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We live in an age of revitalised New Age mumbo jumbo; and these days no one is more jumbo with his mumbo than Eckhart Tolle.

Tolle, whose real first name is Ulrich, was born into a German Catholic family in 1948. He changed his name to Eckhart in a homage to the German spiritual leader Meister Eckhart. He refused all forms of formal education between the ages of 13 and 22, preferring instead to pursue his own creative and philosophical interests. Despite all this, he went to the University of London and is acknowledged by Cambridge University to have matriculated as a postgraduate student there in 1977, when he was 29. At 15, he was given the five books written by the German mystic Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, also known as Bo Yin Ra. He is said to have been heavily influenced by these books; his writing also draws heavily on the New Testament, the Bhagavad Gita and Sufism.

After leaving Cambridge, Tolle went into a steep decline, however. "I was unhappy, depressed and anxious," he said in a rare interview, with the environmentalist website Ecomall.com in 2003. "I was not trying to become enlightened or anything like that. I was looking for some kind of answer to the dilemma of life, but I had been looking to the intellect for the answer; philosophy, religion and intellectual inspiration. The more I was looking on that level, the more unhappy I became."

And then, he says, he had an epiphany. "Suddenly I stepped back from myself, and it seemed to be two of me. The 'I', and this 'self' that I cannot live with. Am I one or am I two? And that triggered me like a koan [a Zen statement that appeals to intuition rather than ration]. It happened to me spontaneously. I looked at that sentence: 'I can't live with myself'. I had no intellectual answer. Who am I? Who is this self that I cannot live with? The answer came on a deeper level. I realised who I was."

He spent the next two years sitting on park benches "in a state of the most intense joy". And then he wrote his first book, The Power of Now. The book, published by Penguin in 1999, sat at the top of the bestseller lists for years.

There is not very much new about The Power of Now – it is Buddhism mixed with mysticism and a few references to Jesus Christ, a sort of New Age re-working of Zen. Its central message is that the root of our emotional problems is our habit of identifying too much with our minds. The past and the future are creations of thought and only the present moment is real and only the present moment matters.

The follow-up to The Power of Now, A New Earth, is an extended riff on the same subject. It aims to "provide a spiritual framework for people to move beyond themselves in order to make this world a better, more spiritually evolved place to live". The encapsulating idea, again, is that by abandoning your ego, you become "Present" in the immortal "Being".

William Bloom is a former professor at the London School of Economics, and one of the UK's most experienced teachers, healers and authors in the field of holistic development. He believes that Tolle's work provides a valuable perspective on Western culture.

"Tolle is offering a very contemporary synthesis of Eastern spiritual teaching, which is normally so clothed in arcane language that it is incomprehensible," says Bloom. "Some people might find him confusing but when he asserts that Descartes' major insight ("I think therefore I am") – one of the foundations of Western thinking – is ostensibly wrong, it's a conceptual challenge to how we think about ourselves. And that has always been the major assertion of Eastern religion: that thinking is not the core of who you are. The core of who you really are is that part of you that can watch yourself thinking – that's very Buddhist, very Eastern, very attuned to the whole field of transpersonal psychology.

"Second, he asks people to exist as best they can in any given moment and to connect with the sensation of the physical body – so instead of just staying in your head thinking, to be aware of what's happening in your feet, your hands, your whole body.

"This is particularly useful in the UK at the moment, because as part of Ofsted's initiative Seal [Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning], teachers are being asked to be very attentive to children's emotions and feelings; the foundation of emotional literacy is being present and to notice what's going on in your body and to feel its subtle sensations as a way of identifying your emotions. Tolle's approach is very body aware. He's done it in a nice accessible way for people.

"The thing that's really good about him," Bloom concludes, "in the midst of all the psychobabble to do with happiness being based on getting what you want, Tolle sounds a clear note stating that happiness comes from a state of consciousness and a connection with being present to the wonder of life. Which is just what's needed."

Tolle's detractors, aside from the Church, dismiss him as New Age rubbish of the worst kind, popular only because he has managed to get the attention of Oprah Winfrey. "Even by the standards of the self-help book industry, Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth is unutterable twaddle," said one newspaper book reviewer. "Oprah Winfrey's golden touch has turned a stinker into a bestseller for Penguin." Another dismissed the book by saying, "Its 313 pages are, frankly, baffling – a mix of pseudo-science, New Age philosophy and teaching borrowed from established religions."

Indeed, it is difficult sometimes to know what sense to make of Tolle's convoluted discursive style. Try this one, for example: "Something suddenly was there that actually had always been there but had been obscured continuously by identification with the heavy mind structure."

Despite this – or perhaps because of it – Tolle does have fans in academic, even Christian, circles. Andrew Ryder, a theologian at All Hallows College, Dublin, wrote in praise of Tolle in The Way, the modern Christian spirituality magazine: "Tolle's writing is based on his own experience and personal reflection. This makes his approach to the challenge of living in the present moment both practical and fresh. While he may not use the language of traditional Christian spirituality, Tolle is very much concerned that, as we make our way through the ordinary events of the day, we keep in touch with the deepest source of our being."

