50 reviews for The Power of Now

The Rebecca Review
Rated 3 out of 5
September 23, 2024
3.0 out of 5 stars Peace of Mind through Controlling the Mind - A form of enlightenment It is obvious to me that Eckhart Tolle is a student of many religions and that was how he was able to write this book. Basically the ideas in this book are based on Zen Buddhism, Sufism, Hinduism and Jesus' teachings. The main core of this book is the idea that humans are really a form of consciousness which Eckhart Tolle seems to believe is God. So really what he is teaching is that humans are actually God but they don't realize it. This is a New Age belief that is quite prominent in the literature. This distracts from all the other good things in this book which seem based on some advanced understanding of psychology. So if you take that one motivation out of the picture you have a book that tries to assist the reader in solving some very human problems.The reason Eckhart Tolle actually awakened to a new reality was because he was in such deep suffering that I think there was no other option. I too awakened after years of continuous and intense psychological suffering which started for me when my ex boyfriend broke up with me. Six years later I was still crying and upset. This seems unreal now but it was my reality. Finally I got the idea in my "head" that I didn't have to suffer anymore. I could decide to get over the situation. 25 years after this breakup I still remember how it felt but I'm completely a different person. I also think that committing more deeply to my Christian faith and becoming a real follower of Jesus was key to me waking up completely. Eckhart even says that salvation is a way to become Enlightened. Although I think Christian enlightenment is different in that we give ourselves over to God's love as we accept we can't save ourselves, only Jesus can save us. In Buddhism it is almost like you have to save yourself.So I think Eckhart Tolle is right in some regards when he addresses the fact that humans are consumed with thinking and don't feel their true essence. Except Christians believe that essence is a "soul" which is conscious and eternal. So a slightly different way of looking at consciousness. If this book used different words for things it might even seem like a Christian book being that Eckhart talks a lot about the peace of God. And what he seems to be talking about in my understanding is a feeling of love towards God.If you are a Christian reading this book it will be a bit of a minefield. If you are Buddhist you will probably understand it quite well.My question is, what good is a feeling of complete peace without the knowledge that you will live eternally in heaven? Eckhart of course doesn't seem to believe that heaven is a real place. He also doesn't seem to think Jesus was a real person, even though he quotes him constantly. I don't think his form of enlightenment guarantees anything beyond this life. The type of enlightenment spoken of in this book seems a temporary solution to an eternal problem. Just because you learn how to control your mind and become happier doesn't mean you are God.I have a good way to find out if you are God or not:1. Sit quietly in a chair and take two deep breaths.2. Ask yourself: "When is the last time I created a universe with 100 billion galaxies?"3. Think very deeply then answer.4. If the answer is "never" BINGO you are not God.5. Take two more deep breaths and realize how glad you are that the real God is in control.If you want to know how to be permanently Enlightened I suggest this book: done.: What most religions don't tell you about the Bible ~The Rebecca Review 62 people found this helpful
SBYogaman
Rated 3 out of 5
September 23, 2024
3.0 out of 5 stars False Authority In the midst of a move recently I sifted through my book collection and before giving this away read it for the first time since I’d bought it many years ago. I’d quite forgotten the book’s faults and how those faults have compounded with time.The book is heavily derivative on other sources and it shows: I’d estimate about 50% A Course In Miracles, 25% Krishnamurti and 25% other sources (mostly buddhist I would say) overlaid with the usual bong water phrasing: “opposite energy polarity”, “blockages of energy in the body” and the like. Admittedly he’s quite open about this and the source material is paraphrased quite well but why have an intermediary at all?While I have nothing against and in fact heartily endorse the last two sources it’s the first and primary one I’m going to examine here.I’m quite familiar with A Course In Miracles, having studied this christian based psychotherapy (though I’m an atheist) extensively a decade or more ago and while there are some useful insights hidden in its voluminous and rambling text - just enough to keep reading it - I regard it at its heart as imposture or delusion. Continuous immersion in it - and the community it supports - just like in any of the more formal religions will tend to hypnotize the mind and impair reasoning. I believe this is what has happened to Tolle. Someone who bases their life philosophy on it at the very least has suspect judgement.Like Marianne Williamson before him he’s found A Course In Miracles followed by Oprah to be a route to riches. Tolle is essentially a new age entrepreneur complete with his own creation myth and cadre of fanboys. Alternately challenged and flattered in time-tested style his audience have lapped it up, helped in the US at least by the book’s christian theme and celebrity followers.The peddling of life after death fairy tales also helps. It’s been clearly shown by cognitive scientists like Daniel Dennett that every thought has its physical correlate in the brain - there is no intangible being existing outside of it. The mind is impaired in direct proportion to injury or deterioration of the brain. Effectively the mind is the brain. When the brain dies you die. But no one wants to hear this.The book’s apocalyptic tone is also fairly standard for the genre - and of course offering itself as the antidote. Every age in modern times has believed that theirs