The Power of Now gets one thing profoundly right: most human suffering is generated by compulsive identification with thought. Its weakness is that it treats "being present" as both the method and the destination, offering no map for what comes after the initial recognition. This review examines what Tolle draws from, what he contributes, and where his framework runs into its own limits.
- Tolle's 1977 awakening began with a single thought: "I cannot live with myself any longer," and the recognition that this statement implied two entities: an "I" and a "self," which dissolved his identification with the thinking mind.
- The book synthesizes elements of Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, and Christian mysticism but strips each tradition of its ethical frameworks, structured practices, and theological context.
- The pain body concept offers a useful psychological model for understanding reactive emotional patterns, but critics argue it personalizes what may be neurobiological conditions and can discourage professional treatment.
- Compared to Rudolf Steiner's approach, Tolle teaches subtraction (removing identification with thought) rather than transformation (elevating thinking into a direct organ of spiritual perception).
- The book's greatest value is as a doorway: it provides a first taste of awareness beyond thought, but it does not map the territory that opens up once that threshold is crossed.
Who Is Eckhart Tolle?
Eckhart Tolle was born Ulrich Leonard Tolle in Lunen, a small industrial town in Germany's Ruhr region, on February 16, 1948. His childhood was unhappy. His parents' marriage was hostile, and he later described growing up in an atmosphere of constant conflict and anxiety. At thirteen, he moved to Spain to live with his father, who did not insist on formal schooling. This gap in conventional education gave Tolle time to read widely but also deepened his sense of isolation.
He eventually moved to England, studied literature and astronomy at the University of London, and then began doctoral research in Latin American literature at Cambridge. By his own account, he was miserable throughout this period. He later described his condition as "almost continuous anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression." He was twenty-nine years old, a graduate student with a promising academic career ahead of him, and he wanted to die.
He changed his first name to Eckhart, reportedly in homage to Meister Eckhart, the 13th-century German Dominican mystic whose sermons on detachment (Gelassenheit) and the ground of the soul (Seelengrund) anticipate much of what Tolle would later teach. This is not a casual name change. Meister Eckhart taught that the soul must become empty of all content, including its idea of God, before the divine ground can be directly known. Tolle's entire teaching is, in essence, a secularized version of this medieval Christian mysticism.
The Awakening on a Park Bench
The story of Tolle's awakening is the foundation of his authority as a teacher. One night in 1977, he woke from sleep in a state of dread. The thought arose: "I cannot live with myself any longer." Then something shifted. He noticed the structure of the thought itself. If "I" cannot live with "myself," there are two entities: the "I" that cannot bear existence and the "self" with which it cannot live. Which one was real?
"I felt drawn into a void," Tolle writes in the opening of The Power of Now. "I didn't know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved."
What followed was not a single moment of clarity but a sustained state change. Tolle describes waking the next morning to birdsong, sunlight, and a sense of aliveness in everything he perceived. This state did not fade. For approximately two years afterward, he lived with no fixed address, no occupation, and no social identity. He sat on park benches in Russell Square in central London. He slept rough on Hampstead Heath. He was, by any conventional measure, a homeless man in a state of psychological crisis. By his own account, he was in a state of unbroken bliss.
This story raises important questions. Was this a genuine spiritual awakening or a dissociative episode following a mental health crisis? Was it enlightenment or depersonalization? Tolle himself does not entertain this distinction, but it is worth noting that many contemplative traditions would not consider a spontaneous state change, however blissful, to be the same as the stable realization that comes through years of structured practice. In Zen Buddhism, for instance, a spontaneous kensho (seeing into one's true nature) is considered only the beginning of training, not its culmination. The years of post-awakening practice that stabilize and deepen the insight are considered essential. Tolle, by contrast, presents his awakening as essentially complete in itself.
Tolle's awakening follows a pattern recognized across traditions: the complete collapse of the constructed self, followed by recognition of awareness that was always present beneath the construction. Meister Eckhart described it as "letting go of God for the sake of God." The Sufi master Ibn Arabi called it fana, the annihilation of the self in the Real. The difference is that these traditional accounts embed the experience within a cosmology and a practice path. Tolle presents it as something that can happen to anyone, at any time, without preparation or context.
