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If you haven’t heard of The Power of Now before reading this article, chances are you would have eventually. It’s become a bit of a phenomenon you see, well beyond the level of your average “new age” book. This is due to author Eckhart Tolle’s apparent lack of religious affiliation, and a huge amount of word of mouth marketing, now doubt helped along in more recent times by Oprah Winfrey’s discovery and endorsement of the author.
I myself came upon it on the unlikely recommendation of my father who is a born again Christian.
I was somewhat surprised to have him recommend such a book to me, and it is perhaps because of that fact that I even gave it a second though, let alone purchase the book, as I did.
The basic premise of The Power of Now is that we human being are unhappy because we live our lives constantly thinking about the past, or the future, thereby neglecting to enjoy the present. Were that all the book had to say, I would contend that it was really very true, and that learning to enjoy every moment is a skill we should all endeavour to have. Naturally such advice would make for a very short book, and in itself does not sound very profound, so naturally (and by necessity) Tolle’s message is far more complicated that that.
The book opens with a short personal history from the author in which he tells us about how miserable his life was until the age of 30 when he magically had some kind of breakdown, blacked out, and when he woke up he was in a state of pure joy which prompted him to spend several years doing nothing except sit on park benches being happy. For the first 163 pages Tolle, in a most repetitive fashion, explains how the key to happiness is to be. That is, to become aware that there is no past or future, only the now, as he calls it. He says that we as humans cause ourselves pain by not living in the now, and instead constantly thinking about the past or the future. If this sounds too esoteric, you can blame Tolle for overcomplicating something that is really very simple: You cannot be happy if you are dwelling on the past, nor can you be happy if you place all your hopes in the future, which hasn’t happened yet and exists only in your imagination. You must learn to enjoy and live only for the present moment, because that is all that every really exists. Up until this point, despite Tolle’s meandering and repetition, and sometimes ‘liberal’ interpretation of various religious texts, I was really enjoying the book. I truly was finding it insightful and inspiring.
That all changed on page 164 with a section that details why women are closer to enlightenment that men. As a man, I was naturally a bit put off by this sweeping and seemingly unfounded statement. Tolle justifies this with some claims relating to the Chinese Tao. The Tao it seems is described as being the mother of the universe. Tolle says that “Tao” can be translated as “being” therefore women naturally embody “being” which Tolle uses a synonym for God, or the Universe, or, well take your pick.
From this point on, the book seems to have an increasing disdain for anything masculine, or perhaps it did from the beginning and only became evident at this point. The mind, for instance is viewed by Tolle as negative, and also as male.
“What does remain true, however, is that the energy frequency of the mind appears to be essentially male. The mind resists, fights for control, uses, manipulates, attacks, tires to grasp for control and so on. This is why the Traditional God is patriarchal, controlling authority figure, and often angry man who you should live in fear of, as the Old Testament suggests. This God is a projection of the human mind.
He then goes onto a section about dissolving the female pain body. The pain-body, according to Tolle, is a false body the mind creates as a collective memory of everything bad that has happened to us. Everyone supposedly has one constantly being fed by the mind in order to keep us in an unhappy, unenlightened state. He contend that women in addition to their own pain-bodies, have a collective pain-body.
“every woman has her share in what could be described as the collective female pain-body – unless she is fully conscious. This consists of accumulated pain suffered by women partly through male subjugation of the female through slavery, exploitation, rape, childbirth, child loss, and so on, over thousands of years. The emotional or physical pain that for many women precedes and coincides with menstrual flow is the pain-body in it’s collective aspect that awakens from its dormancy at that time.
Huh? Did men not suffer as slaves as well? Is child loss something only women must endure? How is childbirth the result of male subjugation of the female? Is it not simply a biological fact of life? Men can no more be held responsible for the design of the human system of procreation that can women be blamed for the intense pain a man can feel when he crosses his leg the wrong way and crushes his scrotum. And did he just blame the existence of PMS on the world’s patriarchal history? My oh my.
Then he comes out with this decidedly offensive whopper.
In the quest for enlightenment, is being gay a help or a hindrance, or does it make any difference?
As you approach adulthood, uncertainty about your sexuality followed by the realization that you are “different” from other may force you to dis-identify from socially conditioned patterns of thought and behaviour. This will automatically raise your level of consciousness above the unconscious majority.
Excuse me? Did he just say that gay people are automatically more spiritually enlightened than the rest of us? I have no issues with gay people, I don’t think it’s immoral or wrong or sinful, but to say that homosexual people are somehow more enlightened than me is not only ludicrous, it’s downright offensive if for no other reason that it is obscenely arbitrary.
In the end the book, which starts out with much promise, become yet another disappointing new age fluff fest littered with material that seems carefully devised to appeal to the main consumers of this type of book: Presumably well meaning but ultimately misguided feminists with an unfortunate resentment to anything deemed to be in the realm of maleness, which in Eckhart Tolle’s view includes such things as rational thought.
In the end, I’d say it’s worth a read for curiosity’s sake, but ultimately most would be much better served the the superior Conversations With God, which presents much of the same ideas, as well as many, many more, while being inclusive and dispensing with the anti-male crap.