was the end of times - and remember the book is now 20 years old. In fact objective living conditions have improved immeasurably worldwide and will continue to improve. We’re no closer to annihilation than at any other time. Yes there are nuclear weapons but also more capacity to resist bacterial and viral threats - the Black Death killed about half the population of Europe in the middle ages. Though it all the human mind is largely unchanged. Technological change has meant losing some serenity perhaps but also gaining sophistication and opportunity. Able to read books like this for example.This kind of book does a disservice to their audience by insisting on progression through catalytic events to result in the finality of an enlightened being once and for all. From my experience there are no enlightened people only enlightened thinking; the best person imaginable can be prone to quite shocking thoughts and conversely for the worst person imaginable. There is overlap between every human being and never any kind of finality to psychological progression but only a process; issues will continue to repeat but if we’re lucky smoother and less traumatic each time. There is a human (egoic) need for certainty that paradoxically acts against any progress.So the book is derivative and has shaky foundations - what’s the harm if some find its psychological truths helpful? Doesn’t he express them quite well? He does indeed but I still don’t get the impression it’s entirely “lived in”, experiential, straight from the horse’s mouth as it were, unlike say, Kabat-Zinn or Krishnamurti. This can’t help but give the book a false authority. Still any kind of authority even if it’s fake is apparently essential for the cult of personality. The public flock to this kind of guru-worship and always will.I don’t wish to be unfair. These days after decades of reading I don’t get too much out of “spiritual” (whatever that means) books - I prefer to study the mind first hand and apply it to a daily health program that includes a mindfulness practice - but there were some passages that made Tolle’s book useful. The section on addiction and relationships is particularly good. He’d make an excellent marriage counselor - and that may well have been his true calling. He’s intelligent and if you ignore some of the more dubious assertions he can be a quite wise if sometimes unreliable guide to the mental landscape we all travel through daily.Giving the book a rating is difficult; if you’ve never read anything like this before, just religious type mumbo-jumbo then four stars might be appropriate, a gateway to more solid foundations. You’ll benefit from reading it at least a bit. If the book is instead an alternative and a blockage to more honest, dare I say more adult authors like Anthony De Mello, Krishnamurti, Jon Kabat-Zinn or even more distant figures like Emerson and Thoreau then I’d give it a punitive two stars. In any case ultimately we have to put aside the books and courses and discover the truth for ourselves. 16 people found this helpful
Someonereallyimportant
Rated 3 out of 5
September 23, 2024
3.0 out of 5 stars I had a disturbing thought about the motives behind this book and more.... First, I have had what felt like a true fight between good and evil for my soul in recent years. I had wife who insisted on following the mormon religion, which divided my family for years. My child chose not to follow the mormon beliefs, but in the end the marriage ended. In the years following my divorce, I was tempted by not one but several women who were willing to give me anything to hang onto me. They would try to bring other women into our bed and they used sex to tempt and control me. Things got progressively worse as I would break things off with each woman, only to be tempted by another exactly like her. The new women would pretend to be Christians, good people, moral people, but in the end, they were just evil. The severity of each woman's revenge grew in intensity 10 times more than the one before for leaving them. Ultimately, I was left broken and beaten down. I have spent the last two years receiving medical treatment and trying to just get back on top of my life again. I looked to the Power of Now as a way to suppress the pain and move forward. It seemed to be helping and I found myself buying books for strangers, telling people about it at every turn, both online and in person.I have been told on multiple occasions that I must be a very important person to have survived the horrible things that were done to me in the fight for good and evil. I would take this as nearly insulting, because I was a broken man at the lowest point in my life. It seemed patronizing and made me feel as though I should be outraged that someone would even suggest that the indignities done to me were part of a plan for my life. Violence was forced upon me with last two women I dated as they tried to see that I paid for not wanting to be with them anymore. This violence resulted in chronic pain and multiple surgeries to repair the damage. Of course, these women enlisted the help of new men in their lives to teach me a lesson, because women control men in ways we may never even want to openly admit.In my attempts to erase the painful memories, I started reading the "Power of Now". One night I woke in pain while I was having a vivid dream about good and evil, where I was left with this shocking insight to the possible real motive behind the book. The author talks about the existence of another entity inside of us as though it is just a common thing. More than that, it says we should learn to NOT LISTEN TO OUR OWN THOUGHTS, saying that in time we might even eventually laugh at the voice inside our head instead of listening to it. I thought for a moment about an exorcism movie I had seen where the priests fought to reach the real person, who's body was taken over by a demon. This had special implications with me, because in the last few years I have had many lapses in time where I had gone to the store in the middle of the night or written emails, etc. that seemed to not even be coming from me. It was blamed on