What The Power of Now Actually Teaches
The book is structured as a dialogue between Tolle and an unnamed questioner. This Socratic format allows Tolle to anticipate objections and address the doubts that arise when someone is told that their entire mental life is, essentially, an obstacle to happiness.
The Core Thesis
Tolle's central claim is that human suffering is not caused by external circumstances but by identification with the thinking mind. "The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly," he writes. "Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly, you usually don't use it at all. It uses you."
This is the key distinction: Tolle is not arguing against thought per se. He is arguing against the state in which thought runs automatically, without awareness, and the thinker identifies with the content of thought rather than the awareness in which thought arises. "All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present," he states. "Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry, all forms of fear, are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence."
Presence
Presence is Tolle's central term, and he uses it with deliberate imprecision. It refers simultaneously to the act of paying attention to the present moment, the state of awareness that emerges when identification with thought drops away, and the fundamental nature of consciousness itself. "If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place," he writes. "Primary reality is within; secondary reality without."
The practical instruction is simple: direct attention to sensory experience in the present moment. Feel the aliveness in your hands. Listen to sounds without labeling them. Notice the gap between thoughts. Tolle argues that this gap, however brief, is a window into your essential nature: the awareness that exists prior to and independent of thought content.
The Watcher
Tolle introduces the practice of "watching the thinker," observing one's own thoughts as if from an external vantage point. "The moment you start watching the thinker," he writes, "a higher level of consciousness becomes activated." This practice has clear parallels in Buddhist vipassana (insight meditation), in the Advaita Vedanta practice of self-inquiry (atma vichara), and in the Gurdjieff tradition's concept of "self-remembering." Tolle does not credit these sources explicitly, presenting the practice as if it were self-evident rather than the product of thousands of years of contemplative technology.
Time as Illusion
Tolle makes a distinction between clock time (practical awareness of past and future for functional purposes) and psychological time (the habitual mental state of living in memories and anticipations). "Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion," he writes. "What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. The more you are focused on time, past and future, the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is."
This teaching echoes Meister Eckhart's concept of the Nunc Stans, the "eternal now" that is always present beneath the flow of temporal experience. It also parallels the Buddhist concept of ksana (the momentary nature of experience) and the Hindu teaching on the timeless Atman. Tolle's contribution is not the idea itself but its translation into contemporary psychological language accessible to readers without religious training.
The Pain Body: Tolle's Most Original Concept
If Presence is borrowed (consciously or not) from Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian mystical traditions, the pain body is Tolle's most distinctive contribution. He defines it as "the accumulated remains of past emotional pain that almost all people carry in their energy field."
The pain body is not a metaphor in Tolle's framework. He presents it as an actual energetic entity that lives within a person, going dormant for periods and then activating when triggered by external events that resonate with old emotional wounds. When active, it "takes over" a person's thinking, generating thoughts designed to produce more suffering, which it feeds on. "The pain body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence," Tolle writes, "and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it."
He extends the concept to collective pain bodies: the accumulated suffering of nations, ethnic groups, and genders that gets inherited across generations. Women, he suggests, carry a collective pain body related to centuries of oppression. Nations carry collective pain bodies that can be triggered into eruption, producing wars and atrocities.
Where the Pain Body Works
As a psychological model, the pain body has genuine utility. It provides a framework for understanding why people repeat self-destructive patterns, why emotional reactions often seem disproportionate to their triggers, and why relationships frequently become vehicles for mutual suffering. The instruction to observe the pain body when it activates, rather than identifying with it, is a practical application of mindfulness that many readers report finding genuinely helpful.
Where the Pain Body Fails
The problems are significant. By presenting emotional suffering as an almost-autonomous "entity," Tolle risks encouraging people with clinical depression, PTSD, or complex trauma to treat their conditions as spiritual problems rather than seeking professional help. The instruction to "observe" the pain body presupposes a capacity for meta-cognitive awareness that is precisely what trauma disrupts. Telling someone with PTSD to "watch" their pain body activate is like telling someone having a seizure to observe their neural activity.
The collective pain body concept is more troubling still. Attributing the suffering of oppressed groups to an inherited "energy pattern" rather than to ongoing structural violence comes uncomfortably close to victim-blaming dressed in spiritual language. Ryan Reudell's critique in The Labyrinth argues that "by placing the blame for human evil and injustice on the shoulders of an abstract 'negative energy field' instead of those truly responsible," Tolle "disregards the horrific evil humans are capable of inflicting." This is a serious charge, and Tolle's framework does not adequately address it.
