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http://cosmic-visions.blogspot.com/
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Eckhart Tolle
Copyrighted 2009
Eckhart Tolle has had many intense spiritual experiences and has helped many other people have them. I do not question these experiences or their value; I myself have had many of the experiences he talks about in his books and so I know from personal experience that many of his teachings are true. I do question, however, the philosophy he adds to his experiences and the implications he draws from them. Like many New Agers, he makes claims that go beyond his spiritual experiences and these claims are not as credible as his experiences. I intend in this essay to look at these claims and analyze them to see if they are true or reasonable. The goal is not to belittle actual spiritual experiences but to help people be careful not to add extraneous ideas to their experiences. In that way spiritual people can stay closer to the Tao and convince others of their ideas.
Eckhart Tolle says his spiritual teachings are all based on personal experience, (The Power of Now, hereafter PN, p. 10) but his emphasis on living in the now is based on a theory of cosmic evolution that it is not possible for him to have experienced. While most people are attracted to the psychological and meditative part of Tolle’s ideas, his theory of cosmic evolution is the center point of his worldview. This theory is the underpinning of his dislike of time and the past and the future as it says our real spiritual home is outside of time and this world.
Tolle says that the start of the cosmos was when consciousness (something like an impersonal God) took on an outer form by creating and infusing itself in the physical cosmos. Over time, this consciousness lost awareness of itself as divine and humans identified themselves not with their inner divinity but with their outer physicalness. (PN, pp. 99-100) He says we then “started to perceive ourselves as meaningless fragments in an alien universe, unconnected to the Source.” (PN, p. 31) In a more Christian phrasing of the same theory he says that humans “fell from the state of grace, entered the realm of time and mind, and lost awareness of Being.” (PN, p. 31)
Tolle does not claim his idea is an original insight, he says this view is what the Indian thinkers call lila, or a game God is playing. (PN, p. 100) Almost all Indian thinkers who believe in lila also say that humans should raise their consciousness and rise above worldly concerns through ascetic practices of bodily discipline and meditation. Tolle rejects this asceticism.
He says that even though over time humans lost most of their connection to the divine, still they had some through their bodies. Males though are generally more identified with their mind and females with their bodies and about five thousand years ago, “the mind took over and humans lost touch with the reality of their divine essence.” God was then conceived as a male. (PN, p. 165)
As this entity he calls the mind took over the world and males dominated, the sacred feminine was suppressed and demonized. This suppression was so widespread that during the Inquisition, Tolle says three to five million women were killed by the Catholic Church. (A New Earth, hereafter NE, p. 155-6) Tolle says the real problem was something called “the evolving ego” which had a plan to take over the world. “What is it that suddenly made men feel threatened by the female? The evolving ego in them [men]. It knew it could gain full control of our planet only through the male form, and to do so, it had to render the female powerless.” (NE, p. 156) In other places he comes right out and says this evolving ego or egoic mind is an entity or being of some type: “the collective egoic mind is the most dangerously insane and destructive entity ever to inhabit this planet.” (PN, p. 102)
Many people experience the modern world and its treatment of the environment as being dominated by “masculine” values and are desperate to find a more caring and more connected way of living. One big philosophical expression of this desire is ecofeminism; Tolle’s ideas are a kind of ecofeminism.
There are a few problems with his basic facts though. While Tolle says millions of witches were killed, people who study this time period say that there were only about sixty thousand killed. Furthermore saying six million witches were killed was part of a Nazi propaganda campaign.[i] It was also not just the Catholics who killed the witches but also the Protestants, who killed them in roughly equal number with the Catholics. Most importantly, almost a quarter of the witches killed were men. The phenomenon of male witches is so important and intriguing that two books have been written on the topic recently.[ii]
Horrible atrocities happened to the witches, both the female ones and the male ones. Maybe we are killing the planet, maybe we have an over-masculinized culture, but unfortunately too many New Agers ignore facts. Mainstream culture, even if it is based on “masculine” values, can’t be denigrated for ignoring people who don’t get basic facts right and instead propagate myths pushed by the Nazis.
Everyone can get facts wrong of course. The even bigger problem is the reason why Tolle gets the facts wrong: he wants to see the early modern period as dominated by masculine values so he exaggerates the number of witches killed and ignores the number of witches killed who were men.
These factual concerns though are just minor quibbles compared to the bigger concern over Tolle’s concept of the egoic mind or evolving ego. Tolle says this is an entity, which has wishes and desires. If it has wishes and desires, then it is something like a living being. Furthermore, by trying to stop humanity’s spiritual evolution and keep the sacred feminine down, it is trying to take over and control the world. Tolle does not say much at all about this entity but it sounds like an evil force, much like the Christian devil. The Christians are bold in stating they believe an evil being like the devil exists. Tolle’s egoic entity is similar to the devil or evil but by calling it an egoic entity he gives it a more sophisticated sounding name. Thus many of his followers, who would probably laugh at the supposedly unsophisticated fundamentalist Christians for believing in the devil, have a very similar belief themselves. While serious Christians would never say “the devil made me do it,” Tolle comes close to saying this when he says the evolving ego or another entity he calls the pain-body takes us over and possesses us. (NE, p. 163)
Besides an Indian theory of cosmic evolution and an ecofeminist theory of the development of the modern world, Tolle also has a New Age theory of a quantum leap in evolution.
