Product Description

Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth will be a cornerstone for personal spirituality and self-improvement for years to come, leading readers to a new levels of consciousness and inner peace. Taking off from the introspective work The Power of Now, which is a number one bestseller and has sold millions of copies worldwide, Tolle provides the spiritual framework for people to move beyond themselves in order to make this world a better, more spiritually evolved place to live. Shattering modern ideas of ego and entitlement, self and society, Tolle lifts the veil of fear that has hung over humanity during this new millennium, and shines an illuminating light that leads to happiness and health that every reader can follow.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #718 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
If there is only one book you read this decade, let it be this one (The Mother Magazine )

Winfrey's decision to include self help book A New Earth in her book club, and embark on a global promotional campaign, has turned it into this year's publishing sensation (The Observer )

About the Author
Eckhart Tolle was born in Germany. When he was 29, a profound spiritual transformation virtually dissolved his old identity and radically changed the course of his life. He is now a counsellor and spiritual teacher, and the author of The Power of Now, Practising the Power of Now and Stillness Speaks. He lives in Vancouver.

Customer Reviews

wonderful
I love the Power of Now but I think A New Earth is even more profound and lucid. I find that this book - like all Eckhart's books, but this one has it even stronger - has an almost uncanny power. Somehow you can feel the wisdom it contains seeping into you as you read and taking you a little closer to realisation. This book gives you a profound understanding of how the ego works, and after reading it you are never quite the same person again. We are amazingly lucky that Eckhart possesses such an acute intellectual mind with an enlightened spiritual state. (The two don't often go together.) I've also been reading books recommended on Eckhart's website, including another stunning book called The Fall by Steve Taylor. It goes together very well with A New Earth. The Fall goes very deeply into the origins of the ego and its insanity and compliments Eckhart's profound analysis The Fall:the Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of a New Era: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of a New Era

Some good points made, but not a keeper for me
I have mixed feelings about "A New Earth". While I thought some very good points were made, I didn't find it easy to read because the style of writing is so dense. Many of the ideas that Tolle presents are not original (e.g. how we interpret people or events is a result of our own thoughts or egos, we must strive to live in the present moment), but they are still well made and thought-provoking.

Some parts of the book do get hard to follow. While Tolle acknowledges this, he also tells us that if we find the book incomprehensible and meaningless, it means that we have not begun the process of awakening - i.e. any fault is with the reader, which strikes me as a cop out. Tolle also implies that his view is the only correct way of viewing the world, with sentences like: "If you don't become speechless when looking out into space on a clear night, you are not really looking, not aware of the totality of what is there."

My main criticism of this book is that I didn't find it of much help in a practical sense. Tolle talks a lot about how you can effect change in yourself by bringing awareness to situations. This has not been my personal experience - while I agree it's the first step, I think sometimes we need a little more "how-to" guidance if we are to make real change. Often when I was reading this book I'd think: "wow, that's such a great point he's just made", but then it would get kind of lost as the book moved on. And ultimately it comes across as being a bit selfish. This idea that your spouse may leave you and your friends may drift away when you achieve spiritual growth, but that's all for the good.

To get the most out of "A New Earth", you probably want to read it slowly and let each chapter sit with you for a while before moving onto the next. Even better, have someone to discuss it with as you go and help you to explore the apparent contradictions e.g. when Tolle says on one hand that you don't want to dwell on the future but stay in the present, and then on the other hand he says that you must have a goal or vision that you are working towards. There is definitely a lot of interesting material in here, but I have found other books to be more accessible and useful.

A big ego writes about ego
I was given this by someone who saw Oprah raving about it and bought two copies in a state of excitement. I thought that the first three pages were quite good then was extremely disappointed as the rest went no further than to rehash Buddhism. My overriding concern is Tolle's continual denigration of the ego and his attempts to persuade us that if we could just annihilate any sense of being an individual or having individual thoughts or preferences we could all acheive permanent bliss. In fact, if we all followed this advice we would all coagulate in one big splurge of mush as no one would be allowed a personality at all.
This kind of spirituality feels very uncomfortable. I have always believed that the ego is a misunderstood beast and gets very bad press in New Age circles. We each represent a shard of God, here to express and experience our uniqueness and to evolve the whole while understanding we are part of the whole to which we will return following death. In addition, Tolle's regurgitated and extreme trashing of the ego is incongruent given that he benefits from the proceeds from a whole range of products, from calendars to cards, emblazoned with his name. No ego there then!
This book feels like a quick attempt to jump on the coat tails of his previous book and, for me, offers nothing new. I am sure this will do very well for the Eckhart Tolle franchise but am concerned about the cost to anybody who adopts this philosophy without understanding that 'God' the Universe or whatever you believe in gave us the ego for a reason. It enables you to find who you are and what you stand for. There is nothing inherently spiritual about voluntary self anhihilation. Even the Dala Lama left Tibet rather than adopting a stance of staying put and being 'meek' in the presence of danger. It isn't a New Earth it is a rehash and it doesn't say what it says on the tin 'awakening to your life purpose' should read 'putting your life purpose to sleep as it doesn't exist.'