If the pain body concept resonates with your experience, use it as a starting point, not an endpoint. The practice of observing reactive emotional patterns without identifying with them is genuinely valuable. But if your emotional pain is intense, persistent, or linked to specific traumatic experiences, pair this contemplative approach with professional therapeutic support. Mindfulness and psychotherapy are complementary, not competing, approaches to healing.
What Tolle Draws From: Sources and Traditions
Tolle's bibliography is thin. He rarely cites sources. But the intellectual lineage of his teaching is identifiable.
| Tradition | Key Concept Tolle Borrows | What Tolle Removes |
|---|---|---|
| Buddhism (Theravada) | Mindfulness (sati), non-attachment, suffering from craving | The Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, ethical precepts (sila), community (sangha) |
| Advaita Vedanta | Pure awareness as ultimate reality, the self as witness | The systematic philosophy of Shankara, the guru-disciple relationship, scriptural study |
| Meister Eckhart | Detachment (Gelassenheit), the ground of the soul, the "eternal now" | The Christian theological framework, the Trinity, the sacraments |
| Zen Buddhism | Direct pointing to awareness, suspicion of conceptual thinking | Years of zazen practice, koans, the teacher-student dynamic, monastic discipline |
| Gurdjieff | Self-remembering, the idea that humans are "asleep" and act mechanically | The Fourth Way system, the enneagram, work in groups, intentional suffering |
| J. Krishnamurti | "The observer is the observed," freedom from conditioning | Krishnamurti's insistence on the danger of following any authority, including spiritual teachers |
The pattern is consistent. Tolle takes the experiential core of each tradition, the direct pointing to awareness, and removes the context that each tradition considers essential: ethics, community, structured practice, intellectual rigour, and the teacher-student relationship. This is why the book has been described as "Buddhism mixed with mysticism and a few references to Jesus Christ, a sort of New Age reworking of Zen." The description is not unfair, but it also explains the book's appeal. For readers who would never enter a Zen monastery or study with an Advaita teacher, Tolle provides a taste of what those traditions offer.
Where Tolle Falls Short
The Problem of Ethics
Every major contemplative tradition pairs awareness practice with ethical commitment. Buddhism has the sila (ethical precepts). Christianity has the commandments and the virtues. Hinduism has dharma. Tolle's teaching has no ethical dimension beyond the assumption that present-moment awareness will naturally produce compassionate action. This is a significant gap. History provides ample evidence that heightened states of awareness do not automatically produce ethical behaviour. Some of the most intensely "present" individuals in contemplative history have been morally catastrophic. Awareness is a capacity. What you do with it requires a separate set of commitments.
The Problem of Development
Tolle presents Presence as both the practice and the goal. Once you are present, you have arrived. There are no stages beyond this. Every contemplative tradition that has mapped the territory disagrees. The Christian mystical tradition describes the stages of purgation, illumination, and union. Buddhism describes the jhanas (meditative absorptions) and the stages of insight. Kabbalah maps the ten sefirot. The Sufi path has maqamat (stations) and ahwal (states). Even within the non-dual traditions that Tolle draws on most heavily, there is a recognized difference between an initial glimpse of awareness and the stable realization that comes through sustained practice.
Tolle's framework is flat where these traditions are topographic. It offers one altitude: present-moment awareness. The traditions he borrows from describe mountain ranges of consciousness with distinct peaks, valleys, and passes that the practitioner must learn to navigate over years or decades.
The Problem of the Body
Despite his instruction to "feel the inner body," Tolle's approach is predominantly cognitive. He teaches people to notice their thoughts and disidentify from them. But embodied spiritual traditions, including yoga, tai chi, Sufi whirling, and Steiner's eurythmy, understand that consciousness transformation requires physical practice, not just mental reorientation. The body stores patterns that mental observation alone cannot access. Somatic therapies like Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing have demonstrated that trauma, in particular, is held in the nervous system and cannot be fully addressed through awareness practices that remain at the level of the witnessing mind.
The Steiner Comparison: Two Approaches to Consciousness
Rudolf Steiner and Eckhart Tolle represent opposite poles of spiritual teaching, and comparing them illuminates the limitations of each.
