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| A New Earth is Eckhardt Tolle's first full-length book since 1999's landmark, The Power of Now. That isnt surprising since The Power of Now pretty much said it all; and it has continued to reach and sustain people through repeated readings and through follow-up releases that refine and embellish its themes (e.g. Even the Sun Must Die, Practicing the Power of Now, and Stillness Speaks). In truth, the same themes are again examined in A New Earth, the first two thirds of which serve as a cumulative compendium of the wisdom Tolle has so eloquently offered to date. These lay the foundation for the final third of the book, which deepens the discussion into practical and cosmological relevance for these quickening times and the evolutionary shifts he affirms are inevitably underway. "You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are," states Tolle in The Power of Now. The focus of A New Earth is to clarify that purpose and how it plays out in the universal as well as individual realms all inextricably intertwined. "Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary," Tolle states in one of the final chapters. "Your inner purpose is to awaken. You share that with every other person on the planet. Your outer purpose can change over time [and] varies greatly from person to person. Finding and living in alignment with the inner purpose is the foundation for fulfilling your outer purpose." The purpose of A New Earth is to support the universal purpose by supporting each individual in realizing his purpose (which thus supports every other individual in his own realization). It is about aligning consciously with the common interest of all. There are numerous beautiful, eloquent passages and metaphors in the unfolding of A New Earth. The expanded discussion of the gifts, traps and manifestations of the Pain Body is particularly astute. Along the way, Tolle reminds us how just recognizing who we are not is key to realizing who we are. He illustrates how even tangible, solid things are perceived through thought filters, so that everything is actually thought and how thought itself is of world of form. He explains how who we are arises from, and is, the "nothingness" around this and including it. He infuses familiar contemplative tools with grounding insight for instance, "This too shall pass" must be applied not only to negative experience but equally to all that can be perceived. Although much may be a review for some readers, and even though the mind may throw up "I know's" and push to skip ahead. Drink deep. The sections within the chapters are relatively brief, deliberately designed for digestive pauses in between. This itself demonstrates keen understanding of the human mind and how to compassionately employ it to best advantage in the game of Awakening in which it plays double agent. Every paragraph holds great gifts and prepares us for the final chapters in which this readers found the greatest rewards. The familiarity (for some readers) of the book's themes and assertions makes it no less valuable. The clarity, assurance, precision and sagacity with which Tolle communicates awakens the same spacious lucidity and knowing within the reader. Listening to this illumined voice, we recognize the flame of this Truth dancing in every cell and space of our being. As we read, these flames merge and feed each other. It's rather like the inspiring and replenishing effect of passing an evening by the fire in the quiet, safe company of a wise friend. Such is the steady companionship of the true Self. Michou Landon
NOW OR NEVER "You are not just a meaningless fragment in an alien universe, briefly suspended between life and death, allowed a few short-lived pleasures followed by pain and ultimate annihilation. Underneath your outer form, you are connected with something so vast, so immeasurable and sacred, that it cannot be spoken of - yet I am speaking of it now. I am speaking of it now not to give you something to believe in but to show you how you can know it for yourself." And that is just what Eckhart Tolle does in his book THE POWER OF NOW. This is not just another candy-ass elementary level celestine prophetic conversation supposedly-with-God clone. It is fresh, revealing, current, new inspiration. This book is written from a depth of a person who has considered suicide, gone through his dark night of the soul and has come out the other side into his very personal and ecstatic enlightenment. " I don't call it finding God, because how can you find that which was never lost, the very life that you are? God-realization is the most natural thing there is. The amazing and incomprehensible fact is not that you can become conscious of God but that you are not conscious of God." Out of the many spiritual books that cross my desk this one stands out from the flock. Eckhart Tolle has discovered an inner vein and explored its magnificence through his own personal experience. This is a sincere seeker's self-realization explained in clear, unfolding