I have a sort of system worked out for books that I read based on recommendations. The first time I get the rec from a close friend, I add the book to a list. The second time I get the rec, I move the book to the top of the list. The third time I get the rec, I buy the book and read it.
Needless to say, I received the three recommendations for both of Tolle’s most popular books, The Power of Now and A New Earth.
I finished The Power of Now months ago and it was a transformative experience. I will say that the book was not impactful to my worldview in the rational way to which I am accustomed from most of my reading. In fact, some of Tolle’s main teachings are about how thinking has become a disease and why we should not “identify” with our minds. Therefore, any rational counter-arguments to Tolle’s teachings are, to some extent, just missing the point.
I do still take issue with how Tolle references Christian scripture and interprets certain passages in ways that support his theories while offering seemingly little explanation and no citing of outside sources to support his interpretations. But we won’t get into that now.
The main point of this post is to break down some knowledge bombs from several consecutive pages that I just read last night from the beginning of “Chapter Seven: Finding Who You Truly Are” in A New Earth. Seriously, at several different points I had to close the book, lie it on my chest, and exhale just to recover from the impact of each one of these knowledge bombs.
Here are some of the main points before we dive in:
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“Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind” (Tolle 186)
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“You are not the ego” (Tolle 189)
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“Acknowledging the good that is already in your life is the foundation for all abundance” (Tolle 190)
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“You cannot receive what you don’t give. Outflow determines inflow” (Tolle 191)
Now let’s jump into the line-by-line. I’ll provide the original quote from Tolle in quotation marks and then add some of my own thoughts underneath each quote …
1. “Knowing yourself deeply has nothing to do with whatever ideas are floating around in your mind. Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind” (Tolle 186).
This one probably requires a bit more explanation than just these two sentences, especially in order to fully understand what Tolle means by ‘Being’ (notice the capital ‘B’). It gets at the metaphysical worldview that Tolle subscribes to, for which he lays the groundwork in the first chapter of The Power of Now. Here is that chapter from a random website if you’d like to read it now.
Here’s the gist: “Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. ”
I am admittedly still trying to wrap my own mind around this concept. It is worth noting that Tolle definitely isn’t alone in having this idea. Something similar seems to be a tenet of Eastern thought. For example, in Hinduism, there is a concept called atman, which refers to the non-material self that is distinct from the mind and the body.
Bringing it back to practical terms: I’m still honestly not 100% sure about what is meant by ‘Being,’ but I do know that it has been very helpful for my mental and emotional health to think of myself as being part of something bigger than myself, as opposed to a separate entity that is trapped in my own mind / body / ego and cut off from the rest of existence.
2. “Your sense of who you are determines what you perceive as your needs and what matters to you in life—and whatever matters to you will have the power to upset and disturb you. You can use this as a criterion to find out how deeply you know yourself. What matters to you is not necessarily what you say or believe, but what your actions and reactions reveal as important and serious to you. So you may want to ask yourself the question: What are the things that upset and disturb me? If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small” (Tolle 186-187).
The ‘criterion’ that Tolle mentions has become a very useful and simple mental / emotional / spiritual exercise for me. It works like this: anytime I am experiencing a negative emotion (anger, worry, fear, anxiety, stress, sadness), I ask myself, “What is causing me to experience this emotion?” In almost all cases it ends up being an attachment that I have to something.
For example, when I worry that the stock market is going to crash, I trace back that worry to my attachment to money. When I fear that my low back pain might be something more serious like a tumor, I trace back that fear to my attachment to my life. Those two examples are pretty serious, but there are definitely smaller things, like getting upset when my bank charges me an overdraft fee (again, attachment to money) or when my flight is delayed (attachment to arriving at a certain time).
3. “You are not the ego, so when you become aware of the ego in you, it does not mean you know who you are—it means you know who you are not. But it is through knowing who you are not that the greatest obstacle to truly knowing yourself is removed” (Tolle 189).
My understanding here is that, even though we should not identify with our egos (according to Tolle), there is still value in knowing your ego, or at least becoming aware of it.
Maybe I have to go backward before I can go forward? I have spent most of my life identifying completely with my ego and, as a result, the ways in which I interact with the world have been constructed according to my ego—how I think, how I feel, my habits, my core beliefs, etc. It seems like it would be very difficult to drop all of that all at once and then pick up right away with completely identifying with Being. What would I do? Just immediately start sitting in ceaseless meditation?
Still, I do not fully understand why “knowing who you are not” is the greatest obstacle to knowing yourself. On this page of the book, Tolle does not fully explain this.
Maybe it’s because there are not many obstacles, but there is at least this one very big obstacle that is the ego. And it’s the obstacle in which almost everyone gets trapped.
Maybe it’s our natural state to know ourselves as rooted in Being, and that’s what would happen automatically, but our egos get to us before the natural process can take its course.
So it’s not so much that you need to know exactly who you are not. In other words, you don’t have to perform rigorous psychoanalysis on yourself and attend countless therapy sessions. You don’t need to know your ego perfectly. You just need to know, generally, that you have an ego and your ego is not you.
Side note: ‘ego,’ similar to ‘Being,’ is another one of the terms that Tolle uses frequently that is important to understand. I won’t go into it here, but a quick Google search should give you an idea.
4. Nobody can tell you who you are. It would just be another concept, so it would not change you. Who you are requires no belief. In fact, every belief is an obstacle. It does not even require your realization, since you already are who you are. But without realization, who you are does not shine forth into this world. It remains in the unmanifested …” (Tolle 189).
Sometimes spirituality seems lazy to me. Maybe that’s just because I was born and raised in capitalist America. But what compels us to “shine forth?” Why not just be?