Tolle says that in times of radical crisis, species either die or experience a radical leap in evolution. (NE, p. 20) He states that humans have killed over a hundred million people in the 20th century and “now they are engaged in destroying nature and the planet that sustains them. Unbelievable but true. Humans are a dangerously insane and very sick species.” (PN, p. 81) Because humans are now in such a radical crisis, we need now to evolve to a new consciousness or die. (NE, p. 21)
Instead of this message of our likely extinction being seen as a downer, he ends his second book with the hopeful sentence: “A new species is arising on the planet. It is arising now, and you are it!” (NE, p. 309) He says the change in our species will be so profound it will be similar to the start of flowering in plants. He even says we could become transparent to light as we lose the density of mind. (NE, p. 5)
Many modern people experience conventional life as extremely limiting and confining. Once they get out of society’s box (the dominant cultural paradigm), they often find a much different spiritual world that is full of amazing synchronicities and connections. It can easily seem that some kind of spiritual evolution is happening to them and other people. But Tolle is claiming that people are evolving to a new species. What evidence is there of this? He is not making a modest claim of spiritual people experience more ESP or synchronicities helping them, but a significantly larger claim. The many New Agers I know, while often being tremendously interesting and creative, show absolutely no evidence of becoming a new species or making a leap in evolution. Tolle claims this evolutionary leap will be like the plants flowering. To match that change, though, humans would have to change greatly. It would be nice if humans were making this big of a leap, but no humans have wings or can jump a mile; no New Agers can even play football as well as Christians like Tim Tebow.
While I see many other problems with his overall theory of cosmic and human evolution, much worse than my concerns is the way this theory does not fit with his own ideas.
First he says that he has personal experience of all his teachings. He says his book “is not derived from external sources, but from the one true Source within, so it contains no theory or speculation. I speak from inner experience.” (PN, p. 10) How has he experienced his theory of cosmic evolution? Did he go back in a time machine and witness consciousness manifesting in the world and then losing its way? Or how has he experienced the egoic mind taking over the world hundreds of years ago?
He never deals with these questions. Unfortunately he denigrates critical thinking about his theories and other questions by saying our feelings tell us what is true. (PN, p. 10) Sometimes our feelings clearly do tell us things our minds cannot. For example our feelings may sense someone is dangerous without our minds having enough information to make that conclusion. But to categorically trust feelings as a reliable indicator of truth ignores the problem that to Germans during Hitler’s time it rang very true that the Jews were the cause of all their problems. Lots of times something might feel true because you have been conditioned to believe it or want to believe it. [More on the idea that if it rings true, it is true, is discussed on this site here.]
Scientists and mathematicians build great things like the internet because they get beyond their feelings to an empirically testable, intellectual understanding of the nature of the physical world. On the other hand, alternative spiritual people who trust their feelings can’t even agree amongst themselves when the Age of Aquarius supposedly starts or might end. Some feel it started in the 1960s, Jung says it started in 1940, others that it has not quite started yet. If we are entering into the Age of Aquarius and this is why a new age is starting, I want to know when it starts and how long it lasts. The same for exactly how many chakras we have or where our reflexology points are. Mainstream people will not and should not respect New Agers as long as the New Agers emphasize feelings so much to the detriment of intellectual understanding that they cannot answer basic questions like these.
Secondly, his idea that spiritual people accept the now does not fit with his theory of cosmic evolution. Central to his teaching in The Power of Now is the idea that “all that is, is holy.” (PN, p. 134) He continually makes statements affirming that “when you live in complete acceptance of what is – which is the only sane way to live—there is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in your life anymore. There is only a higher good.” (PN, p. 178) He says a wise person has a “refusal to judge anything that happens.” (NE, p. 197) When someone questions this view, saying that the present moment seems unpleasant, or even awful, he responds that the present moment “is as it is. Observe how the mind labels it and how this labeling process, this continuous sitting in judgment creates pain and unhappiness.” (PN, p. 35) He continually echoes this position throughout his book by saying that instead of judging, we should accept all.
Not only should we accept everything, we should “allow the present moment to be… Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.” (PN, p. 35-6) He extends this radical acceptance of the now to everything, even the death of those close to you. We think of death as tragic “but it is only tragic because you projected a separate self where there was none.” (PN, p. 100)
While on one hand he says we should accept all that is, on the other hand he continually talks about how humanity is insane and is a sick species. He says that humans have killed over a hundred million people in the 20th century and “now they are engaged in destroying nature and the planet that sustains them. Unbelievable but true. Humans are a dangerously insane and very sick species. That is not a judgment. It’s a fact.” (PN, p. 81) Tolle tries to get around his judgment of our civilization’s sickness by calling it a fact. But just calling something a fact does not make it a fact or make it less of a judgment.
