informational value of the words. That is why such a book can be read again and again and lose none of its aliveness.
Thirdly, the terminology used needs to be as neutral as possible so that it transcends the confines of any one culture, religion, or spiritual tradition. Only then will it be accessible to a broad range of readers world-wide, regardless of cultural background.
All these conditions were met in The Power of Now, which is why the book has had such an impact on the collective consciousness.
Why write another book?
Since the publication of The Power of Now, I have given hundreds of talks and teaching sessions all over the world, and in the course of those seven years, the teaching evolved. While the essence remained the same (The Truth is timeless.), new perspectives arose, new signposts, alternative approaches to the Truth, as well as an added sense of urgency. A New Earth reflects this evolution and this urgency.
If The Power of Now worked for you and changed your life – as it did for countless people all over the world – there is no need for you to read A New Earth (although you may enjoy reading it and may find some of it helpful in recognizing the ego and thus sustaining the state of Presence).
My feeling is that A New Earth will make the teaching (the one thing) accessible to an even wider audience, including people who perhaps would not have dreamt of reading a “spiritual” book but have within them a hitherto unrecognized longing for spiritual awakening.
A New Earth will also be extremely helpful for those who read The Power of Now, found it interesting, but somehow missed the essence of it. It presents them with new perspectives on the same truth, new signposts, pointers towards Presence. Different pointers work for different people.
Millions are now ready to awaken because spiritual awakening is not an option anymore, but a necessity if humanity and the planet are to survive. Everything is speeding up – the madness, the collective egoic dysfunction, as well as the arising of the new consciousness, the awakening.
We are running out of time. From the perspective of the ego, that’s bad news and will give rise to fear. From a higher perspective, the running out of time is exactly what is needed for the new consciousness to come into this world.
Here is an excerpt from a review of Tolle's previous book The Power of Now:
Using a question and answer format throughout the book, Tolle weaves his words together like a carefully constructed net designed to catch and constrain all the objections of the mind and ego to the freedom of being he is pointing to. His basic message is simple: disconnect from the thinking mind, shift your attention from "mind to Being, from time to Presence." Indeed, time is the enemy in Tolle's teaching, and the mind is the enemy's tool. We must reject them both, abandoning our psychological attachment to the past and future, realizing that a mind-identified condition is "a form of insanity." "Be so utterly, so completely present," Tolle tells us, "that no problem, no suffering, nothing that is not who you are in your essence, can survive in you. In the Now, in the absence of time, all your problems dissolve. Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in the Now." While he never strays far from this basic point, Tolle parlays his message into a wide-ranging discussion of such diverse spiritual topics as freedom from thoughts and emotions; the student/ teacher relationship; death and dying; the human ego; our physical body, sexual relationships, and gender issues; and even the design of human evolution. And through it all, the "power of Now" serves as a sort of universal "portal" that can always take us (or bring us back) into a state of presence, providing access to the "unmanifested dimension of life," and freeing us from anything and everything that would interfere.
The more I read of The Power of Now, the more I was convinced that in Eckhart Tolle's teachings we had stumbled upon a genuine and profound expression of the nondual realization, a rare pearl in the shallow tidepools of new millennium spirituality. Indeed, in a time when the teachings of Advaita Vedanta—the ancient Hindu doctrine of nonduality expressed exquisitely in the last century by Ramana Maharshi and others—are being used by Western seekers as a quick and easy passport to a dubious, if not downright nihilistic, "enlightenment," Tolle's book shines with authenticity, a welcome addition to a spiritual climate grown rife with reductionism. Thankfully, he refuses to use the subtle and profound teachings of nonduality to whitewash the darker sides of human nature or pretend that the human ego is simply an illusion that we need not concern ourselves with. Instead, his call to awakening contains within it an honest appraisal of the reality of the human condition. Referring to the "collective egoic mind" as the most "dangerously insane and destructive entity ever to inhabit this planet," he speaks at great length about the negative and inevitable consequences inflicted on both ourselves and others when we are unable or unwilling to surrender ourselves to the liberating power of "the Now."
Yet, as impressive and refreshing as the book is, Tolle's presentation of the spiritual life is not without its disconcerting moments, and some of his conclusions are worth a second look. Are we really in the middle of a "profound transformation that is taking place in the collective consciousness of the planet and beyond," even as our "social, political, and economic structures . . . enter the final stage of collapse"? Are women really "closer to enlightenment" than men, and is their monthly menstrual cycle poised to become the powerful catalyst for their widespread awakening? Does greater consciousness actually lead to a "significant slowing down of the aging of the physical body"? Whatever the ultimate veracity of these and other unusual declarations, their inclusion in the book only served to raise further questions, rather than illuminating or clarifying the territory of enlightenment.
But perhaps the most important issue to examine with a finer eye is the very nature of the nondual teaching itself, because in the final analysis, Tolle is a nondualist through and through. The essential point, expressed beautifully over and over again in the book, is to always, no matter what the circumstance, return to the Now, return to being, return to that mystery where there never has been and never could be any problem whatsoever. And while Tolle goes to great lengths to acknowledge and address the mental, emotional, and psychological issues that we must confront in doing so, the practices and methods he suggests are, in essence, all derivatives of this one fundamental movement, this one absolute inner shift from doing to being, from time to the Now, from duality to nonduality. "Direct your attention inward," he says, "If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within, secondary reality without." Whether in the nondual tradition of Advaita, the Dzog-chen teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, various schools of Zen, or even some of Jesus' teachings (which Tolle often quotes in his book), this nondual approach has been a fundamental part of the spiritual landscape for millennia. Yet, it is an approach that has also endured much criticism over the years for its perceived failure to present a truly complete and integral path to awakening. One of history's most ardent and articulate critics of this view was the Chinese Ch'an Buddhist Master Tsung-mi (780-841), who spoke out in his own time against what he saw as the dangers inherent in any teaching that did not place importance on the need for "gradual cultivation." He felt strongly that those spiritual teachings, like The Power of Now, that emphasize a fundamental, inner shift of awareness, must be balanced by a cultivation of the dynamic and active aspects of our nature—the positive transformation, in other words, of our motivations, our actions, and our capacity to discriminate between what is wholesome and what is unwholesome in the world of time and space. While he would no doubt have agreed with Tollethat nondual insight, what he called "sudden awakening," must be the foundation of any genuine path, Tsung-mi calls to mind contemporary critics of the nondual approach when he claims, (as summarized here by Buddhist scholar Robert Buswell) that "for full realization to occur . . . the symbiotic relationship between sudden awakening and gradual cultivation must be recognized" so that "each aspect supports the development of the other. The sudden awakening at the beginning of the student's practice assures a proper attitude toward cultivation," while "gradual cultivation ensures that the awakening is kept dynamic. Through cultivation, awakening is applied in ordinary life, protecting the student from indifference to the sufferings of others and the compulsion to seek quietude and isolation which often characterizes ascetic hermits."
Interestingly enough, the application of awakening in "ordinary life" was one of the most oft-repeated themes at the Inner Directions conference last spring. Speakers and participants alike seemed to be struggling with the question of how to live our deepest realizations of enlightenment, the very issue that prompted Tsung-mi to make such bold criticisms of the "sudden awakening" schools of Chinese Buddhism 1,200 years ago. The Power of Now injects into this perennial discussion a practical and accessible nondual teaching of enlightenment whose burgeoning popularity will hopefully inspire not only appreciation for the rare wisdom it contains but also deeper thought about these very important issues. Whatever the case, with Eckhart Tolle's growing presence on bestseller shelves usually reserved for much lighter-weight fare, it will be interesting to see what time has in store for this unusual modern mystic.