I’ve heard some people say, “You’re a human being, not a human doing.” What would it look like just to be? I guess there is always doing. Just by inhabiting a body we are doing. We are breathing, seeing, sitting, etc. What is the least amount of doing possible? Sitting in silent meditation?
5. “Acknowledging the good that is already in your life is the foundation for all abundance” (Tolle 190).
For example, I focus on my low back pain, but the rest of my body is healthy. Instead of focusing on my low back pain, I can focus on the health in the rest of my body, which will invite abundance into my life.
This one seems similar to just being grateful. It seems so simple, but I always forget.
6. “You cannot receive what you don’t give. Outflow determines inflow. Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you already have, but unless you allow it to flow out, you won’t even know that you have it” (Tolle 191).
This makes me think of something I realized one day when I was in college. I remember wishing that people would ask me to hang out more—going out to drinks, going to a party, going on a date. Then I realized, other people are probably thinking the exact same thing. So what if I become that person who asks those other people to go out? In this way, I would be receiving by giving. I still get to the same place: going out. Instead of just waiting for other people to ask me, I’m the one doing the asking.
Giving is creative, I find. The more you give and put yourself out there, the more that comes back to you. I don’t necessarily think of this so much like giving $10 to charity and then expecting to get $10 back in another area of your life. It’s way more simple than that. Like maybe I stop to help someone on the sidewalk and then we get to talking and become friends. I gave some of my time to help and received a new friend.
I do wonder if there are limits to this. Can you give too much? What if you are giving so much that you neglect yourself? Can you give more by taking better care of yourself? Maybe this is getting too technical about a general concept.
7. “Most people define themselves through the content of their lives. Whatever you perceive, experience, do, think, or feel is content … What is there other than content? That which enables the content to be—the inner space of consciousness” (Tolle 193).
This is one of Tolle’s main points. We are not the “content” of our lives. We are consciousness.
8. “When we go into a forest that has not been interfered with by man, our thinking mind will see only disorder and chaos all around us. It won’t even be able to differentiate between life (good) and death (bad) anymore since everywhere new life grows out of rotting and decaying matter” (Tolle 194-195).
Not seeing death as “bad” has been a big one for me lately. What is, is what is. If I am to die, that is what is. And what is, is bigger than me. I am a part of all this, and it will all continue on, even after I am gone. In some way, I will even continue to be a part of it.
In a very physical way that is easily understood by the modern scientific mind: the atoms that make up my body will not disappear when I die. My body will decompose and the atoms that were previously a part of my body will become part of the soil or something else. This is actually happening all the time already. I lose atoms when my hair falls out and my skin cells fall off. I gain atoms when I eat and drink.
As for the less tangible parts of “me,” like my mind and my soul, I am less sure of how they will persist. I will live on in pieces of art that I have created and relationships that I have formed.
But trying to hold on to ways in which “I” will persist even after my death is missing the point, because “I” am neither my body nor my brain. I am Being. Everything is Being. I am not separate from Being. And Being will go on, even as the egoic concept of myself changes forms.
9. “The mind is more comfortable in a landscaped park because it has been planned through thought; it has not grown organically. There is an order here that the mind can understand. In the forest, there is an incomprehensible order that to the mind looks like chaos. You cannot understand it through thought, but you can sense it when you let go of thought, become still and alert, and don’t try to understand or explain. Only then can you be aware of the sacredness of the forest. As soon as you sense that hidden harmony, that sacredness, you realize you are not separate from it, and when you realize that, you become a conscious participant in it. In this way, nature can help you become realigned with the wholeness of life” (Tolle 195).
“Nature can help you become realigned with the wholeness of life.” Boom! That’s a knowledge bomb if I’ve ever heard one.
This reminds me of a book I’d like to recommend to anyone who wants to go deeper on the concept of being one with nature: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
10. “This is illustrated in the story of a wise man who won an expensive car in a lottery. His family and friends were very happy for him and came to celebrate. ‘Isn’t it great!’ they said. ‘You are so lucky.’ The man smiled and said ‘Maybe.’ For a few weeks he enjoyed driving the car. Then one day a drunken driver crashed into his new car at an intersection and he ended up in the hospital, with multiple injuries. His family and friends came to see him and said, ‘That was really unfortunate.’ Again the man smiled and said, ‘Maybe.’ While he was still in the hospital, one night there was a landslide and his house fell into the sea. Again his friends came the next day and said, ‘Weren’t you lucky to have been here in hospital.’ Again he said, ‘Maybe.’ The wise man’s ‘maybe’ signifies a refusal to judge anything that happens. Instead of judging what is, he accepts it and so enters into conscious alignment with the higher order” (Tolle 196-197).
I wrote a poem about this (it’s a work in progress):
How can you be so sure
A wrong turn won’t be right
How come you grip
The steering wheel so tight
Watching lines on maps
And planning where to go
It helps to know
That the road will have its way
A detour
Might save a crash
And a pit stop
Might change your life
So step on the gas surely
Because going is the only way
But maybe just
Loosen up a bit
11. “J. Krishnamutri, the great Indian philosopher and spiritual teacher, spoke and traveled almost continuously … At one of his talks in the later part of his life, he surprised his audience by asking, ‘Do you know to know my secret?’ … ‘This is my secret,’ he said. ‘I don’t really mind what happens'” (Tolle 198).
In my mind, I immediately test this ‘secret’ to the fullest possible extent: Do I mind if I die? If I’m being honest with myself, I think a lot of the smaller things that I mind about are in some way connected to my attachment to my own life.
I haven’t read Mark Manson’s book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, but I have read this article by him. I think Manson is halfway to what Krishnamutri realized.
Source: Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2006.