Why eckhart tolle is bullshit

With no plans for his future, he grew more depressed until, as he puts it, "I couldn't live with myself any longer. Maybe, I thought, only one of them is real. I was so stunned by this realisation that my mind stopped. I was conscious, but there were no more thoughts. When thinking later resumed, as Tolle tells it, things were different: he no longer identified with the "voice in my head" that was doing the thinking. Instead, he could observe his thoughts, as if from a distance. He could see that they somehow weren't real: that the real him was the consciousness watching the thoughts, not the thoughts themselves.

But a peace that was joyful, and alive, and very alert. The intention of The Power of Now and A New Earth isn't necessarily to trigger a similar sudden transformation in the reader, but to convey a view of human psychology that has deep roots in Buddhism, Hinduism and Sufi Islam. Most of us, Tolle argues, spend most of our lives with a constant "voice in our heads", that judges and interprets reality, and determines our emotional reactions; if you doubt this, it's probably because you're so fully identified with the voice that you can't see the wood for the trees.

There are occasional pauses in the brain-chatter - when gasping in awe at beautiful scenery, doing intense physical exercise, or making love, say - but mostly, we're lost in thought.

We're especially lost in thoughts of the past and the future. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now," Tolle says, chuckling. Tolle's transformative experience, which happened in , didn't lead to instant global stardom: commercialising his insights was apparently the furthest thing from his mind. Instead, he embarked on a doctorate in Latin American literature at Cambridge. But it felt meaningless; he dropped out after a year.

He spent the next two years in London, sleeping on friends' sofas, and spending the days on park benches in Russell Square, or sheltering in the British Library. When money ran out, he took a temp job doing office admin for the Kennel Club. And from a logical point of view, that looked quite correct.

But there were many more years to come of what looked, from the outside, like drifting - including a long spell on the west coast of the United States, where he started to write The Power of Now. It was first published in , with a print run of 3, copies. It would be 10 years and one Oprah endorsement later before Paris Hilton would be spotted carrying a copy on her way to jail.

There are certain contradictions involved in marketing a spiritual message like Tolle's, however valuable the message itself may be. The usual criticism is that it is a superficial mash-up of spiritual platitudes from many familiar sources. This, I think, is quite wrong—although an understandable mistake. A New Earth is not superficial at all. Tolle explains core principles and functions from two major spiritual systems.

He has thought these through and understood them exceptionally thoroughly. The book is dense: every page has at least one significant idea. There is none of the usual self-help filler. I think that it is a good thing, although perhaps it gives the impression that his ideas are light-weight. He goes straight to the heart of the matter, without getting lost in complex concepts.

He explicitly does not teach a system , with all the dogmatic beliefs, jargon, history, and rituals that go with those. People are used to the idea that difficult intellectual theories are the mark of profundity; I think that is quite wrong.

It is also not true that A New Earth is a mash-up of many religious traditions. This mistake can be forgiven, because Tolle goes out of his way to make it seem as though it is.

For example, he quotes the New Testament once every couple of pages. That is, I think, a deliberate misdirection. I can find no meaningful influence of Christianity in the book. One is Buddhism, which is dominant, and which Tolle often explains magnificently. It will follow you and come out sooner or later, or can result in a wound psychologically.

I think that this could be an old psychological trick to implant the authors message inside you. It breaks down barriers of skepticism for many people, even some skeptics. I thought it was strange that he would claim to know little in the world of knowledge, but quote all of these authors works at will. He is widely read and was a scholar in the UK when he was young. I followed Eckhart for a number of years. I am 32 now, and no longer obsess over New Age authors like Eckhart.

They are easily manipulated. Even books on the New York Times bestseller list can be of poor quality. Just be wary! This can start the recovery process to become more balanced in our thinking. Posted by: shamrock. She characterizes him from her point of view as: Quote Wanderer77 An extremely, and I want to say, dangerously isolated individual, who has become worse, far worse since his fame.

Hi Everyone, I read one of Tolle's books years ago - but I can't remember which one it was. I thought it was quite interesting, but right towards the end of the book, I was left asking myself "What is the practical application for all this stuff? There was a question and answer section at the end of the book and I couldn't follow Tolle's line of reasoning - it seemed confusing to me. Why the confusion? I don't mean to brag or anything, but I'm an intelligent girl. If someone's reasoning seems wonky, I always notice it.

I could not see how you could possibly 'live in the moment' all day long in every situation and still get things done? Especially if you have a very demanding job? Even mundane jobs require some forward planning. A friend of mine once tried to 'live in the now' for a period of several weeks and everyone quickly became frustrated with her because nothing was done and everyone else had to pick up the slack and it was as annoying as hell.

I suppose Tolle would say "let other people become annoyed, that is not your concern". But then what if your marriage falls apart and your friends disown you and you have no job as a result of living in the moment? What if the baby isn't fed all day, and so the authorities come and take it away? I guess someone like Tolle would then say that you are in a more 'spiritual' place - living like a beggar on the street or in a homeless shelter?

And yet we see him living in a secluded mansion and raking in millions? He is implying that his teaching is going to deliver an extraordinary life! I call bullshit on his teaching! Luckily for Tolle, a new batch of unsuspecting devotees comes along frequently - all those who are left homeless and destitute can no longer afford to buy his books, but it doesn't matter, because new people come along to replace them.

Greedy Old Tolle is happy - we don't need to worry about him! That's a great example of the confusion Tolle sows with his anti-scientific approach. Telling people that they can achieve peace of mind by trying to be in the present moment is like telling someone that they can achieve REM-sleep by closing their eyes and moving them rapidly. If you want to experience the present moment more consciously, it's better to look at what the problem factually is and what methods actually demonstrably work to solve that problem.

However, the default mode of humans appears to be that of mind-wandering, which correlates with unhappiness, and with activation in a network of brain areas associated with self-referential processing. Quote While brain default mode network DMN activation in human subjects has been associated with mind wandering, meditation practice has been found to suppress it and to increase psychological well-being.

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 , sat at the top of the bestseller lists for years. 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. 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. 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.

Tolle's approach is very body aware. He's done it in a nice accessible way for people. Which is just what's needed. Tolle's fans regard him as a sort of other-worldly sage; he is often described as "mystical" and "elfin-like"; his blondish hair is always parted on the far left of his head and he sports a beard, but no moustache.

He tends to wear corduroy trousers, waistcoats and shirts buttoned to the top, without a tie. Tolle has his own fan site at inner-growth.