A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

 Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth” is a compelling follow-up to his transformative book, “The Power of Now”.

Tolle has a gift for distilling the essence of the world’s philosophies into one lucid synthesis. He is able to reconcile the wisdom of the Zen masters, Jesus, Vedanta, and Sufism, without watering down the originals.

In this book, he touches upon the Ego: its nature, its many manifestations, and awareness of the ego, as its best cure. He presents his statements as simple, irrefutable truth, with no effort to convince or persuade.

The book is lightened, and the reader enlightened, by the inclusion of simple, and often humorous, anecdotes that beautifully illustrate his perspective.

Some excerpts:

“Strictly speaking, you don’t think: Thinking happens to you. The statement “I think” implies volition…For most people this is not yet the case…Digestion happens, circulation happens, thinking happens.”

“The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment.”

“…there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is another.”

“Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.”

“…Not everybody however will have to go through drastic change in their external circumstances. At the other end of the spectrum you have people who stay exactly where they are and keep doing whatever they are doing. For them, only the how changes, not the what. This is not due to fear or inertia. What they are doing already is a perfect vehicle for consciousness to come into this world, and it needs no other. They too bring into manifestation the new earth.”