While it might be true that humanity is insane and is destroying the earth, it is not easy to reconcile this view with his other view of how all that is, is holy. If everything that exists is holy that would seem to mean we should accept people who are destroying the world as holy as these people obviously exist. It would also seem to mean we should accept the mind and evolving ego as holy, as, according to Tolle, they also exist.
Tolle might say that people who don’t accept the now are causing all the problems because they are living in their minds and raping the earth. But in his basic insight of accepting the now, he says a person in the now does not judge the situation as wrong but instead sees it from a higher perspective where everything is right. Tolle either has to give up his view of the now as leading to total acceptance of all that is, or give up his condemnation of humanity as insane and then just accept in the blissfulness of the now the massive murdering of humans and raping of the Earth.
After all, how important is humanity to consciousness/God? Tolle contends humans are very important to consciousness, saying, “You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!” (PN, p. vii) However, the earth and its creatures existed very well before us and they might exist even better without us; I would not be surprised if there was a worldwide grand celebration lasting decades or centuries if we went extinct.
The third way his theory of cosmic evolution does not fit with his other ideas is his idea spiritual people rise beyond polarities. Tolle professes to believe in getting beyond “the mind with its resistance patterns that create the positive-negative polarities,” (PN, p. 178) yet he has an extremely negative view of the mind and males and a very positive view of the body and females; thus he himself creates a dualistic, either/or way of thinking which is clearly contradictory to his belief in getting beyond the mind and its dualistic nature.
Tolle continually says extremely negative things about the mind. For example he says “ultimately, there is only one problem: the time-bound mind itself.” (PN, p. 61) He also says you only are in pain when you do not accept the present moment, and this resistance comes from the mind: “the mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer.” (PN, p. 33) Not only do individuals suffer because of the mind, humans as a race will be destroyed by using the mind. He says that if humans “do not free themselves from their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it.” (PN, p. 102)
Tolle also links the mind to males and the ego. He says “the ego can take root and grow more easily in the male form than in the female. This is because women are less mind-identified than men. They are more in touch with the inner body and the intelligence of the organism where the intuitive faculties originate. The female form is less rigidly encapsulated than the male, has greater openness and sensitivity toward other life-forms, and is more attuned to the natural world.” (NE, p. 155) He also says the human body is the doorway to presence (PN, p. 116) and women are closer to their bodies, so they are closer to being. (PN, p. 165) The mind, which is “essentially male…resists, fights for control, uses, manipulates, attacks, tries to grasp and possess, and so on. What we need are the opposite qualities of “surrender, non-judgment, an openness that allows life to be instead of resisting, the capacity to hold all things in the loving embrace of your knowing. All these qualities are much more closely related to the female.” (PN, p.165)
In reading a spiritual thinker, one has to keep in mind that her intuition can be clouded by her personal experience. In Tolle’s case, he gives biographical details in his book that lend credence to the idea that he has personal issues with the mind. In his book A New Earth, he says that when he was young he was very intellectually oriented and thought all answers to human dilemmas could be found through thinking. “I looked upon the professors as sages who had all the answers and upon the university as the temple of knowledge.” (NE, p. 32) Then one day he met a crazy woman on the subway who talked continually in a real loud and angry voice. He followed her and was amazed to find she was going to the same place he was: the main library at the University of London. He then realized his mind was as continually active as hers and he was full of emotion like her and he was even starting to talk to himself. So he realized he was much like the very crazy woman. After this realization, for the first time ever, he shifted to a deeper perspective on the nature of reality. Unfortunately for him this deeper perspective did not last very long and he said he “would spend the next three years in anxiety and depression, completely identified with my mind.” (NE, p. 33)
Looking at his biography, Tolle had identified himself with his mind when he was young and saw the mind as providing all the answers to life’s problems. Now he goes to the opposite extreme and condemns the mind as the source of all of our problems. Maybe it was extremely positive for him to get out of his mind some, and maybe it is positive for some of his readers to hear this message, as they need to get out of their mind some too. But why go to the opposite extreme? Why go against another insight he has against dualisms and embrace a polarizing duality and label the mind as negative and the source of all problems and even build a history of civilization and its problems on this duality? He cannot both be against polarizing dualities and then embrace a duality concerning the mind/males and the body/females. He has to give up one of these beliefs if he wishes to have his ideas fit together.
A fourth problem fitting his own ideas together involves his continual disdain for thinking your life’s problems will be solved in the future instead of living in the now. But this future phobia would seem to be inconsistent with his idea that the solution to our current crisis is to evolve into a new species. Tolle says he is not going against his emphasis on the present moment because a new heaven and a new earth are not in the future as people in the moment are in the process of becoming a new species. (NE p. 308) If we were in the process of becoming a new species, then it would seem there should be some evidence we can see of this evolutionary leap. Tolle is either living in the future with his theory of an evolutionary leap solving our problems or there should be some evidence of it now.
