Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now

Jettison the ego, still the incessant chatter of the mind, abandon the mind-created ‘pain
body’, live in the present moment, be a channel for the Divine. What do I need? Well,
for starters, a copy of Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, 1 the book which, with a little
help from Oprah, inaugurated Tolle’s career as “spiritual teacher” and has since taken
up permanent residence in the best-seller charts, along with the more recent A New
Earth (2005). Tolle is now a hugely popular speaker on the “spirituality”
lecture/seminar/workshop/retreat circuit. Business has never been better!
Many readers will be familiar with the outer facts of the Eckhart Tolle
phenomenon. He was born Ulrich Tolle in Germany in 1948. He spent some time as a
youth in Spain and studied literature, languages and philosophy at London and
Cambridge universities, enrolling in but never completing doctoral studies. Until his
thirtieth year, Tolle tells us, he lived in a state of “continuous anxiety” and suffered
from “suicidal depression” (p3). His life was altered by a “profoundly significant”
transformative experience which awakened him to his real nature as “the ever-present
I am”. Later, he writes, he learned to enter “that inner timeless and deathless realm”
and to dwell in states of “indescribable bliss and sacredness”. After his “epiphany” he
finds himself with “no relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity,”
but with a sense of “intense joy”. (5) He spends a lot of time in parks. Somewhere
along the line he takes on the name of the great medieval mystic. In the mid-90s he
meets Ms Constance Kellough, a marketing executive, management consultant and
“wellness expert” who soon publishes The Power of Now on her start-up imprint,
Namaste. Sales remain modest until 2002 when Oprah Winfrey’s acclamation of The
Power of Now as “one of the most important books of our times” lifts Tolle out of the
general ruck of New Age teachers and, virtually overnight, turns his books into chart-
toppers. The Power of Now has since been translated into upwards of thirty languages,
and sold over five million copies. Tolle lives in Vancouver with his business partner,
Kim Eng, now also a teacher of sorts. Beyond this sketchy biographical outline further
details are remarkably scarce. (Tolle: “I have little use for the past and rarely think
about it”. p.3)
Tolle’s books, five in number, have been variously described as “New Age
mystical texts”, “self-help manuals”, “spiritual classics” and the like. He belongs with
those many contemporary “spiritual teachers” without any firm commitment to a
particular religious tradition — Deepak Chopra and Shakti Gawain might serve as
examples. He also shares some ground with those “self-help” teachers who draw on
psychotherapy and transpersonal psychology, and sometimes on successful business
and advertising techniques. (One may mention such figures as Dale Carnegie, Norman
Vincent Peale, Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay and Richard Carlson.)

1
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Namaste Publishing & New World
Library, Novato, CA, 2004 edition.
 Tolle writes in a simple and often quite engaging style, and weaves together
teachings from and allusions to the world’s great religious traditions. Among his
favourite sources we find the spiritual classics of Taoism and Zen Buddhism, Rumi,
the New Testament and A Course in Miracles. One can find reverberations of
traditional teachings throughout his writing and much of what he says is quite
unexceptional, often nicely put. He has also acknowledged a considerable debt to the
teachings of Barry Long (1926-2003), the Australian journalist and self-styled “tantric
master”. Asked in an interview about the influences on his work, Eckhart Tolle
identified the great Advaitin sage of Arunachala, Ramana Maharshi, and the Indian
iconoclast and counter-culture “guru”, Jiddu Krishnamurti (also a formative influence
on Long, and on Deepak Chopra). His own work, Tolle claims, is a synthesis of these
two influences — a case of mixing gold and clay! The fact that Tolle registers no
sense of dissonance here, that he can apparently situate these two figures on the same
level, just as he can without embarrassment juxtapose A Course in Miracles and the
teachings of Jesus and the Buddha, alerts us to one of the most troubling aspects of his
work — not only the conspicuous failure to discern between the authentic and the
spurious but also the lack of any sense of the different levels at which such figures and
their teachings might be situated, a lack of any sense of proportion. One might say the
same of his treatment of “the mind” in which he fails to differentiate its many
functions or to understand that all manner of modes and processes might come under
this term; for Tolle the mind seems to be no more than a rather mechanical accomplice
to the ego. Moreover, the ego-mind is the root of all our troubles. Now, of course,
there is an echo of traditional teachings here — but in Tolle’s hands, the idea is robbed
of all nuance and qualification, and his writing on the subject often degenerates into
rhetorical sleight-of-hand. “Being” is another word bandied about in cavalier fashion.
Tolle’s general philosophical position as modern day magus can be summed up
this way: non-dualistic, a-religious, vaguely “Eastern” but with pretensions to
universality, tinged with “spiritual evolutionism” (one of the calling cards of New Age
teachers), and directed towards an inner transformation bringing peace and joy. He
promotes a “new consciousness” to liberate us from the fetters of the analytical and
ratiocinative mind which is the principal instrument of the ego. Associated with the
ego-mind is the “pain body” in which reside all manner of negativities (hatred,
jealousy, rage, bitterness, guilt and so on — some echoes of Wilhelm Reich here).
Both our individual and collective ills derive from the false but tyrannical
constructions of the ego-mind and its associated “pain-bodies”. We must break out of
“inherited collective mind-patterns that have kept humans in bondage to suffering for
eons” (6). Readers familiar with the genre will readily understand the kind of fare on
offer through the most cursory glance at Tolle’s chapter headings: “You Are Not Your
Mind”, “Consciousness: The Way Out of Pain”, “Moving Deeply into the Now”,
“Mind Strategies for Avoiding the Now” etc. Tolle’s central message is signalled by
the title of the book under review. Here is a characteristic passage:
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the
primary focus of your life. Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to
the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future
 when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation. Always say
“yes” to the present moment. (35)

