Spiritual Author Eckhart Tolle\'s Latest

¶ … spiritual author Eckhart Tolle's latest book, "A New Earth," Tolle elaborates on the ideas he developed in the spiritual classic, "The Power of Now." The key theme is that you are not your mind. You are something much greater than your mind. The mind is merely an instrument of your body that you falsely identify with, believing your mind's activity to be "you." This process of mind-identification results in a false sense of self, referred to as the ego.

In A New Earth, Tolle expands the scope of the original book. In A New Earth, Tolle's aim is not only to help individuals correct their own spiritual deficiencies, but to explain the world's major problems as outgrowths of this deep-set spiritual deficiencies. He reveals the connection between ego-identification and war, economic exploitation, and the destruction of our environment.

For Tolle, the conflicts in the world are merely reflection of our own inner conflicts, created by our false sense of self. We look through the world through the prism of the "self," a "self" which is separate from the universe that it exists in. Because of this false view, we feel constantly threatened by our environment: people, animals, and Mother Earth itself. This false self gives birth to self-interest and self-preservation, which is the root of all violence and exploitation.

Tolle explains that the human race has evolved, through the effects of mind-identification, into a highly destructive and miserable species. Humans are the only species which can think. Animals and plants, on the other hand, cannot think, they can only be. This state of being is what human beings have lost through identification with the mind.

The development of our thinking faculties, Tolle explains, is the true meaning of the parable of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve existed in a state of grace, a state of "pure being," blissful and perfect. They fell from grace when they ate of the forbidden fruit, when they started to think. That is, when they started to prefer this over that, to worry about their future, or to dwell on the past. Thoughts can be likened to a voice in the head. This thinking is what prevents us from being, which is our natural state as human beings.

This thinking does not only make human beings miserable, it is leading them to pollute the very planet that they rely on for sustenance. However, Tolle points out, it is not Planet Earth that is at risk, as Planet Earth is not nearly as fragile as the human species. Rather, it is the human race that is at risk. By polluting the planet, humans are destroying their very capacity to exist on the planet.

Although humans cannot stay in this condition, neither can humans go back. Humans cannot revert to the stage of sub-conscious being in which animals and plants exist. To survive as a species, humans must rise above the mind. They must attain a higher state of consciousness, where mind is subservient to being, the instrument instead of the user.