Forum: Book Reviews

I recently had the opportunity to listen to The Power of Now, read unabridged by the author, Eckhart Tolle. The occasion came about because a psychiatric partial hospitalization program I am the medical director and attending psychiatrist for began recommending this book to the patients there (or at least one of the therapists did, anyway). Normally I might avoid literature with this kind of popular appeal, but I felt compelled to read it, as I was indirectly endorsing it, and also because the patients reported some benefit from reading it. As it turns out, there are some useful things in this book in terms of relieving emotional suffering, and expresses concepts that I've found difficult to express in a therapeutic context. Tolle makes __ main points: 1 One is not one's "mind" (the internal monologue or movie). 2. The mind is dependent on "psychological time" (sense of a "hard" past present and future) 3. The mind creates an illusion of separation that is seen through when one dis-identifies with it. 4. The mind can be transcended through non-judgmental observation and consciously present awareness - this amounts to a sort of constant mindfulness meditation on both one's present sensory experiences, mental activity, and "inner" body.

The book is short on practical techniques, maps of insight progress, and seems to draw some metaphysical conclusions regarding the ultimate state, which are open to debate. I think this book would be a disappointment to most hardcore meditators given this and the lack of rigorous style. Nevertheless, the ideas in this book might still benefit seekers by complementing their chosen practice. If I recall, Buddha was said to have practiced a kind of constant mindfulness in addition to meditation after giving up asceticism - perhaps these suggestions are a necessary component of any practice.

I also recently encountered Tolle. I should say I recently overcame my holier than thou attitude sufficiently to give the man an opportunity to speak. I'm reading his New Earth after watching him online on Oprah's soul series. If you can wait mindfully through the first five or so minutes of Oprah's monologue the 3 video series gives a good overview of Tolle's approach. That's here:

http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahradio/oss/ss_oaf_tolle

Tolle apparently has a Zen Buddhist background, somewhere. Tolle, like a few others, believes in a fairly immediate evolutionary change in humanity leading to or precipitated by widespread awakening, I am not sure which. I don't know if Tolle's lack of specifics regarding practice leading to enlightenment is due to his wish to be popular (he is astonishingly popular) or because of his direct path approach (one that kinda reminds me of Genpo Roshi's Big Mind technique).

Two things astonished me. The first was that in my naivete I assumed everyone had some understanding that they were not their thought stream. The second was, given this popular dedication for the interior monologue as the definition of personal identity, that anyone who refutes this as delusion this could be as popular a figure as Tolle obviously is.

- Mark

It reminded me of the Advaita or Vendanta non-dualism stuff a little, such as the book "Awakening to the Natural State" - the "always already are" kind of thing that you just have to notice.

The approach seems both deceptively simple and "easy," but if you actually attempt to stay fully engaged with your present experience at all times, it's actually not all that "easy." It strikes me that Vipassana is a specialized approach to this same task, and also that while one is fully engaged with present experience, the Three Characteristics are fully evident. It's certainly not a new technique - you versions of it in Buddhism with mindfullness, Taoism, and also Gurdjieff's "self-remembering" to list just a few examples.

One of the more intriguing ideas is his instruction to focus on the "inner body" or internal experience of one's own body as a gateway to "The Unmanifest" - I don't remember seeing anything similar in other traditions unless it's Qi Gong. It's also unclear whether by the Unmanifest if he's referencing the formless realms, or The Void, or emptiness. I'm guessing it's the former.

I see the downside of having no maps is that there is no good advice on how to manage whatever stage you find yourself in; the upside is that it keeps one focused on what one is currently assimilating.

I recently heard a critique of Tolle by Christopher Titmuss. Titmuss believes "now" is being over-emphasized by folks like Tolle, who appear to take one piece of dharma and give it special preeminence it over all the other pieces. I'll try to find a link to the article.