words. "To be conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from the mind. This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual journey." You don't have to be superman nor superwoman to become aware. " When you become conscious of Being, what is really happening is that Being becomes conscious of itself - that's presence." Tolle tells it like it is, "For most people, presence is experienced either never at all or only accidentally and briefly on rare occasions without being recognized for what it is. Most humans alternate not between consciousness and unconsciousness but between different levels of unconsciousness." This book identifies the human situation precisely and then goes on to clarify how we can realize to a more loving, illuminated truer self. His chapter Mind Strategies for Avoiding the Now documents the spectrum from our core delusions, to freedom and inner purpose. His insightful writing holds no punches. "If they do not free themselves from their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it. They will experience confusion, conflict, violence, illness, despair, madness. Egoic mind has become like a sinking ship. If you don't get off you will go down with it. The collective egoic mind is the most dangerously insane and destructive entity to inhabit this planet. What do you think will happen on this planet if human consciousness remains unchanged?" If you are considering getting back in touch with your soul this book is a great companion. Review
by: Joseph Roberts, Publisher & Senior. Editor,
If I were allotted only one book, I would choose Eckhart Tolle's THE POWER OF NOW: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. Because this book emanates a spirit of love, not only through its words, but in the spaces between the words. No book has touched me, nor embraced me as this one has. Perhaps it was its rhythm - the moving back and forth from simple to complex, from question to answer, from form to spirit, from dysfunction to divinity - which I found so comforting. Perhaps it was the author's authenticity as he spoke the unspeakable - of homosexuality, menses, patriarchy, and rape - which opened my consciousness. This book is for all of us sleepwalking travelers in time - philosophers or kings, young women or terminally ill, gays or feminists, religiously inclined or scientifically motivated - who are willing to take the pilgrimage to wakefulness, from worry to peace, from unhappiness to joy. Tolle provokes us through an uneasy questioning that rocks us back and forth, between discomfort and solace, as he pokes at our handed-down unexamined beliefs then soothes with an offering of truth. Eckhart begins by introducing us to his story - a story of early despair. For a moment, we are touched by compassion as we release from our belief in separation and connect in our shared mortality. In chapter one we learn of enlightenment and its greatest obstacle - us. Next Tolle awakens us to our role as the creator of our pain, of our attachment to pain, and our identification with pain. In the third chapter we find we can create a pain-free identity by living in the present. Tolle flips us back and forth 'time and time again' between the past and the future, between pain and pleasure, between unhappiness and happiness. As we experience the futility of duality and the emptiness of living in the past or future we access the fullness of living in the Power of Now. In chapter four we plummet from the fantasy of living consciously in the Now to the reality of being lost in unconscious living. Eckhart then raises us in the next chapter to the glory of "waiting," to the sacredness of stillness, to the purity of consciousness, and finally - to the reality of our divinity. In
chapter six we shift from the mind to the inner body only to discover
that all feeling and emotion are produced from thought. When
we understand we are greater than thought, we are free - we are
free to access our self behind the thought. We are the unmanifest
and when we tap into our source we may consciously create our own
destiny. A complex portal to consciousness is presented in chapter eight - relationships. We are guided and supported in our passage from unconscious romantic love to the wonder of a conscious love where opposites do not reside. In chapter nine we learn to 'give up' negativity, judgment, drama and our belief in impermanence. As we learn to forgive the past, the present, and ourselves, fear evaporates and a new reality crystallizes - a reality founded on love. Our compassion transforms. Our belief of a shared mortality becomes a knowing of shared divinity. In the final chapter, chapter ten, we finally 'let go' of our attachment to pain and we surrender to what is - our pure radiance - as we 'take up' the Power of Now. Review by: Patricia Gordon, M.A. Calgary, Alberta
