Anyone reading Eckhart Tolle?

[serendipityspeaks]

I tried to read the Power of Now years ago but found it difficult to put into practice. Recently I came across 'A New Earth' and thought it would be more of the same, but this book really works for me, although I still have a few questions.

Anyone up for a discussion about their findings?

Sorry, I haven't read it yet as I'm only just starting to get into this. Marking place and looking fwd to discussion.

Read all his books; love them! They are great to reread and dip in and out of them, really help me focus when I need a little extra something. Power of Now is probably one of the best books ever in terms of changing perspective and outlook and for me has stopped all that living in the future and appreciating what I have here and now. I lent a copy to a friend - she thought it was too heavy. I think you have to be ready for it... enjoy!

I read a lot of Eckhart Tolle some years ago. It really helped me when I was going through a period of stress and anxiety. I found his books to be quite repetitive,however I have never forgotten what I learned through his books which I definitely still draw upon quite often.

Ooh I'd love to talk about The Power Of Now. Give me a minute to dig up my notes

You know me so well, crescent

I thought it best to start with quotes from the book. Here are two of my personal favourites:

"Even a stone has rudimentary consciousness or it would not be, and its atoms would disperse"

"As there is more consciousness in the body, its molecular structure actually becomes less dense"

Cote - isn't that a tautology, the cleverer you are the less dense you are? :)

LOL. Its molecular structure becomes "less dense". Who on earth can tell what that means, I wonder? Molecular structures don't become more or less dense.

At this point, I should point out that Eckhart Tolle has spent two years on a park bench as a homeless bum before writing this book and his claim to authority on all such sciency bits is that... erm... he spent lots of time thinking about this stuff.

so that's one to get from the Library then.

I was really looking forward to have a discussion about my "findings" but OP & other fans have disappeared.

Really disappointed that we won't get to talk about how menstrual pain is a woman's 'pain body' tapping into the collective suffering of all women in history and other gems from this book of surprising 'truths'

Well, I sometimes do feel I suffer for all womankind so this gentleman seems to have understood things deeply.

"Enlightenment... is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being"

Enlightenment is simply... what?

"The pain body consists of trapped life energy that has split off from your total energy field"

The... what?

Dunno but I'm having what he's having.

Oh, I LOVED this book, especially the thing about us being mostly air. And once you get that the mind is the cause of a lot of distress and that you can step beyond the ruminating on past and future, and just be, it makes life calmer. You are the part of the universe, same as the stars and the sun.

I like the stuff about psychological time too, and how we can use that for our goals, but not be driven by it.

Women and the pain body, I was less sure about - as quite a lot of it seemed to be about letting go of material aspirations, etc., injustice and just being, I thought this really means that women have less investment in public trappings of status and wealth, and less to lose by just being in the present. He does say you should change, if you can, situations you are unhappy in, but the emphasis on acceptance could be misconstrued where there is abuse or inequality. Hence, I was dubious about women's greater affinity with the pain body and greater ability to transcend it. Seemed a new way of saying women get more shit to deal with and can do so.

Also, wondered about the suggestion that the whole of humanity was responsible for atrocities, rather than just the perpetrators. From the name, I would guess, maybe wrongly, that he is German, so the legacy of the Holocaust is hanging over this. I think it is about understanding the past, not being defined by the past and looking for ways forward which do not damage you, or make you do damage in the present, and we all have a responsibility or the potential to do this, for the sake of humanity.

Caveat: I am tired, I read the book a while ago (no notes) so this may make NO sense. But has prompted me to dig it out - tomorrow.

"I LOVED this book, especially the thing about us being mostly air."

Erm... Except that we are not mostly air.

Air is about 70% Nitrogen and 20% Oxygen. That is not what people are made of. If it were, we would not be solid.

What the book was referring to was that building blocks of atoms are spaced out within the atom, so you could say that everything (not just people) is made more of vacuum than electrons and protons. You are still not made of air, though. Or emptiness. You are made of atoms that make up molecules that make up you and everything else you have ever seen.

I could not really deal with Eckhart, I tried but I found him too severe.
I tried.. gave up.
But I'm much more Buddhist than whatever Eckhart Tolle is.

Anyway, to get another view of consciousness, like the stone having some kind of consciousness .. consciousness being part of matter as it were, there are some philosophers that talk about this too. I found Galen Starwson very clear: panpsychism
Not woo although some people might find it way too much 'out there'.

If anyone thinks a stone is conscious, that is their faith imho. Nutty faith, but they are entitled to it.

What is laughable is when Echart Tolle says "A stone is conscious because if it wasn't, its atoms would disperse", which just shows that he has no knowledge, none whatsoever, about what an atom is and how subatomic particles attract each other.

It is like saying the earth, the sun, and all planets & their moons must be conscious because they wouldn't otherwise stay together in the solar system. The ignorance behind that statement is shocking.

Of course it is not the sort of thing you learn by gazing at the trees while living on a park bench for years, so the author's lack of knowledge is understandable

It's a possible solution in the mind body problem though. Ans it is not saying that a stone IS conscious but if consciousness has a material base and only arises when an organism has a certain level of complex organisation, then there is consciousness in things you would not normally attribute it too. Not on an experiential level but as part of matter.
I think it's cool. Listen to the man Cote, he's Peter Strawson's son and a respectable philosopher in his own right. Has a nice voice too and Nigel Warburton is always a pleasure to listen to.

"Listen to the man Cote, he's Peter Strawson's son and a respectable philosopher in his own right"

I try not to listen to people who pretend to know the secrets of mind and body, when they are demonstrably, outrageously wrong on what they say. Like, when he says that the molecular structure of the body becomes "less dense" as there is "more consciousness in the body". Huh? Less dense? Do you realise that is not possible, even theoretically?

I don't think Eckhart Tolle is a philosopher and haven't come across a source calling him one. He has theories based on falsehoods which he has been successful in spreading, possibly because the general level of scientific knowledge among people who read self-help books is so low. That is all. He is not much better than a con artist, imho.

Not that I care whose son he is, but are you sure that Ulrich Leonard Tolle born in Lünen, Germany is the son of Sir Peter Frederick Strawson who lived in Oxford all his adult life? I think you are thinking of Galen Strawson, another philosopher and P F Strawson's son.

"if consciousness has a material base and only arises when an organism has a certain level of complex organisation"

The key word there is organism - i.e. a life form. A stone is not an organism and it is not alive. And it is not "complex". There are complex molecules that make up inanimate objects, but those are not organisms and they are not conscious either.

I am not talking about Eckhart Tolle as a philosopher, I am talking about Galen Strawson.
Didn't realise you would get all knickertwisted.

Ah OK. I only read & replied to that one post which didn't mention Galen Strawson

I meant listen to the podcast, which I linked as panpsychism in my post above. It is a nice philosophy bites thing, well worth the 15 odd minutes.
Anyway.
I like the funny twists some philosophers come up with but that's got nothing to do with Mr Tolle.

at the conscious stones.

His basic points that you should enjoy the moment for what it is, and that if you can do something right now about problem X then do it, otherwise don't worry about it, are always worth reminding oneself of.

But the rest of the book is pretty vacuous, as I recall. And very self-absorbed... he doesn't look at earning a living, running one's life or caring for other people. I kept wondering who was subsidising him to live on a park bench for two years.

Also, this whole thing about living in the moment... fine, when the moment's good, but when it's shitty I derive great comfort from thinking about other things. I don't want to be like a tiny baby that is happy when it's happy and hysterically miserable and angry when it isn't, because it has no wider concept of time and the world. The Tolle approach denigrates or ignores many of the unique joys of life as a conscious adult human.