Tolle teaches subtraction. Remove identification with thought. Strip away the constructed self. What remains is Presence, the ground of awareness. The method is via negativa: stop doing, and being reveals itself.
Steiner teaches transformation. Do not stop thinking; think so intensely and so precisely that thought itself becomes an organ of spiritual perception. Where Tolle sees "the mind" as the obstacle, Steiner distinguishes between ordinary conceptual thinking (which is indeed mechanical and largely unconscious) and what he calls "living thinking" (a concentrated, willed form of cognition that becomes, through systematic training, a capacity for direct spiritual perception).
Steiner described three stages of higher cognition: Imagination (the capacity to perceive spiritual realities in picture form), Inspiration (the capacity to hear the "inner word" of spiritual beings), and Intuition (the capacity for direct union with spiritual reality through thinking). Each stage requires years of disciplined practice. None of them involves stopping thought. All of them involve elevating thought to a level of intensity and precision it does not normally reach.
The anthroposophical critique of Tolle, articulated by Josef Graf among others, is that Tolle's Presence represents the first step of spiritual development, the emptying of ordinary consciousness, but mistakes this first step for the entire journey. In Steiner's framework, the contemplative must first empty the vessel (which Tolle teaches well) and then fill it with transformed cognition (which Tolle does not teach at all).
Rather than choosing between Tolle and Steiner, consider what each offers. Tolle provides an accessible entry point: the recognition that you are not your thoughts, that awareness exists prior to and independent of mental content. Steiner provides a map for what comes next: the systematic training of awareness into a capacity for direct spiritual knowledge. The first without the second risks stagnation. The second without the first risks intellectual abstraction. Both are needed. The contemplative traditions that have produced the most consistently realized practitioners, from Tibetan Buddhism to Christian hesychasm, have always combined emptiness practices with content-rich cognitive training.
A Hermetic Perspective on Presence
From the standpoint of the Hermetic tradition, Tolle's teaching captures something real but captures it incompletely.
The first Hermetic principle, Mentalism, states that "All is Mind; the Universe is Mental." Tolle's emphasis on consciousness as primary reality is fully compatible with this principle. When he writes, "If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without," he is restating the Hermetic position in modern language.
Where the Hermetic tradition diverges from Tolle is on the question of what to do with this recognition. The Hermetic practitioner does not rest in awareness. The Hermetic practitioner works. The tradition of Hermes Trismegistus teaches that the human being is a microcosm of the macrocosm, endowed with the capacity to participate consciously in the creative work of the cosmos. This participation requires not just awareness but transformed will, purified emotion, and illuminated intellect, the full development of the human being as a spiritual agent.
Tolle's teaching corresponds, in Hermetic terms, to the solve (dissolution) phase of the alchemical maxim "Solve et Coagula" (dissolve and recombine). He teaches dissolution masterfully: the dissolving of identification with the constructed self. But the coagula (recombination), the building of something new from the purified elements, is absent from his framework. The alchemical tradition would say that dissolution without recombination leaves the practitioner in a state of formless awareness: peaceful, perhaps, but incomplete.
For readers interested in the full arc of consciousness development that both Tolle's and Steiner's approaches gesture toward, the Hermetic Synthesis Course offered by Thalira provides a structured pathway through both dissolution and recombination.
Scholarly Reception
Academic Engagement
Academic engagement with Tolle has been limited. He is not taken seriously in departments of religious studies or philosophy, largely because he does not engage with the scholarly literature on the traditions he draws from. He does not cite sources. He does not acknowledge predecessors. He presents ancient teachings as personal discovery. This approach is effective pedagogically (it removes barriers to entry for general readers) but it disqualifies him from academic discourse, which requires citation and lineage.
Where Tolle has received academic attention, it has been primarily in psychology and education. Mindfulness research, which has exploded since the 2000s, provides indirect support for Tolle's core claims about present-moment awareness and its psychological benefits. Studies by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Richard Davidson, and others have demonstrated that sustained mindfulness practice reduces anxiety, depression, and reactivity. Tolle can claim, with justification, that science has caught up with his intuitions, though he was neither the first nor the most rigorous articulator of these ideas.
