Tolle Me a Story: A Review of ‘A New Earth’ Chapter 1

            So we begin our look into Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. What I am going to do is take each chapter, read through it and try to be as open minded as I can; trying to get the purpose that Tolle is trying to communicate. Then I will go back through and list the things that are not Biblically sound. I hope this journey will be informative for both you and me.

CHAPTER 1: The Flowering of Human Consciousness

Open Review

Tolle’s views are based on the fact that we, as a human race, are dysfunctional; that we are on a downward spiral, spinning faster and faster out of control unless we do something about it. I completely agree with his point here. As he says in the book, all we really have to do to see this is watch the evening news. The leading stories are almost always murder, rape, drugs, explosions, and death. As a culture we thrive on bad news. Think of the last time you passed a car wreck; you slowed down to look didn’t you. I know I do. It is hard not to. Did you look at the wreck and pray for those involved so that they are safe and unhurt, have insurance so that they can pay for the repairs, or that this does not ruin their lives because now they have no way to get to work? We should.

                A New Earth’s first chapter is based on these facts and that a new awakening is coming and each of us should seek this out. This will lead us to a new Heaven that is spoken of in the Bible and this inner change will bring about an outer change which will bring us a new Earth.

Biblical Review

This book’s main purpose is not to add new information or beliefs to your mind or to try to convince you of anything, but to bring about a shift in consciousness, that is to say, to awaken.

Page 6

                If the above was true, this book would be fine sitting on the New Age shelf and Christians, Buddhists, and Hindi believers would have little to worry about. The issue here is that Tolle likes to put in these type statements to try to cover himself, but then turns around and tells you what the spiritual leaders of these religions “really meant” and that all three agree with him. To me that really sounds like he is trying to change your views on that religion.

                Let’s start at the beginning and work our way through chapter one. As I said in my post about Oprah Winfrey vs. Christianity, Tolle starts A New Earth by dipping into the evolution of a flower.

Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun. Prior to this momentous event that heralds an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants, the planet had already been covered in vegetation for millions of years.

Page 1

He continues lower on that page with a continued version of his theory of evolution:

One day, however, a critical threshold was reached, and suddenly there would have been an explosion of color and scent all over the planet—if a perceiving consciousness had been there to witness it.

Page 1

This is quite the opposite of what the Bible tells us in Genesis 1:11-12:

¹¹Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. ¹² The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.  

A New Earth continues with this version of evolution later in the chapter in the bottom half of page 20 then the first ‘sea creature’ comes to land. However, here, Tolle uses a lot of uncertain words such as “perhaps it would crawl”, “at some point”, and “It seems unlikely”. These all expose the fact that he is not sure of what he is asking the reader to believe. Within this paragraph, he is purely speculating on what the evolution theory says happens. I find it hard to swallow anything when the author, himself, seems so unsure of his facts, or the lack thereof. Truth be told, it appears Tolle does not really know for certain what the evolution theory is past what he learned in grade school science and has decided this to be the truth.

The second issue that I have with this chapter is the common mortality that he gives to Jesus Christ. In fact, he never uses the word Christ at all. That could be that he just did not feel the need since, as a whole, when you say Jesus everyone is aware of whom you speak; or it could be that he does not believe that Jesus is the son of God and the mortal version of the Deity. These facts can be found in the sections shown below.

The messengers—Buddha, Jesus, and others, not all of them known—were humanity’s early flowers.

Page 6

The world was not yet ready for them, and yet they were a vital and necessary part of human awakening.

Page 14

As you can see from these two passages, Tolle clearly shows that he believes Buddha, Jesus Christ, Lao Tzu, and ‘others’ are all equal. Each was great moral teachers and their wisdom will help all of mankind. But while Jesus Christ was a teacher and a messenger that was not His purpose on this earth. He was sent by His Father in Heaver to bear the weight of mankind’s sins; to free us from the chains of sin and to allow us to connect to God.

He then begins to alter not only our perception of Jesus Christ as the son of God and our savior, but also his teaching; he also does the same for the other religious leaders, bending their message to match his own. He says that the messages from these teachers have become corrupted over time and no longer hold their true value of truth.

Their teachings, although both simple and powerful, became distorted and misinterpreted, in some cases even as they were recorded in writing be their disciples. Over the centuries, many things were added that had nothing to do with the original teachings, but were reflections of a fundamental misunderstanding.

Page 14 to 15

                Now I do not know the history of Buddhism and Hinduism well, if at all really. But man has been debating about the validity of the Bible for centuries and still Christianity stands backed by the words in the Bible. Yet, Eckhart has decided that these teachings that we hold in our hands have been distorted over time even though modern archeology has done nothing but proven many of the locations and events contained within its pages!  Tolle then begins to replace the message of the Bible with his own to help us understand what Jesus Christ and the other spiritual leader “really meant.”

Sin is a word that has been greatly misunderstood and misinterpreted. Literally translated from the ancient Greek in which the New Testament was written, to sin means to miss the mark, as an archer who misses the target, so to sin means to miss the point of human existence. It means to live unskillfully, blindly, and thus to suffer and cause suffering.

Page 9

                When talking about his own belief of awakening to a new level of consciousness, Tolle tells us on page 13 that “In the teaching of Jesus, it is salvation,” This is nowhere near true and a complete bending of the Christian faith to match his own belief system. Sin could be considered “missing the mark” that God has planned for us and laid out for our lives, but to trivialize it by trying to bridge it to “miss the point of human existence” is a jump that should not be made. Sin is an act that we perform against the will of God. A New Earth continues its affront to Christianity by then redefining Heaven:

We need to understand that heaven is not a location but refers to the inner realm of consciousness. This is the esoteric meaning of the word, and this is also the meaning in the teachings of Jesus

Page 23

                He then shatters the whole basis of the Christian religion by telling you that you can get to Heaven all by yourself by realizing that you are living this “unawakened life.” With that he has completely thrown out Jesus’ divinity and the fact that He died on the cross to save us from eternal damnation. Oh no! None of that matters according to Eckhart Tolle. The simple fact that you awaken yourself to this is enough to start the salvation. He adds that for each person that joins his enlightenment movement that it will become easier for everyone else to become enlightened. Most of these comments can be found on pages 7 & 8. This is simply not true as any Biblical based church will attest. The only way to reach Heaven and salvation is to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and pray for forgiveness of your sins.

The fact that I find somewhat humorous is that throughout these passages, he adds in several different ‘security sayings’ such as “You can only see the Truth if you are ready”, “It can only awaken those that are ready,” “Not everyone is ready yet, but many are,” and “It is unlikely, however, that you will be able to perceive it there unless you have at least already had glimpses of that Truth within you.” I find these remarks really funny and comparable to “You can fly if you really believe. Oh you fell. You didn’t really believe now did you!?”

The final blow in this chapter comes when Tolle declares on page 15 “Man made “God” in his own image.” As Christians, we do have a mental image of Jesus Christ and it is quite possible that the ‘normal’ picture we see of a white guy hanging on the cross is not right. Remember this was in the Middle East, in a culture the valued work. There is a good chance that Jesus was a good bit darker than we see Him depicted today. That I fully concede. However, he is reaching a bit when he tells us how most Christians picture God and the Holy Spirit. But, we do have a solid basis for having this ideal. After all:

²⁶Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

²⁷So God created man in his own image,
       in the image of God he created him;
       male and female he created them.

Both from Genesis 1.

God Bless,
Hunter