the head injury that I had received and at other times it was blamed on sleep medications like Ambien and Triazolam. They called it sleep walking, but the bottom line is that I felt violated every time I woke to a morning after being someone else for a night with no memories at all. You walk and talk to people as though you are in a zombie state. I went as far as to give Ambien to one of these women who had taken part in the destruction of my life one night. She was awake and looking into the camera with dead (possessed looking) eyes, as she proudly told me the real story about dozen of lies she had told me over the years. She had cheated on many occasions, while launching verbal attacks on me to divert the attention off her. On the Ambien, this girl told me the truth about everything with a smile on her face. With the pride of a demon, she would smile as she told me about how hot the other men's orgasms were. She used words that would be as painful as they could be as she mockingly told me all of these stories with very vivid details. This was not SLEEP WALKING. It was the act of a evil entity. It was like looking into the face of evil. I broke all ties with her and later she was launching another attack on me about how delusional I was to believe all of the things I did about her. I told her that I had a video of her confessing everything in great detail, to which she replied that I was a (cursing) liar and to (cursing) prove it. I sent her video and she was shocked. She reacted with such disbelief as she watched the video. It was her, telling me as harshly as she could ever evil thing she had ever done to me, that she always claimed were just me being delusional when I would question her about where she had been or what she had been doing. She could only tell me that she didn't know why she said those things, but that maybe she was just screwing with me or something. I have always believed that this girl had given in years ago to the forces of evil and she claims to be an atheist. If Ambien could make someone who lived a life full of secrets suddenly look into a camera and boldly tell 20 sex stories in great details that had happened and with no other goal but to see pain on my face as she told me while smiling, then what is the true purpose of meds like Ambien and Triazolam? Is it all just tools of evil to peck away our soul's ability to be in charge of our body?I am throwing allot at you at once, but keep reading.It is my belief that our souls are the entity that is primarily in control of our body, but that there are other entities constantly trying to take over, like in the possession stories. In the possession stories, some other entity takes over the body at their will, not your will. The demons kill and abuse others. When the person wakes later, they have no memory of anything happening. Anyone who ever took something Ambien and woke to weird things that had been done by them with zero memory or first hand accounts, will see this connection now and (like me) are feeling a chill run up their spines.The forces of evil are about deception. They are about manipulation. What does any of this have to do with the Power of Now book? We are knowing taking medications that may in fact be allowing these other entities to take over our bodies. Then I read this book, which is supposed to be about ending suffering. It says that we must be open it. It says we should lay down our will and not believe that we are the ones who are supposed to be controlling our bodies. The book encourages us to "stop thinking". It tells us to empty our mind and ignore the voices in our head that are questioning love and life. It uses words like enlightenment and oneness to shame us or peer pressure us into falling into submission. The fact that the author openly talks about other entities inside of us is powerful. It says the only difference between us and a crazy person talking to themselves as they walk down the streets (which we have all seen), is that we have these conversations inside of our head everyday. They don't keep it inside their heads, but aside from that, we are the same. He says over and over that they voices are real. He tells us to ignore the voice that we "think is in charge" and learn to numb your mind to the point of letting our "true identity" take over. Does anyone else see a problem with any of this?I do not have a great education. I am communicating this as clearly as I can. I think I am supposed to tell you all to look at this from from this point of view. Are we becoming enlightened? Or are we following instructions to lay down our will and let another entity take over our bodies? Why don't we remember the things we say or do while on Ambien or other similar medications? Do they artificially have the same results? Do they force our true identity to lay down control to another entity? People have been charged with crimes committed while on these medications. What would a demon do if they could joy ride with your body for a night? When I first read the book "The Power of Now", I felt a wisdom that did not seem possible to come from a single man. When I heard the audio recordings of Eckhart Tolle reciting his book, they sounded like the words of God. His voice is hypnotizing and anyone who has heard it, will have to admit that. The immensity of his pure and simple logic was frightening to me on some level, but I read on. Now, I fear that they are all tools of the forces of evil, trying to get us to lay down our free will. God gave us free will and I have heard that evil cannot exist anywhere that it was not first invited. I don't even like to watch Hollywood movies about evil, because that is a form of us inviting evil into our lives.I don't honestly know my role yet in this fight between good and evil. I honestly don't even know if I am the good guy or the bad guy yet. I am just reporting my insights as clearly as I can for you to consider, because I have been moved to do so. I am honestly fearful that by me going public with this that I will be inviting evil into my life. I have no intentions except to tell what I have witnessed and the enlightenment