The Oprah Effect
Tolle's cultural influence owes more to Oprah Winfrey than to any scholarly endorsement. In 2008, Oprah selected Tolle's second book, A New Earth, for her book club and hosted a ten-week online class with Tolle that was viewed by an estimated 35 million people. This catapulted Tolle from respected spiritual teacher to global celebrity. It also shaped the way his teaching was received: filtered through Oprah's emphasis on personal empowerment and self-improvement, the non-dual philosophy at the core of Tolle's work was softened into a framework for feeling better about yourself.
The New York Times described Tolle as "the most popular spiritual author in the United States." By 2009, The Power of Now and A New Earth had together sold over 12 million copies. Tolle's company, Eckhart Teachings, generates substantial revenue from online courses, retreats, and digital content. The scale of this operation raises the same questions that arise with any spiritual teacher who has become a brand: can the teaching of egolessness be transmitted through a corporation?
The Supportive View
Steve Taylor, a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University, has written sympathetically about Tolle, arguing that his awakening experience is consistent with documented cases of "spiritual emergence" and that his teaching accurately describes a shift in identity from the "ego-self" to a wider, transpersonal awareness. Taylor notes that Tolle's contribution is making this shift accessible to people who are not involved in formal spiritual practice. Whether accessibility comes at the cost of accuracy is the central question that divides Tolle's defenders from his critics.
Who Should Read This Book
The Power of Now is most valuable for three groups.
First: people who are suffering from compulsive thinking, anxiety, or the inability to stop replaying past events and rehearsing future ones. For these readers, Tolle's instruction to simply notice the gap between thoughts, to feel the aliveness in the present moment, can provide genuine and immediate relief. The book has helped millions of people discover that they are not their thoughts. This is no small thing.
Second: people who have heard about meditation or mindfulness but find traditional teachings intimidating, foreign, or overly structured. Tolle's strength is accessibility. He writes in plain language, avoids jargon, and addresses the common objections and confusions that arise when someone first encounters the idea that their sense of self is a mental construction.
Third: people who have had spontaneous experiences of expanded awareness, perhaps during crisis, in nature, or in moments of deep stillness, and want a framework for understanding what happened. Tolle's description of Presence can validate these experiences and provide language for something that often resists description.
The book is less suitable for experienced contemplatives who already have a meditation practice; for people seeking a systematic path of spiritual development with stages, practices, and milestones; and for anyone dealing with serious psychological trauma who needs professional therapeutic support alongside (not instead of) contemplative practice.
After reading Tolle, consider deepening your understanding through the traditions he draws on. Explore the Hermetic tradition for a path that combines awareness with active spiritual work. Study the seven Hermetic principles for the philosophical architecture that Tolle's teaching implicitly rests on but never explicitly engages with.
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The most honest thing that can be said about The Power of Now is that it opens a door and then tells you that the doorway is the room. The door is real. The awareness that exists when identification with thought drops away is genuine and verifiable in your own experience. But the room beyond, the vast territory of consciousness that contemplative traditions have spent millennia mapping, awaits your exploration. Presence is the beginning, not the destination.
Frequently Asked Questions
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What is The Power of Now about?
The Power of Now is a spiritual guide arguing that most human suffering comes from identification with the mind and its compulsive thinking. Tolle teaches that liberation is available in any moment through direct attention to present-moment awareness, which he calls Presence. The book combines elements of Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, and Christian mysticism into a practical framework for disidentifying from the stream of thought.
What was Eckhart Tolle's awakening experience?
In 1977, at age 29, Tolle was a depressed doctoral student at Cambridge University when the thought arose: "I cannot live with myself any longer." He noticed the split implied in this statement: an "I" and a "self" that "I" could not live with. This recognition triggered a dissolution of his identified sense of self, followed by months of sustained bliss. He spent two years sitting on park benches in London's Russell Square and sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath, absorbed in a state he describes as pure awareness without mental content.
What is the pain body according to Eckhart Tolle?
The pain body is Tolle's term for the accumulated residue of emotional suffering that exists as a semi-autonomous energy pattern within a person. It is dormant much of the time but periodically activates, feeding on negative emotional reactions and generating thoughts that provoke more suffering. Tolle presents it as almost parasitic: it needs drama, conflict, and emotional pain to sustain itself. The practice he prescribes is to observe the pain body with present-moment awareness rather than identifying with it, which gradually dissolves its hold.