It's easy to see why Tolle's self-help schtick appeals to such ne'er do wells as Paris Hilton; his central advice about living for now and not dwelling on the mistakes of your past appeals to those with a colourful back history. Too many people, he says, defensively hold on to and preserve guilty, hostile feelings from past events and allow these memories to make them anxious and unhappy.

And really, what Tolle is trying to say is: "chill out" – but you can't sell five million copies of that.

Additional reporting by Photini Philippidou

Quote Unquote
Tolle in his own words

The Power of Now
"The pain-body consists of trapped life-energy that has split off from your total energy field and has temporarily become autonomous through the unnatural process of mind identification"

"Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible"

"In the normal, mind-identified or unenlightened state of consciousness, the power and creative potential that lie concealed in the Now are completely obscured by psychological time. You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be"

A New Earth
"Is humanity ready for a transformation of consciousness, an inner flowering so radical and profound that compared to it the flowering of plants, no matter how beautiful, is only a pale reflection? "

"There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness: One With Life. Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realise that you don't live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance"

"If you are not familiar with 'inner body' awareness, close your eyes for a moment and find out if there is life inside your hands. Don't ask your mind. It will say, 'I can't feel anything'"

"Can human beings lose the density of their conditioned mind structures and become like crystals or precious stones, so to speak, transparent to the light of consciousness?"

"You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness"

Labels: Buddhism, Eckhart Tolle, ego, Ether Walker, happiness, Jesus, spirituality

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Monday, March 17, 2008

Oprah, self-help book author connect with millions online

By Jodi Rave
03/16/08

"This book is about you. It will change your state of consciousness, or it will be meaningless." — Eckhart Tolle, author of "A New Earth"

On Monday, I’ll meet with my reading group to discuss Oprah Winfrey’s latest book-club choice, a spiritual self-help guide that led one televangelist to call Winfrey “the most dangerous woman in the world.”

“A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,” is on the New York Time’s bestseller list. Oprah is helping propel the spiritual enlightenment book to dizzying heights, thanks to an unprecedented online promotion that includes a 10-week interactive Webcast discussion with her, the book’s author and an international audience.

“This is the most exciting thing I’ve ever done,” Oprah said in the first discussion.

“I’ve done a lot of things in my life, but I am most proud of the fact that all of you have joined us in this global community to talk about what I believe is one of the most important subjects and — presented by one of the most important books of our time.”

As of Thursday, Oprah.com claimed more than 2 million people in 139 countries had “experienced” one of her New Earth Internet seminars.

The book’s primary focus encourages “a shift in consciousness,” or an awakening by the reader. The Web site encourages readers to discuss “A New Earth” in book clubs. Finding nothing in Missoula, the site allowed me to create one.

Here’s a bit of what we learned from the first Tolle-Oprah discussion:

Oprah: “This is not about trying to tell you how to believe. And how do you advise people to reconcile this with their religious beliefs?”

Tolle: “Well, religion can be an open doorway into spirituality and religion can be a closed door. It prevents you from going deeper. So I love reading the New Testament and I also read the Old Testament. Sometimes there’s some incredible jewels in there.

“There’s a depth to it. And it reflects your own depth when you read it. So there’s no conflict between this teaching, which is purely spiritual, and any religion. The important thing is that religion doesn’t become an ideology. And the moment you say ‘only my belief’ or ‘our belief’ is true, and you deny other people’s beliefs, then you’ve adopted an ideology. And then religion becomes a closed door.”

Oprah: “Well, I am a Christian who believes that there are certainly many more paths to God other than Christianity.”

At that point, the host took a video call from a viewer who asked: “Why is this happening now?” Why were some 700,000 watching a show encouraging an awakening of spiritual consciousness?

Tolle: “It’s happening now because we’re reaching a crisis point. Very essential things don’t happen until there’s an absolute need for them to happen. If you look at the history of the 20th century, that gives you a taste of what it will be if there is no major shift.”

Conservative estimates conclude that more than 100 million humans were killed by other humans in the 20th century, Tolle said. “It’s unbelievable insanity when you look at that history.”

“And so if there’s no shift in consciousness, we will go downhill very quickly, because we’re already in the process of destroying the planet. But there will also be continuous conflict, collective conflict, and eventually then humanity would collapse.”

Oprah: “So you think we’re at a crisis point, no?”

Tolle: “Crisis point, yes.”

Tolle’s message shouldn’t be so startling to anyone who keeps up with the daily news.

Our local reading is gearing up for our Monday discussion of Chapter 3. And I’m looking forward to being part of a conversation with “the most dangerous woman in the world.”

Labels: A New Earth, crisis, Eckhart Tolle, Oprah Winfrey, religion, shift, spirituality