An initial reluctance to read yet another book on enlightenment was soon replaced by interest and respect as I read on into THE POWER OF NOW. Eckhart Tolle had an experience of near suicidal misery in his thirtieth year, after a life of "almost continual anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression." He experienced a repetitive thought: "I cannot live with myself any longer." And then - "if I cannot live with me, there must be two of me, the 'I' and the 'self' that I cannot live with." After a moment of intense fear, he describes that he fell into a void and emerged in a radically different state. He tells that the light that came into the room seemed to carry the luminosity of love, beauty and aliveness. He lived for five months in a state of bliss, and then for almost two years with no relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity. He spent most of that time sitting on park benches "in a state of the most intense joy." He is now a teacher in Europe and North America. He dedicates his book to "spiritual pioneers: people who are reaching a point where they become capable of breaking out of inherited collective mind-patterns..." The book originated as answers to questions. He uses the interesting device of a pause symbol after certain passages, with the suggestion that the reader stops at that point and becomes still, digesting the text. One of the most useful concepts he uses is that of the "pain-body". He suggests that the pain-body is a residue of pain from the past and pain that lives on in the present. He describes the accumulated pain as a negative energy field that occupies body and mind. "If you look on it as an invisible entity in its own right, you are getting quite close to the truth." He describes the pain-body as the dark shadow cast by the ego, that is afraid of the light of consciousness, and that its survival depends upon our unconscious identification with it as well as the unconscious fear of facing the pain that lives in us. "The pain-body doesn't want you to observe it directly and see it for what it is. The moment you observe it, feel its energy field within you and take your attention into it, the identification is broken. A higher dimension of consciousness has come in." Self-inquiry is implicit in Tolle's approach. He also gives attention to the psychological, physical and energetic dimensions of the ego's identification with the pain-body, describing graphically just how this state manages to live on in us, in spite of spiritual practice. As a tai chi and qi gong practitioner, and as one who discovers that these practices support Self-inquiry, I was delighted to read the chapter called Portals into the Unmanifested, where he talked about chi (energy) as the "energy field of your body, the bridge between the outer you and the Source." Here are the last two questions of the book: How do I get to that point of realization? When you surrender to what IS and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. You do not need it any more. Presence is the key. The NOW is the key. How will I know when I have surrendered? When you no longer need to ask the question. From Self-Inquiry, 1999 Ramana Maharishi Foundation
There is a great yearning among aspirants today to learn to live more fully in the present. THE POWER OF NOW - a beautifully expressed, succinct spiritual volume - addresses this theme with a depth and originality of thought that cannot fail to touch the soul of the serious seeker. He ( Eckhart Tolle) is uniquely qualified to guide us on this inner sojourn to discover Being for, unlike most , his knowledge is not gleaned from books and exemplars but from the crucible of first-hand, inner experience. Other sources are drawn upon, such as the sayings of Jesus, Buddha, Zen Buddhism, and The Course of Miracles, but they are used to enhance the light of his own knowing. And the style of language, without being simplistic, is both warm and remarkably free from complex terms, making it readily appealing to aspirants of varying backgrounds and spiritual persuasions. The overall effect is one of a quiet compassion and wisdom which homes in on the very soul of the reader. We are reminded that "Enlightenment" is not only "the end of suffering " (as Buddha once said), but also the end of slavery to continuous thinking. Contrary to what most believe in the Western world, the mind is not the epitome of existence: it is only a stage in the evolutionary process, only "a small aspect of consciousness," for Cosmos goes beyond thought and does not need thought - as we experience it - to exist. Thus, it is the author's conviction that freeing oneself from the ever-demanding lesser mind is an essential step for experiencing enlightenment and our true Being. An
especially helpful section for these troubled times is the chapter
on Enlightened Relationships. The author presents the extraordinary
opinion that all relationships are "deeply flawed and ultimately
dysfunctional" unless based on "spiritual practice" and
on the understanding that wholeness, and the end to duality, which
most of are seeking unconsciously, cannot be found outside ourselves. Pathways Vol. 13, No. 1, 1999 - The Theosophical Society
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