Is The Power of Now based on Buddhism?
The Power of Now draws heavily on Buddhist concepts, particularly mindfulness (sati), non-attachment, and the illusory nature of the separate self. However, Tolle removes these ideas from their Buddhist context. He does not teach the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, or the ethical framework that gives Buddhist mindfulness its structure. His approach is closer to Advaita Vedanta (non-dual Hinduism) in its emphasis on pure awareness as the ultimate reality, but without the systematic philosophy that Advaita provides.
What are the main criticisms of The Power of Now?
Major criticisms include: oversimplification of complex contemplative traditions; the pain body concept personalizing what may be neurobiological conditions; insufficient attention to ethical action and social engagement; the implication that thinking itself is the problem rather than compulsive or unconscious thinking; and a lack of structured practice beyond "be present." Defenders argue the book's accessibility has introduced millions to contemplative awareness who would never have encountered traditional teachings.
How does Eckhart Tolle compare to Rudolf Steiner on consciousness?
Steiner and Tolle represent opposite approaches. Tolle teaches withdrawal from thinking into pure awareness. Steiner teaches the intensification and transformation of thinking into a higher cognitive faculty he calls Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. For Steiner, the goal is not to stop thinking but to think so intensely that thought becomes a direct organ of spiritual perception. Tolle's Presence is, in Steiner's framework, only the first step: emptying the vessel. Steiner's path fills that vessel with transformed cognition.
Does The Power of Now actually work?
For many readers, The Power of Now provides genuine relief from anxiety and compulsive thinking. The core practice of directing attention to present-moment sensory experience is supported by clinical research on mindfulness. What the book does not provide is a structured path for sustained spiritual development. It offers an entry point, a first taste of awareness beyond thought, but does not map the stages that come after that initial recognition.
What is Presence in The Power of Now?
Presence is Tolle's central term for the state of alert, non-reactive awareness that remains when identification with the thinking mind dissolves. It is not a state of blankness but of heightened perception: colours appear more vivid, sounds more distinct, and the body feels more alive. Tolle identifies Presence with the "I Am" of Christian mysticism, the Buddha-nature of Buddhism, and the Atman of Hinduism, though each tradition would qualify this identification in important ways.
What is the difference between The Power of Now and A New Earth?
The Power of Now (1997) focuses on individual liberation from the thinking mind through present-moment awareness. A New Earth (2005) extends this to collective consciousness, arguing that humanity is undergoing an evolutionary shift from ego-based to awareness-based consciousness. A New Earth addresses the structures of the ego more systematically and applies Tolle's framework to relationships, work, and social life. The core teaching is the same; the scope is wider.
Is Eckhart Tolle's teaching compatible with the Hermetic tradition?
Partially. Tolle's emphasis on consciousness as primary reality aligns with the Hermetic principle of Mentalism ("All is Mind"). His teaching on the illusory nature of time resonates with Hermetic concepts of eternity. However, the Hermetic tradition values active engagement with the cosmos through transformed thinking, ritual, and creative action, whereas Tolle's path is predominantly receptive. The Hermetic practitioner seeks to become a conscious co-creator; Tolle's practitioner seeks to dissolve the illusion of the separate creator.
Who should read The Power of Now?
The Power of Now is most valuable for people caught in compulsive thinking, anxiety, or the habit of living in mental narratives about the past and future. It provides a direct, accessible pointer to the awareness that exists beneath thought. It is less useful for experienced contemplatives who already have a meditation practice, and it should not be treated as a substitute for professional mental health support for clinical depression or trauma.
- Tolle, Eckhart. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. Namaste Publishing, 1997.
- Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. Dutton/Penguin, 2005.
- Taylor, Steve. "The Power of Eckhart Tolle." Steve Taylor PhD, Leeds Beckett University.
- Graf, Josef. "The Limits of Mysticism: Eckhart Tolle Meets Anthroposophy." Trans4Mind.
- Kabat-Zinn, Jon. Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. Delacorte, 1990.
- Meister Eckhart. Selected Writings. Trans. Oliver Davies. Penguin Classics, 1994.
- Steiner, Rudolf. How to Know Higher Worlds. Trans. Christopher Bamford. Anthroposophic Press, 1994.