More importantly, if we are in a time of dire trouble, it will be the geeks who will set us free. To live even close to harmoniously on the Earth while having cool things like ipods or the internet, we need non-polluting sources of energy, more efficient water desalination and Star Trek-like teleportation. These problems will only be solved by geeks using their minds for years hoping to get rich so that the cheerleaders who ignored them in high school will finally date them. While Tolle is right that some scientific insights come from deep intuitional insight, (PN, p. 24) most of the work on the internet and ipod and cell phones were done by geeks interested not in wholeness but in hotties. Tolle’s railings against the mind and living in the future thus hurt the chances that the geeks will save us.
Tolle could respond that the new species of people that are evolving might not need or want the internet or ipods as they will be in a higher state of consciousness. But he distributes his teachings via pod castes on his website, so he and his followers are not in this state yet. Thus it would be living in the future to respond in this way.
Copyrighted 2009
This essay was written by Joseph Waligore. He dedicated his life to following the will of the Universe when he was 20. Seven months later he received a message from his Higher Self or inner connection to the divine to quit Dartmouth College. Through following a deep intuition in a dream and after many synchronistic experiences, he met his soulmate and married her. He and his wife followed their spiritual intuitions in their daily lives, including receiving messages to have children. For twelve years he stayed at home and raised his three children while his wife worked. Then, his wife told him he needed to make some money, so he got a Ph. D. in philosophy from Syracuse University. He currently has a part-time job teaching philosophy and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. More information about him can be found at his MySpace profile. He also has a website with information about his own spiritual journey and his spiritual philosophy.
Many people reach this site through keyword advertisements. It might be of interest that Joseph got the money for these ads through his daytrading profits.
MY RESPONSE TO SOME OF THE COMMENTS (Jan. 5, 2010)
Tolle’s spirituality is a form of contemplative or Oneness mysticism. I consider contemplative mysticism to be over-emphasized and over-valued in contemporary spirituality. People are right to think I do not practice it. But it is not because I am stuck in my mind. I practice active mysticism. I discuss this point further here. I do think many people are helped in their life by his methods as he is presenting an accessible form of Oneness mysticism. But it is not trivial that he buys into superficial myths about history. It is also tremendously significant that he, and many other modern spiritual writers, breathlessly talk about spiritual evolution and can show no evidence for it. Tim Tebow does something marvelous: play football well and help other people. If all Tolle can show is that he can get into deeper states of consciousness, that is nice for him, but it does nothing for our society. Furthermore, it is no evidence of spiritual evolution as people have been doing that for thousands of years. I am not a Christian and I have no problem with the idea of evolution. I don’t think the road he is pointing to is such a good road for individuals and I think it is a very bad road for solving society’s problems. If all Tolle was talking about was helping individuals, I would not spend my time talking about his ideas. But he is also claiming that his approach will solve society’s problems and I think his approach is very misguided. Once he says his approach will help society, it is incumbent on us to think about whether this is true or not. I am not analyzing his behavior as much as wondering about his solution. I think the emphasis in modern spirituality about not judging is mistaken. We judge things all the time and that is necessary as well as good. We should just avoid stupid judgments.
Some people say they sense fear or jealousy in my writings. It is not obvious to me that people can sense my feelings rather than project things onto me. And even if I am fearful, does that mean my analysis of his road map to solve our civilization’s problems is wrong? Maybe I am fearful because I think so many people are going the wrong way listening to Tolle and that will screw us up more.
Tolle does occasionally say positive things about using our mind and rationality. But these occasional positive utterances are tremendously outweighed by the negative things he says about the mind and the deep structure of his philosophy which is built on denigration of the mind.
I do not think all spiritual teachings are saying the same thing and if you really listen to many teachers you will realize this is true as their teachings are very different.
All comments that are about my criticism of Tolle will be posted. Posts that are off topic, especially about other religions, will be deleted.
[i] Wolfgang Behringer, “Neun Millionen Hexen,” Geschicte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 49, 1998, 664-685, p. 673-677. It is available on his website. Behringer is Germany’s foremost expert on the witch persecutions.
[ii] See Lara Apps and Andrew Gow, Male Witches in early modern Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003) and Rolf Schulte, Man as Witch: Male Witches in Central Europe, trans. Linda Froome-Doring (Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
http://www.spiritualcritiques.com/author-criticisms/eckhart-tolle/?gclid=CIutkpG3kZ8CFQJaagodg0r9UgEckhart Tolle has had many intense spiritual experiences and has helped many other people have them. I do not question these experiences or their value; I myself have had many of the experiences he talks about in his books and so I know from personal experience that many of his teachings are true. I do question, however, the philosophy he adds to his experiences and the implications he draws from them. Like many New Agers, he makes claims that go beyond his spiritual experiences and these claims are not as credible as his experiences. I intend in this essay to look at these claims and analyze them to see if they are true or reasonable. The goal is not to belittle actual spiritual experiences but to help people be careful not to add extraneous ideas to their experiences. In that way spiritual people can stay closer to the Tao and convince others of their ideas.