Presumably you may mean this: http://www.dharmafacilitators.org/index.php/welcome/eng/now

I certainly don't want to be put in a position of defending Tolle but my basic sense of this criticism by Titmuss is that he is irked by the popularity and marketability of Tolle - the commercial aspect of his message. Titmuss seems to be making a straw man argument to me and is either deliberately misrepresenting Tolle's position or has misunderstood it. Titmuss admits his own books have advocated the importance of being present in the here and now going on to say, "When grounded in the now, we experience a sense of well being, harmony of body and mind, a fading away of involvement in the past and future, a strong sense of mindfulness and presence, and an absence of discursive thinking. There is immense value in establishing oneself in the present moment. A practice of mindfulness of being here and now contributes significantly to clarity, peace of mind and insights." His arguments seem to be directed at those who take this to an extreme position. I'm not entirely sure what his points are regarding the "mind being able to touch all three fields of time." My view is that the past and future exist as aspects of the present - but never independently (the opposite of what Titmuss seems to be saying). Nor does Tolle advocate the complete cessation of thought - only the ability to turn it off when it is not needed.
My attitude is that Tolle is directing his words towards the spiritual naive, the beginners, and I'm quite thankful that he has been successful and popular - those people might just as easily be spending their money on pop culture

After reading the "strange internet advertisment" posted on another thread - http://myilp.com/ I'm ready to take it all back and agree with Titmuss! Still - listening to Tolle, he really doesn't convey that same sense of commercial focus, or desire to exploit that you see in the advertisement (which he doesn't seem to be involved in - it's other people exploiting his popularity).

All I'm really saying is that relative to my expectations, Tolle isn't all that bad. If someone gives you a free audiotape, and you are going on a road trip, listening to "The Power of Now" is not a total waste of time. That's all.

Author: ccasey

Thank you for posting the link to the Christopher Titmuss article. This article speaks well to wisdom that had been arising for me around the "Now" movement.

I agree that Tolle's books are helpful in a certain way, and I also agree that they are at a rudimentary level. The new marketing ploys developed by advertising companies are very misleading and give me a sick feeling.

I read a library copy of Power of Now, and bought The New Earth, and found them easy to read, but frustratingly unhelpful. In the New Earth, I appreciated him talking about pain, but there is no "pain body" this is just giving people more delusions. There is much more I could say, but Christopher highlights it well in his article already. Thank you.

Haquan, Titmuss' critique of Tolle (he never actually refered to Tolle by name in the version I read) is that Tolle emphasizes "here and now" beyond it's actual dharmic importance. Titmuss said that while it is indeed important to be mindful and present (in the now) it is not, by any means, weighted more heavily than other important aspects of the dharma. He does not like the western notion that living only in the "here and now" is just about all there is to awakening or enriching your life. It's clear to me that Titmuss approaches the topic with a lot of knowledge and insight. He doesn't criticize the "Nowists" (my term) because he supposedly resents the commerciality of the message coming from people like Tolle. But that's just my take on the thing.

BTW for ccasey, I thought after reading "The Pwer of Now" myself that what Tolle meant by "pain body" was the ego.

Maybe so. <shrugs> Again, my initial take was that was "his mind talking," given the dialectical tone - perhaps it is an assumption to believe all that is directed at Tolle though it is a bit synchronous, so to speak. Perhaps I was a bit unfair - I just thought that Tolle probably would not have taken some of the positions that Titmuss argued against - clearly though, if he did, then Titmuss would be in the right. Incidentally, I haven't completely integrated the Time Space and Knowledge stuff, but I'm interested in what someone who has thinks about this issue. I suppose someone should point out that Tolle styles himself as nondenominational rather than Buddhist and much of his message is directed at Christians - so he may not be particularly concerned about dharmic orthodoxy...
Probably useful for people who never crossed the A&P and who completely identify with their internal monologue - not bad for my patients, and just pop enough to have credibility - a nudge towards the path.

I haven't read The New Earth, but I had similar reservations about the concept of the "pain body" (which I did not understand to be the ego by the way but rather the ego's identification with it's own suffering). It's a device, that could be useful in a narrative therapy/Gestalt sort of way - by making the pain something separate, it allows one to disidentify with it. Sort of the way I might ask someone questions about how "The Anger" comes on - who it's friends and enemies are, etc. By making it something separate, people are able to get insight and perspective on it. The risk, though, for people at this level of experience, who don't have an experienced teacher or psychotherapist, is that it can also take on a life of it's own, and they can forget that in the final analysis, it really is them... Possibly useful at a certain stage of development, with some risks, and it would eventually need to be re-integrated.

I disagree with Titmuss's criticism. The book addresses many other aspects included in Buddhism, including the sense of self, compassion, etc.

What Tolle calls "pain bodies" is what Buddhists call samskaras/sankharas.