The Power of Now is a book by spiritual author Eckhart Tolle.
Initially published in 1997 as Tolle's first book, has been on the NY Times best seller list after Oprah Winfrey highly recommended it on her show. The book is a self-help and/or spiritually focused book that is of no specific religious denomination. The book starts out with Eckhart's recalling his initial transformative experience in 1980. The book covers topics including personal and collective forms of: the ego and the emotional 'pain body'.
The book teaches that while our use of time has a practical aspect for survival purposes, that most people are lost in time and only peripherally aware of the present moment, the Now. In doing so, we make the Now primarily a means to an end in the future and then we become what Tolle calls unconscious. In this unconscious mind-state, we are easily controlled, live in fear, and manifest other egoic behaviors. He explains that to the ego, this future is going to save us (retirement, graduation, job promotion, etc), and also we think that the future is going to kill us in our inevitable death. This paradox of our use of time adds to our anxieties and fears.
Tolle also talks about how our ego also over-amplifies the past as 'my story.' The ego identifies with its story so it can have a sense of self. It does not matter to the ego if this story is happy or sad. In the book he says that primarily our unhappiness is our own creation as a rejection of the present moment.
In the book Tolle also talks about the emotional 'pain body' explaining that it is emotional pain from the past that builds in the body. He gives advice on how to free ourselves from the pain body as well. He explains that the ego and pain body help to feed each other in a cycle of torment that we inflict upon ourselves.
Author Eckhart Tolle.
Eckhart Tolle (born Germany, 1948 as Ulrich Tolle) is a contemporary spiritual teacher and writer on spirituality.
Biography
He was born in Germany but lived with his father in Spain from about age 13 until he moved to England in his early 20s. He did not attend formal schooling after age 13, but rather took language and other courses. He attended night colleges to obtain the necessary entrance requirements for university in England. Tolle was educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge.
At the age of 29, he experienced what he considered a spiritual transformation that marked the beginning of his function as a counselor and spiritual teacher. He now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Teachings
Eckhart Tolle claims to have attained enlightenment at the age of 29 after suffering long periods of depression. Tolle's non-fiction bestseller, The Power of Now, emphasizes the importance of being aware of the present moment as a way of not being lost in thought. In Tolle's view, the present is the gateway to a heightened sense of peace. "Being in the now" also brings about an awareness that is beyond the mind. This awareness helps in transcending "the pain-body" that is created by the identification of the mind and ego with the body. His later book, A New Earth, further claims to explore the structure of the human ego and how this acts to distract people from their present experience of the world. His other works include Stillness Speaks, a book that modernises the ancient sutra form.
Influences
Eckhart Tolle is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition. Influences which are alluded to in The Power of Now are the writings of Meister Eckhart, Advaita Vedanta, A Course in Miracles, mystical Islam, Sufism, and Rumi's poetry and Zen Buddhism's Lin-chi (Rinzai) school. The book also interprets sayings of Jesus from the Bible.
Some disciples of the Australian teacher Barry Long see Long's influence in Tolle's writings as well. Tolle attended Long's seminars in London in the mid-1980s, some years after his own self-described awakening. Tolle himself mentions briefly in an interview with John Parker [1] that by listening to and having some conversation with Long, he understood things more deeply. In the same interview Tolle also mentions the influence of the Western-born Buddhist monk, Ajahn Sumedho, and also speaks passionately of his appreciation of the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti and Ramana Maharshi. He sees his own teaching as enabling the respective messages of the two latter to merge as one. (Read on...)
Ref: The Power of Now From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ref: Eckhart Tolle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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