A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61)

Eckhart and OPRAH for bringing all this knowledge to the public.
I maintain and work on my NOW in life every day. Thank you, www.imthankful.com

The Author does a good job with his easy read format. This is a book for someone to reflect on over and over again. A good tool for a Therapist to recommend to her clients.

There are many problems with this book. It is repetitive, vague, factually erroneous in a number of places, but most problematic for me utterly unscientific and unsubstantiated.

Eckhart Tolle makes a number of claims about the nature of the universe. Not just moral or ethical claims, or behavioral observations, but statements which describe fundamental aspects of our universe. What does he base these claims on? Other than a few cherry-picked quotes from religious texts (which is hardly compelling evidence) how can he make so many claims about the nature of consciousness, mind, body, cosmology without any support? He must realize that his views in most cases completely contradict the widely accepted scientific worldview.

It strikes me that he took a little here and there from Buddhism, Christianity and New Age philosophy, and just made up the rest.

Here is a short quiz. Do you believe either of the following statements represents our universe, and if so, why?

"So your physical body, which is form, reveals itself as essentially formless when you go deeper into it. It becomes a doorway to inner space. Although inner space has no form, it is intensely alive."

"Form and consciousness are both timeless and coexistent. Consciousness without form reveals itself as a lack of ego, which depends on form to generate the necessary sense of 'I'. Only by letting go of 'I' and hence ego can form be contained, revealing the Essence of consciousness."

One of these quotes belongs to Eckhart Tolle, the other completely fabricated by me. Even if you know which is which, why do you believe his statement (which strikes me as essentially blather) is true, while my statement is not? Without referred to New Earth, how would you defend one statement versus the other?

Or do you simply trust Eckhart because he is a "teacher" or "guru?"

I think this book does have nuggets of wisdom. I agree that living "in the now" makes generally sense, as does not attaching oneself excessively to objects or ideas, to avoiding excessive materialism, etc. But these are all common sense principles, which could have been presented in a short pamphlet without the excessive verbiage.

Eckhart seems to believe, based on a story in New Earth, that after a woman reflected on her problems in his office, negative energy was released which was toxic to such a degree, that it followed him when he ventured into a Chinese restaurant and caused a man in a wheel chair to have a near-violent confrontation with the staff. Why would you accept, without any evidence other than his subjective claims and some Bible citations, this man's view of the universe and reality?

In some ways, I liked this book because it offered a "somewhat" different and simplistic way teaching people about Buddhism. The problem is that true Buddhism is many faceted and Tolle seems to have forgotten or has never known that fact. One of the problems in my opinion, with this book was that the author seemed to ramble on and on and on. He appeared to recant events and insights that didn't really pertain to anything except his belief in his own sense of self worth. The author's life, in my opinion does not illustrate an example of life's lessons learned but instead exemplifies only the fact that his opinion is based on the fact that he is oh, so perfect and oh, so enlightened. I think not!

Let's be honest, Ekhart kinda looks like a little elf. But maybe that's where he gets his magic to bring people together-it certainly worked on Oprah! A New Earth talks a lot about the great teachers Buddha and Jesus and shows how they really had the same mentality. He talks about getting rid of your pain body (a organism that is trying to do you harm from within you- kinda scary!) and how to overcome life's difficulties by living for the Now. I'd say this is a great compliment if you're trying to do something big in your life like get a new job, fix a relationship or start a diet (my favorite- Evolution Diet)! Tolle may be a little elf-like, but he's my favorite little elf :-)

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