Eckhart Tolle says his spiritual teachings are all based on personal experience, (The Power of Now, hereafter PN, p. 10) but his emphasis on living in the now is based on a theory of cosmic evolution that it is not possible for him to have experienced. While most people are attracted to the psychological and meditative part of Tolle’s ideas, his theory of cosmic evolution is the center point of his worldview. This theory is the underpinning of his dislike of time and the past and the future as it says our real spiritual home is outside of time and this world.
Tolle says that the start of the cosmos was when consciousness (something like an impersonal God) took on an outer form by creating and infusing itself in the physical cosmos. Over time, this consciousness lost awareness of itself as divine and humans identified themselves not with their inner divinity but with their outer physicalness. (PN, pp. 99-100) He says we then “started to perceive ourselves as meaningless fragments in an alien universe, unconnected to the Source.” (PN, p. 31) In a more Christian phrasing of the same theory he says that humans “fell from the state of grace, entered the realm of time and mind, and lost awareness of Being.” (PN, p. 31)
Tolle does not claim his idea is an original insight, he says this view is what the Indian thinkers call lila, or a game God is playing. (PN, p. 100) Almost all Indian thinkers who believe in lila also say that humans should raise their consciousness and rise above worldly concerns through ascetic practices of bodily discipline and meditation. Tolle rejects this asceticism.
He says that even though over time humans lost most of their connection to the divine, still they had some through their bodies. Males though are generally more identified with their mind and females with their bodies and about five thousand years ago, “the mind took over and humans lost touch with the reality of their divine essence.” God was then conceived as a male. (PN, p. 165)
As this entity he calls the mind took over the world and males dominated, the sacred feminine was suppressed and demonized. This suppression was so widespread that during the Inquisition, Tolle says three to five million women were killed by the Catholic Church. (A New Earth, hereafter NE, p. 155-6) Tolle says the real problem was something called “the evolving ego” which had a plan to take over the world. “What is it that suddenly made men feel threatened by the female? The evolving ego in them [men]. It knew it could gain full control of our planet only through the male form, and to do so, it had to render the female powerless.” (NE, p. 156) In other places he comes right out and says this evolving ego or egoic mind is an entity or being of some type: “the collective egoic mind is the most dangerously insane and destructive entity ever to inhabit this planet.” (PN, p. 102)
Many people experience the modern world and its treatment of the environment as being dominated by “masculine” values and are desperate to find a more caring and more connected way of living. One big philosophical expression of this desire is ecofeminism; Tolle’s ideas are a kind of ecofeminism.
There are a few problems with his basic facts though. While Tolle says millions of witches were killed, people who study this time period say that there were only about sixty thousand killed. Furthermore saying six million witches were killed was part of a Nazi propaganda campaign.[i] It was also not just the Catholics who killed the witches but also the Protestants, who killed them in roughly equal number with the Catholics. Most importantly, almost a quarter of the witches killed were men. The phenomenon of male witches is so important and intriguing that two books have been written on the topic recently.[ii]
Horrible atrocities happened to the witches, both the female ones and the male ones. Maybe we are killing the planet, maybe we have an over-masculinized culture, but unfortunately too many New Agers ignore facts. Mainstream culture, even if it is based on “masculine” values, can’t be denigrated for ignoring people who don’t get basic facts right and instead propagate myths pushed by the Nazis.
Everyone can get facts wrong of course. The even bigger problem is the reason why Tolle gets the facts wrong: he wants to see the early modern period as dominated by masculine values so he exaggerates the number of witches killed and ignores the number of witches killed who were men.
These factual concerns though are just minor quibbles compared to the bigger concern over Tolle’s concept of the egoic mind or evolving ego. Tolle says this is an entity, which has wishes and desires. If it has wishes and desires, then it is something like a living being. Furthermore, by trying to stop humanity’s spiritual evolution and keep the sacred feminine down, it is trying to take over and control the world. Tolle does not say much at all about this entity but it sounds like an evil force, much like the Christian devil. The Christians are bold in stating they believe an evil being like the devil exists. Tolle’s egoic entity is similar to the devil or evil but by calling it an egoic entity he gives it a more sophisticated sounding name. Thus many of his followers, who would probably laugh at the supposedly unsophisticated fundamentalist Christians for believing in the devil, have a very similar belief themselves. While serious Christians would never say “the devil made me do it,” Tolle comes close to saying this when he says the evolving ego or another entity he calls the pain-body takes us over and possesses us. (NE, p. 163)
Besides an Indian theory of cosmic evolution and an ecofeminist theory of the development of the modern world, Tolle also has a New Age theory of a quantum leap in evolution.