You havent ‘gotten’ the jist of his message. Your reactions to his answers comes completely from your ego-identified sense of self. That your a man ‘so naturally you take offence’..blah blah..
his message is basically, who you think you are is nothing but a self-construct made up of thought and emotional interpretations of things that happened, are happening, or ‘may’ happen. Therefore your attention is engaged in a tug-of war of past and future because its the backdrop of your form idenitfy — in your case ” Jonathan – a guy who doesnt hate gay people blah blah ,who grew up over here, went out with such and such, expects and believes such and such…all that is based on past ‘occurences’ that have conditioned you.
Who you truly are is ‘spacious conscious ‘unconditioned’ intelligence’ That underlying ‘awareness’ That, I am that I am, not I am Jonathan, etc…That unconditioned conscious awareness is more essentially who you are, and who everybody is. That consciousness can manifest in 2 forms as you and me – and then get lost based on our form identity – boy/gir/gay/str8.. and that’s were the joys and sorrows of duality lie.
Read his book again.
It also seems to me that you have completely missed Tolle’s premises. I don’t believe he is saying that Gay people – or women – are more enlightened. Only that because of prejudices, these folk often have the ability to question damaging social norms and attain a broader insight. I too suggest you read this wonderful book again. Living in the moment is enlightenment.
Simon, I respect your point of view, and I certainly did not find the book to be a total waste of time, I believe the specific examples that I mentioned above present a very clear bias.
I specifically reject the idea that women in modern North American society (the primary target audience of his book being North America) are subjugated. If anything the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.
And connecting it to PMS is just outright strange.
Hello,
I think that you’re overassuming a bit. Even though Tolle is talking about the collective pain women carry with them, he’s not denying that men have collective pain too, that men have been (and are being) mistreated.
One could, perhaps, say that the oppression of women is easier to point out, easier to define, considering that it’s not been too long that women have even been considered equally human.
Also, I think the part about gays is basicly stating “the ones who most get beaten up by their surroundings, have the most experiential material for transformation” – that is, the more pain you have endured, the more likely you are to search for answers and alternatives.
I also did not feel that Tolle is per se attacking the mind or declaring it “wrong” or “negative” – my impression of Tolle’s viewpoint, which I agree with, is that he’s just defining the ways that the mind tries to control, lie and cheat to keep its self-image constant. However, used properly and cooperated with, the mind is a great tool.
Hi Henry,
Thank you for taking the time to offer your comments.
I would like to let you know that you presented your viewpoint in a very clear and well thought out way, and what you said was enough to open my mind to giving Eckart Tolle a second chance in the future.
I still think Eckart was far less clear, perhaps intentionally, about these points.
All persons, regardless of their gender, face hardship in life. As a woman, I would never presume to fully understand the male experience nor would I deny its challenges.
Likewise, I think its very hurtful for you to assume you understand the feminine experience and for you to discount the extraordinary difficulties related to womanhood.
Your statement “I specifically reject the idea that women in modern North American society are subjugated. If anything the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction” demonstrates an alarming lack of empathy.
If you were able to live as a woman for one day, you would understand the subtle discrimination which we consistently endure. Have things gotten better in the last 40 years? Of course they have. Is there equality? It breaks my heart, but no. Not even close.
I guess I can’t expect you to understand what its like to be female, but I simply ask that you refrain judging things that you can’t possibly know about. Walk a mile and then you can judge the relevancy of Tolle’s comments on gender inequality…or PMS for that matter. Which, incidentally, I found to be very helpful in learning to manage this difficult time.
If you were able to live as a woman for one day, you would understand the subtle discrimination which we consistently endure. Have things gotten better in the last 40 years? Of course they have. Is there equality? It breaks my heart, but no. Not even close.
If you expected to sway me without providing a single shread of evidence, then you failed. Sorry.
I have to say there are plenty of female commentators who also reject the idea that our society is somehow unjust towards women. For recent example, read Barbara Kay’s column in the Globe and Mail regarding the Liberal party’s “pink book”.
Frankly, if you were man, you might also find yourself discriminated against in subtle and not so subtle ways. Just ask any man who’s been through the family court system, or who is afraid to give his own children a bath for fear of being accused of child abuse, the man who’s ordered to pay alimony to an ex wife who cheated on him with multiple men. Or the man who’s suffering spousal abuse but *can’t* tell anyone about it for fear of being ridiculed or simply not believed. That’s the reality of being a man, but I’d be willing to bet you don’t have any empathy for that, in fact I suspect your advice would be to shut of and stop whining. Which luckily for you, most men do.
If you want me to feel empathy for your supposed mistreatment by our society then you better start by showing me specific examples of just how are society wrongs you on a daily basis. The way I see it, women in our country can do pretty much anything men can do, and without restriction.
It’s high time the sexes stopped competing against each other and started realizing that we are simply different, and our differences are a strength, not a weakness.
yeah eckhart can say some pretty whacked out stuff sometimes…. sometimes i think he has no idea what he is talking about and he just likes to hear himself talk….
mostly though is is amazingly clear i find…
if you asked him, he’d probably admit to saying the same thing over and over again in a million different ways… thats what most spiritual teachers do…
the truth is that there are no problems… if we want to pretend there are problems we can… until we get tired of pretending… then the problems go away
(so… the external situation does not have to change for our problems to be negated… one second they are real and havey and oh so terrible… the next *pooof*… gone… and nothing has changed)
dezian