that I recently experienced about it all leads me to suspect deception. Someone told me awhile ago to question books like "The Power of Now", because even though they talk about the empowering us with true enlightenment, they may ultimately be leading us down a road of deception. These people told me to only trust the Bible and my first reaction was that they were being purist and that anything that leads us to internal peace can only be a good thing. Now, I fear they may have been right.There is no doubt we are living in the final days. 200,000 people died in the earthquake of Haiti, thousands more in the tsunami in 2004 that shook the world, the tsunami that claimed the nation of Japan, and so on. Japan now has a person committing suicide every 15 minutes nationally after the tsunami. Its their number one cause of death nationally since the tsunami hit. Japan continues to be rocked by earthquakes every week, so does the Philippines, New Zealand, The United States, and Europe. Look up how many volcanoes have erupted world wide in the last year alone.Look up Supernova info regarding the Red giant star Betelgeuse. Look up the Great Rift. Its a black hole in our solar system. Why do I mention both of these? Because the Betelgeuse (ancient name for Satan too) supernova is predicted to happen as early as next year and the earth is also supposed to travel dangerously close to the great rift next year. Next year happens to be 2012, aka end of Mayan calender, etc. Its really all just too much to be ignored any longer isn't it? Personally, I think its all happening right under our feet. If a day to God like a thousand years to us, then today may be the day of reckoning. In fact, all of these terrible disasters have all happened in just a few years of each other.Revelation 1:12 talks about opening the sixth seal. When the "SIXTH SEAL" was broken John tells us that there was a "GREAT EARTHQUAKE," and the "SUN BECAME BLACK AS SACKCLOTH OF HAIR," and the "MOON BECAME AS BLOOD," and the "STARS OF HEAVEN FELL TO THE EARTH," and the "HEAVEN DEPARTED AS A SCROLL," and "EVERY MOUNTAIN AND ISLAND WERE MOVED OUT OF THEIR PLACE." The great earthquake is basically happening now. If you don't believe it, look at the US Geological Service's website [...] and you will see a 7 day window to world quakes. If you look at a larger window for several years, its frightening how much is happening right under our feet. It says the moon will become as blood, which has happened many times in history from earthquake gases and volcanic ash released into the atmosphere. Here is just one example [...]. As for the heavens departing like a scroll and the sun becoming black as a sackcloth, what do you think would happen if we went into a black hole in the universe? The stars would fall from heaven? The black hole would make everything fall from heaven, but the star suspiciously named Betelgeuse imploding, becoming a second sun in our own sky for a week or so before dimming to just a glowing cloud of smoke in the night sky would also sufficiently be described in this way. Certainly, every mountain and island would be moved of their place, but again this has already happened in our poles being shifted by earthquakes of recent years. The entire nation of Japan was shifted 3 feet and the poles moved again.I am not an overly religious person really. I do not preach or even talk opening about this stuff often, but for some reason I am being compelled to share my insights. I have many questions about all of it and that is all I am saying to you. Question Everything. "The Power of Now" may just be another cleverly disguised tool of evil and I only want you to consider that as you read or listen to it. Are you being given instructions to lay down your free will and let another entity take over your body? Lookup "Is Ambien creating a nation of zombies?" on Youtube. It talks about people "sleep driving" and "Sleep walking". It talks about crimes being committed and people even walking off buildings. What would a demon do if they had control of your body. God gave us free will and Eve chose to be disobedient to God. He gave them one rule and she broke it. In keeping with the nature of women in general, they want to be heard by their man. They want to bring knowledge into the relationship and to be valued for that. I think that Eve truly thought she was just enlightening Adam, who she loved. I do not believe she intentionally misled Adam. In her mind, she had figured out that the fruit was good and she wanted Adam to see it too. This simply analogy can be applied to life in marriages around the world and the situations they find themselves in daily. Deception comes in many forms.My mother always told me, "God will never give you more than you can handle".Paul tells us: "God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength but with your testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it" (1 Corinthians 10:13). Over time that promise has become abbreviated to "God will never give you more than you can handle."Maybe its my job to remind you of this and to draw attention to the devil's tools of manipulation. Maybe I am being chosen to provide you the way out by sharing this. Women are Biblically one of those tools as well. It started in the Garden of Eden. I am only saying that men are supposed to be the spiritual leaders of the family and that if a woman is leading you down a different path, that you should recognize that for what it is. Its deception and manipulation. A woman scorned is not something we should make jokes about. It is truly an example of the wrath of evil and its real. There are good moral woman out there, but more alarmingly there are women out there who feel they are good and moral as they lead you down a path of destruction.I don't know all of the answers. I am certainly no scholar. I am saying to you to be strong.Do not lay down your will to an unknown entity, a medication, or a deceptive woman.I know there are truths that have been shown to me and for some reason it is my responsibility to tell you.I have done that.May God protect my soul. 269 people found this helpful