The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The subject of this simply written book is your identity. Eckhart Tolle writes in a question and answer format about the subject that makes the subject — identity, ego, self. You can lose yourself, and you probably should because that isn’t you. But you probably won’t do it (and there’s nothing wrong with not trying to) if you aren’t already unhappy and suffering.
This book won’t change who you are though, at least not from the point of view of everything. You’ll still die. You won’t fly. You won’t gain immortality… although you will be a part of the universe that is a part of itself, as you are. Really, the book won’t change anything except your mind. If it’s true, you will alter your consciousness and lose the trappings of this world. Of course, losing your identity and losing your attachment of the image of yourself that you have as yourself also means losing all the things we struggle for: success, recognition, wealth. What is the difference anyway? On the one hand, you could find happiness, although happiness never lasts forever, because happiness requires conditions that change. Being with the change, or not being at all, as Tolle might write, is what will really give you inner peace. The struggle, he says, is simply that trying to gain inner peace itself will cause you to lose it… as your ideas of inner peace will also disturb true inner peace.
His answer to how is simply the title of this book. Be fully present, not in your dreams, your fantasies… and not in your ideas of what now is… which is what I found so fascinating… much of what he says already coincides yes, with Eastern philosophy, but also Western philosophy, namely through the works of Hegel. The actual function of unrealizing thought is undoing the terms x and it’s negation, which of course is also the root of identity creation (I am X, Others are not-X). But that’s enough mechanics.
You probably also won’t read this book if you are already content. And you won’t pick it up if you think you already know what you will read! And if you identify with the oppositions inherent within thought you probably won’t see the common ground he speaks of because the split between the two will seem so natural, there won’t be any common ground at all. That’s okay though, it’s part of the dialectic before synthesis. If it works for you, in some way, you will like it. If it can’t work for you, you won’t like it.
But then again, all books pretty much work like that.
