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| A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61) | 
 enlarge | Author: Eckhart Tolle
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy Used: $4.14
You Save: $9.86 (70%)
New (130) Used (162) Collectible (5) from $4.14
Avg. Customer Rating:  1281 reviews
Sales Rank: 28
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0452289963
Dewey Decimal Number: 204.4
EAN: 9780452289963
ASIN: 0452289963
Publication Date: January 30, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: some cover wear & edge wear with some underlining in pen, just fine for reading
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Proof is in the Pudding October 17, 2005
86 out of 122 found this review helpful
I have been a life-long spiritual seeker (one of those seekers/never-finders that Eckhart refers to - rightly). This book is absolutely marvelous and stunningly practical. I find Eckhart's orientation toward spiritual teachings to be refreshingly direct and free of traditional dogma, yet touching on all the perennial threads that are the underpinnings of all spiritual teachings. I have great respect for his ability to approach ideas and concepts that are effectively ineffable and communicate them well and with a gentle and encouraging invitation to try them out for yourselves.
And that is where I find his teachings have the greatest strength and potential to improve immediate, personal, and eventually collective, lives - by trying out the teachings and practices that he suggests.
In particular, I am very grateful for the emphasis he places on the power of watching and witnessing our own thoughts - and how that small, but profound act can begin to permit us to view our thoughts and life-patterns in a different way. This, to me, is a deeply liberating concept.
Read his books, or better, buy some of his audio works. I found them to be more powerful because some quality came through the voice that doesn't on the printed page.
There is goodness to be had here.
A New Earth is Born November 26, 2005
81 out of 108 found this review helpful
If you got the concepts in the Power of Now, and love the simple, easy-to-understand message of that book, you will find a "going deeper" happening with this one.
I've always been one to disagree with spiritual teachers about the ego - that it's basically all bad. If it's bad, why did God create it? My feeling is if it is here on Earth, it belongs, even though we may not understand why.
That said, Eckhart clearly defines, with excellent examples, how our identification with the ego (and not the ego itself, mind you) keeps us from simply being in the present and instead tied to thoughts, concepts, mind-stuff, endless identification with people, places, and things. He shows us the many forms and faces that the ego takes up, and shows us the fallacy of identifying with forms in the first place.
To identify so completely with form is to identify with that which is doomed to extinction, causing us loss and sadness. Wouldn't it be better if we simply observed things from an aware state, and not get so caught up in them? This is Eckhart's goal, to get us to a place where we can see the benefits of raising our awareness, and actually wanting to do so.
Ah, easier said than done, I hear you say. Within the pages of A New Earth, Eckhart gives us precisely the tools we need to recognize and become aware of own folly. From that higher state of awareness, the flowers of enlightenment can bloom. And voila, a New Earth is born.
I find this book a great comfort.
 Cult rhetoric March 25, 2008
80 out of 109 found this review helpful
Tolle's philosophy is intellectually primitive and spiritually immature. There is nothing new in what he says and is reminiscent of the 60's culture when Timothy Leary and drug use was so popular. It's the same hippy "free love," amoral, surrender your ego rhetoric Charles Manson and other cult leaders have used to brainwash followers.
It lacks logical consistency and demonstrates a superficial understanding of the ego. It is mostly a fantasy that attempts to recapture human infancy experiences and claim that they are reality. Like many gurus of this sort who use such rhetoric about the 'ego,' 'ultimate reality,' 'space,' 'time,' and 'oneness,' the main idea is a regression to an infantile state of mind where there are no inhibitions and thus no morality, as well as no sense of self as a separate individual. For infants there is only 'now'. Consequently, Tolle's books invite readers to de-evolve, or at least arrest their developmental progress, and return to the paradise of infancy. "Refuse to grow-up" would be a better title for his book.
kindergarten philosophy March 13, 2008
76 out of 89 found this review helpful
Tolle's books are a collection of vague cliches and ambiguous platitudes; a combination of kindergarten philosophy and New Age mysticism. There are millions of books available, written by so-called enlightened individuals who all churn out the same stuff. Does this prove there must be something to them? Not at all. Billions of fast food joints doesn't prove that fast food has much nutritional value for the body. Similarly, thousands of self-described enlightened writers putting out books like these doesn't prove that fast-food spirituality has much nutritional value for the spirit. Eckhart Tolle admits that his enlightenment came spontaneously. Clearly he didn't need a book like his to become enlightened. Why should anyone else? I'm just going to wait until I become spontaneously enlightened too.
"too many words, very little substance" March 8, 2008
70 out of 94 found this review helpful
Tolle's book contains many philosophical errors. His idea about relativism (page 70 is simply wrong.) Tolle's writing is wordy with very little substance. I gave up reading this intellectually empty book at page 72. Best wishes to those who choose to go further.
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