Tolle says that in times of radical crisis, species either die or experience a radical leap in evolution. (NE, p. 20) He states that humans have killed over a hundred million people in the 20th century and “now they are engaged in destroying nature and the planet that sustains them. Unbelievable but true. Humans are a dangerously insane and very sick species.” (PN, p. 81) Because humans are now in such a radical crisis, we need now to evolve to a new consciousness or die. (NE, p. 21)
Instead of this message of our likely extinction being seen as a downer, he ends his second book with the hopeful sentence: “A new species is arising on the planet. It is arising now, and you are it!” (NE, p. 309) He says the change in our species will be so profound it will be similar to the start of flowering in plants. He even says we could become transparent to light as we lose the density of mind. (NE, p. 5)
Many modern people experience conventional life as extremely limiting and confining. Once they get out of society’s box (the dominant cultural paradigm), they often find a much different spiritual world that is full of amazing synchronicities and connections. It can easily seem that some kind of spiritual evolution is happening to them and other people. But Tolle is claiming that people are evolving to a new species. What evidence is there of this? He is not making a modest claim of spiritual people experience more ESP or synchronicities helping them, but a significantly larger claim. The many New Agers I know, while often being tremendously interesting and creative, show absolutely no evidence of becoming a new species or making a leap in evolution. Tolle claims this evolutionary leap will be like the plants flowering. To match that change, though, humans would have to change greatly. It would be nice if humans were making this big of a leap, but no humans have wings or can jump a mile; no New Agers can even play football as well as Christians like Tim Tebow.
While I see many other problems with his overall theory of cosmic and human evolution, much worse than my concerns is the way this theory does not fit with his own ideas.
First he says that he has personal experience of all his teachings. He says his book “is not derived from external sources, but from the one true Source within, so it contains no theory or speculation. I speak from inner experience.” (PN, p. 10) How has he experienced his theory of cosmic evolution? Did he go back in a time machine and witness consciousness manifesting in the world and then losing its way? Or how has he experienced the egoic mind taking over the world hundreds of years ago?
He never deals with these questions. Unfortunately he denigrates critical thinking about his theories and other questions by saying our feelings tell us what is true. (PN, p. 10) Sometimes our feelings clearly do tell us things our minds cannot. For example our feelings may sense someone is dangerous without our minds having enough information to make that conclusion. But to categorically trust feelings as a reliable indicator of truth ignores the problem that to Germans during Hitler’s time it rang very true that the Jews were the cause of all their problems. Lots of times something might feel true because you have been conditioned to believe it or want to believe it. [More on the idea that if it rings true, it is true, is discussed on this site here.]
Scientists and mathematicians build great things like the internet because they get beyond their feelings to an empirically testable, intellectual understanding of the nature of the physical world. On the other hand, alternative spiritual people who trust their feelings can’t even agree amongst themselves when the Age of Aquarius supposedly starts or might end. Some feel it started in the 1960s, Jung says it started in 1940, others that it has not quite started yet. If we are entering into the Age of Aquarius and this is why a new age is starting, I want to know when it starts and how long it lasts. The same for exactly how many chakras we have or where our reflexology points are. Mainstream people will not and should not respect New Agers as long as the New Agers emphasize feelings so much to the detriment of intellectual understanding that they cannot answer basic questions like these.
Secondly, his idea that spiritual people accept the now does not fit with his theory of cosmic evolution. Central to his teaching in The Power of Now is the idea that “all that is, is holy.” (PN, p. 134) He continually makes statements affirming that “when you live in complete acceptance of what is – which is the only sane way to live—there is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in your life anymore. There is only a higher good.” (PN, p. 178) He says a wise person has a “refusal to judge anything that happens.” (NE, p. 197) When someone questions this view, saying that the present moment seems unpleasant, or even awful, he responds that the present moment “is as it is. Observe how the mind labels it and how this labeling process, this continuous sitting in judgment creates pain and unhappiness.” (PN, p. 35) He continually echoes this position throughout his book by saying that instead of judging, we should accept all.
Not only should we accept everything, we should “allow the present moment to be… Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.” (PN, p. 35-6) He extends this radical acceptance of the now to everything, even the death of those close to you. We think of death as tragic “but it is only tragic because you projected a separate self where there was none.” (PN, p. 100)
While on one hand he says we should accept all that is, on the other hand he continually talks about how humanity is insane and is a sick species. He says that humans have killed over a hundred million people in the 20th century and “now they are engaged in destroying nature and the planet that sustains them. Unbelievable but true. Humans are a dangerously insane and very sick species. That is not a judgment. It’s a fact.” (PN, p. 81) Tolle tries to get around his judgment of our civilization’s sickness by calling it a fact. But just calling something a fact does not make it a fact or make it less of a judgment.
While it might be true that humanity is insane and is destroying the earth, it is not easy to reconcile this view with his other view of how all that is, is holy. If everything that exists is holy that would seem to mean we should accept people who are destroying the world as holy as these people obviously exist. It would also seem to mean we should accept the mind and evolving ego as holy, as, according to Tolle, they also exist.