This theme was popularized in counter-cultural “spirituality” by books such as

Douglas Harding’s On Having No Head (1961), Alan Watts’ The Book on the Taboo
Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), and Ram Das’ Be Here Now (1971). Of
course, it has many antecedents, both in orthodox religious teachings, particularly
Buddhist, and in their modern dilutions and counterfeits.
There is no doubt that Tolle, and others like him, answer — or seem to answer —
to a widespread spiritual hunger in the contemporary Western world. There is also no
gainsaying the fact that Tolle is a writer of considerable intelligence and charm, and
some insight — his ruminations on the tyrannical regime of “time”, for instance, are
not without interest (see Chapter 3). Nor, as far as I can see, is there reason to suspect
Tolle of being a charlatan who shamelessly fleeces his followers in the manner of a
Rajneesh or a Jim Bakker; this is not to ignore the fact that his writings are finely
calibrated to an affluent Western market with an apparently insatiable appetite for the
quick “spiritual” fix, especially of the “self-help” and “you can have it all now”
variety.
In the early 1970s Whitall Perry examined various “prophets” of “new
consciousness”, among them Gerald Heard, Aurobindo, Gopi Krishna, Alan Watts and
Krishnamurti. Among the characteristics he discerned in their teachings, in varying
degree, were the following (here enumerated for easy reference):
…(i) a patent individualism, (ii) a scientific and moralistic humanism, (iii)
evolutionism, (iv) a relativistic “intuitionism”, (v) inability to grasp metaphysical and
cosmological principles and the realities of the Universal domain, (vi) a mockery
(latent or overt) of the sacred, (vii) a prodigal dearth of spiritual imagination, (viii) no
eschatological understanding, (ix) a pseudo-mysticism in the form of a “cosmic
consciousness”.2

Let us consider these charges in relation to Eckhart Tolle who, in many respects,
follows in the footsteps of the figures with whom Perry was concerned — quite self-
consciously so in the case of Krishnamurti. On the basis of the book in front of us, the
charges most easily sustained are (iv), (v), (vii), (viii) and (ix). The case is more
complicated with reference to (i) to (iii), while he can be declared (more or less)
innocent of (vi) — though some will think this lenient.
The most disabling limitation of Tolle’s work, from which much else inevitably
follows, is “the inability to grasp metaphysical and cosmological principles”: thence,
no real understanding of either Intellection or Revelation, no comprehension whatever
of the multiple states of Being, not even a glimmer of understanding of Tradition or
orthodoxy, no awareness of the metaphysical basis of the “transcendent unity of
religions”. As Frithjof Schuon and others have so often insisted, there can be no
effective spiritual therapy without an adequate metaphysic; this is to say that an
efficacious spiritual method must be rooted in a doctrine which can never be
exhaustive but must be sufficient. To put it even more simply, a way of spiritual

2
W. Perry in Studies in Comparative Religion, 6:3, 1972, p. 186.
transformation, such as is provided by all integral traditions, must be informed by an
adequate understanding of Reality. In the case of Eckhart Tolle we have neither
doctrine nor method — only a jumble of ideas, perceptions, and reflections, some
insightful, some attractive, many no more than the prejudices of the age dressed up in
“spiritual” guise. Throw in a few passing nods towards a heterogeneous collection of
techniques ransacked from Zen, yoga, Sufism, Christianity and modern psychology.
Tolle’s work actually confronts us with a case of what Schuon has called “the
psychological imposture” whereby the rights of religion are usurped, the spiritual is
degraded to the level of the psychic, and contingent psychic phenomena are elevated
to the boundless realm of the Spirit. This kind of psychism, infra-intellectual and anti-
spiritual, is endemic in New Age movements. And, to be sure, whatever distinctive
features Tolle’s work might evince, it belongs firmly in this camp.
No doubt some people have found a measure of guidance and temporary relief
from their immediate problems in Tolle’s books, though it is difficult to imagine them
leading to any long-term transformation. After all, one does not harvest figs from
thistles. Perhaps Tolle’s books, for all their limitations, have served to direct some
seekers towards deeper and more authentic sources of wisdom. This is to take the most
charitable view possible. On the other hand, there is a good deal here to set off the
alarm bells. Consider, for instance, this claim, one which has doubtless been
swallowed whole by many Tolle enthusiasts:
This book [The Power of Now] can be seen as a restatement for our time of that one
timeless spiritual teaching, the essence of all religions. It 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… (10).

A review of this scope does not allow us to dismantle this claim, nor to demonstrate its
implications and possible ramifications — though these should be clear enough. In our
time there have been many who have laid claim to some essential wisdom, surpassing
traditional religious forms. By now we should be wary of all such claims when they
are apparently based on nothing more than “inner experience” and when traditional
criteria are either flouted or ignored. Tolle’s work as a whole should be subjected to
the most severe interrogation in the light of Tradition.

published in Harry Oldmeadow, Touchstones of the Spirit,

Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2012, pp. 183-188.