Tolle might say that people who don’t accept the now are causing all the problems because they are living in their minds and raping the earth. But in his basic insight of accepting the now, he says a person in the now does not judge the situation as wrong but instead sees it from a higher perspective where everything is right. Tolle either has to give up his view of the now as leading to total acceptance of all that is, or give up his condemnation of humanity as insane and then just accept in the blissfulness of the now the massive murdering of humans and raping of the Earth.
After all, how important is humanity to consciousness/God? Tolle contends humans are very important to consciousness, saying, “You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!” (PN, p. vii) However, the earth and its creatures existed very well before us and they might exist even better without us; I would not be surprised if there was a worldwide grand celebration lasting decades or centuries if we went extinct.
The third way his theory of cosmic evolution does not fit with his other ideas is his idea spiritual people rise beyond polarities. Tolle professes to believe in getting beyond “the mind with its resistance patterns that create the positive-negative polarities,” (PN, p. 178) yet he has an extremely negative view of the mind and males and a very positive view of the body and females; thus he himself creates a dualistic, either/or way of thinking which is clearly contradictory to his belief in getting beyond the mind and its dualistic nature.
Tolle continually says extremely negative things about the mind. For example he says “ultimately, there is only one problem: the time-bound mind itself.” (PN, p. 61) He also says you only are in pain when you do not accept the present moment, and this resistance comes from the mind: “the mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer.” (PN, p. 33) Not only do individuals suffer because of the mind, humans as a race will be destroyed by using the mind. He says that if humans “do not free themselves from their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it.” (PN, p. 102)
Tolle also links the mind to males and the ego. He says “the ego can take root and grow more easily in the male form than in the female. This is because women are less mind-identified than men. They are more in touch with the inner body and the intelligence of the organism where the intuitive faculties originate. The female form is less rigidly encapsulated than the male, has greater openness and sensitivity toward other life-forms, and is more attuned to the natural world.” (NE, p. 155) He also says the human body is the doorway to presence (PN, p. 116) and women are closer to their bodies, so they are closer to being. (PN, p. 165) The mind, which is “essentially male…resists, fights for control, uses, manipulates, attacks, tries to grasp and possess, and so on. What we need are the opposite qualities of “surrender, non-judgment, an openness that allows life to be instead of resisting, the capacity to hold all things in the loving embrace of your knowing. All these qualities are much more closely related to the female.” (PN, p.165)
In reading a spiritual thinker, one has to keep in mind that her intuition can be clouded by her personal experience. In Tolle’s case, he gives biographical details in his book that lend credence to the idea that he has personal issues with the mind. In his book A New Earth, he says that when he was young he was very intellectually oriented and thought all answers to human dilemmas could be found through thinking. “I looked upon the professors as sages who had all the answers and upon the university as the temple of knowledge.” (NE, p. 32) Then one day he met a crazy woman on the subway who talked continually in a real loud and angry voice. He followed her and was amazed to find she was going to the same place he was: the main library at the University of London. He then realized his mind was as continually active as hers and he was full of emotion like her and he was even starting to talk to himself. So he realized he was much like the very crazy woman. After this realization, for the first time ever, he shifted to a deeper perspective on the nature of reality. Unfortunately for him this deeper perspective did not last very long and he said he “would spend the next three years in anxiety and depression, completely identified with my mind.” (NE, p. 33)
Looking at his biography, Tolle had identified himself with his mind when he was young and saw the mind as providing all the answers to life’s problems. Now he goes to the opposite extreme and condemns the mind as the source of all of our problems. Maybe it was extremely positive for him to get out of his mind some, and maybe it is positive for some of his readers to hear this message, as they need to get out of their mind some too. But why go to the opposite extreme? Why go against another insight he has against dualisms and embrace a polarizing duality and label the mind as negative and the source of all problems and even build a history of civilization and its problems on this duality? He cannot both be against polarizing dualities and then embrace a duality concerning the mind/males and the body/females. He has to give up one of these beliefs if he wishes to have his ideas fit together.
A fourth problem fitting his own ideas together involves his continual disdain for thinking your life’s problems will be solved in the future instead of living in the now. But this future phobia would seem to be inconsistent with his idea that the solution to our current crisis is to evolve into a new species. Tolle says he is not going against his emphasis on the present moment because a new heaven and a new earth are not in the future as people in the moment are in the process of becoming a new species. (NE p. 308) If we were in the process of becoming a new species, then it would seem there should be some evidence we can see of this evolutionary leap. Tolle is either living in the future with his theory of an evolutionary leap solving our problems or there should be some evidence of it now.
More importantly, if we are in a time of dire trouble, it will be the geeks who will set us free. To live even close to harmoniously on the Earth while having cool things like ipods or the internet, we need non-polluting sources of energy, more efficient water desalination and Star Trek-like teleportation. These problems will only be solved by geeks using their minds for years hoping to get rich so that the cheerleaders who ignored them in high school will finally date them. While Tolle is right that some scientific insights come from deep intuitional insight, (PN, p. 24) most of the work on the internet and ipod and cell phones were done by geeks interested not in wholeness but in hotties. Tolle’s railings against the mind and living in the future thus hurt the chances that the geeks will save us.
Tolle could respond that the new species of people that are evolving might not need or want the internet or ipods as they will be in a higher state of consciousness. But he distributes his teachings via pod castes on his website, so he and his followers are not in this state yet. Thus it would be living in the future to respond in this way.
Copyrighted 2009
This essay was written by Joseph Waligore. He dedicated his life to following the will of the Universe when he was 20. Seven months later he received a message from his Higher Self or inner connection to the divine to quit Dartmouth College. Through following a deep intuition in a dream and after many synchronistic experiences, he met his soulmate and married her. He and his wife followed their spiritual intuitions in their daily lives, including receiving messages to have children. For twelve years he stayed at home and raised his three children while his wife worked. Then, his wife told him he needed to make some money, so he got a Ph. D. in philosophy from Syracuse University. He currently has a part-time job teaching philosophy and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. More information about him can be found at his MySpace profile. He also has a website with information about his own spiritual journey and his spiritual philosophy.
Many people reach this site through keyword advertisements. It might be of interest that Joseph got the money for these ads through his daytrading profits.
MY RESPONSE TO SOME OF THE COMMENTS (Jan. 5, 2010)
Tolle’s spirituality is a form of contemplative or Oneness mysticism. I consider contemplative mysticism to be over-emphasized and over-valued in contemporary spirituality. People are right to think I do not practice it. But it is not because I am stuck in my mind. I practice active mysticism. I discuss this point further here. I do think many people are helped in their life by his methods as he is presenting an accessible form of Oneness mysticism. But it is not trivial that he buys into superficial myths about history. It is also tremendously significant that he, and many other modern spiritual writers, breathlessly talk about spiritual evolution and can show no evidence for it. Tim Tebow does something marvelous: play football well and help other people. If all Tolle can show is that he can get into deeper states of consciousness, that is nice for him, but it does nothing for our society. Furthermore, it is no evidence of spiritual evolution as people have been doing that for thousands of years. I am not a Christian and I have no problem with the idea of evolution. I don’t think the road he is pointing to is such a good road for individuals and I think it is a very bad road for solving society’s problems. If all Tolle was talking about was helping individuals, I would not spend my time talking about his ideas. But he is also claiming that his approach will solve society’s problems and I think his approach is very misguided. Once he says his approach will help society, it is incumbent on us to think about whether this is true or not. I am not analyzing his behavior as much as wondering about his solution. I think the emphasis in modern spirituality about not judging is mistaken. We judge things all the time and that is necessary as well as good. We should just avoid stupid judgments.
Some people say they sense fear or jealousy in my writings. It is not obvious to me that people can sense my feelings rather than project things onto me. And even if I am fearful, does that mean my analysis of his road map to solve our civilization’s problems is wrong? Maybe I am fearful because I think so many people are going the wrong way listening to Tolle and that will screw us up more.
Tolle does occasionally say positive things about using our mind and rationality. But these occasional positive utterances are tremendously outweighed by the negative things he says about the mind and the deep structure of his philosophy which is built on denigration of the mind.
I do not think all spiritual teachings are saying the same thing and if you really listen to many teachers you will realize this is true as their teachings are very different.
All comments that are about my criticism of Tolle will be posted. Posts that are off topic, especially about other religions, will be deleted.
[i] Wolfgang Behringer, “Neun Millionen Hexen,” Geschicte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 49, 1998, 664-685, p. 673-677. It is available on his website. Behringer is Germany’s foremost expert on the witch persecutions.
[ii] See Lara Apps and Andrew Gow, Male Witches in early modern Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003) and Rolf Schulte, Man as Witch: Male Witches in Central Europe, trans. Linda Froome-Doring (Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
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http://cosmic-visions.blogspot.com/
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Although I do not agree with everything you say here, it merits publication. I am an over all fan of Eckhart Tolle among others, but opposing viewpoints of should be openly discussed and not suppressed. I have taken the liberty to republish your article on my website newsofthespirit.com. If you object to me doing this please let me know, otherwise thank you for taking the time to present your opposing viewpoint.
ReplyDeletepeace out,
don
newsofthespirit.com
1-11-2010 ~ Gracias Donovan ~
ReplyDeleteI love Tolle and other New Age Spiritual Leaders. I believe much of it is ancient wisdom. As a humane being I am concerned with helping to meet the needs of people, including absorbing new knowledge. I posted the above just to give our minds a little stretch.
Namaste ~ Peta-de-Aztlan
Twitter http://twitter.com/Peta_de_Aztlan
Your Link ~ http~newsofthespirit.com/