So I was in psychiatry for a drug induced psychosis when I was 20, and while I was there my mother gave me two of Eckhart Tolle's books, The Power of Now and A New Earth. The way he wrote made it seem like enlightenment was the only way to sanity, and I'd read Bhante Gunaratana's book Mindfulness in Plain English before, in which he proclaimed an enlightened person becomes completely mentally healthy. And so I spent over 5 years seeking enlightenment. It was nohing short of a horror show. I was addicted to drugs and my illness kept coming back. I would have the occasional mystical experience or "spiritual awakening", only for things to return to normal, which was horrible due to yet another sense of failure. Things never got better. I chose new age spirituality over modern scientific approaches such as therapy and psychiatry, and this stunted my recovery from psychosis, and prevented me from facing my drug problem. At some point I snapped out of it and realized it's all bullshit, and that I'd been chasing a fairytale. In the process I had become brainwashed.

One thing that I still struggle with is Eckhart Tolle's teachings on Ego. I realized I had become ego-phobic. Anything that I could percieve or label as ego was bad in some way. Dirty, worthless, stupid, primitive. As long as it was ego, it was a bad thing, and I would over react to even the smallest hint of ego in my own life, and in the lives of others. I still do occasionally.

I also somehow thought I was more egoless than others, that I was somehow special or more enlightened than others. Which makes me remember his teaching that says once you've had a spiritual awakening enlightenment is inevitable, as if he would know. Anyways, I thought I was somewhat enlightened. At least more so than others, one reason being I had so many years of spirituality under my belt.

In the end though I realized. I hated ego so much, to me it was simply wrong, and I realized, that's what Eckhart is teaching. I honestly believe his teachings are ego-phobic, and he himself is as well. He seems blind to his own egocentricity.

I eventually realized thanks to some articles and videos that his definitions of things like ego, intelligence, consciouness or what not were not based in science. He made it all up. Pain body and all that shit. And I realize even after a good year of staying clear of that guy, he still lurks over my shoulder, he's in my head. Whenever I feel angry or annoyed or something, he'll pop up into my head. It drives me nuts, I honestly wish I could kill that guy, to the point where I've found myself actually imagining it. Luckily very rarely, twice so far.

Anyways, that's what I think. Eckhart Tolle (Not his real name btw) and his teachings are ego-phobic, dangerous, and damaging. Not only this, but he seems like an ego-maniac as well, extraordinarily narcissistic and has a grandiose sense of self. Having been through a psychosis myself I can confidently say he has showed signs of psychosis during his mental breakdown/awakening, and perhaps he still does.

As a healthcare professional once told me, people that are in psychosis generally don't know they're psychotic. Funny how he preaches about sanity when he is clearly not very sane himself.

Does anybody else have any thoughts concerning this guy?

Hi Andy.Mo18,

I'm sorry to hear about your illness.
There is a lot of information about Eckhart Tolle on this forum and the destructive effect his teachings can have on people's lives.

Someone who called himself The Anticult was posting here years ago about Tolle and other similar teachers, and it is worthwhile doing a forum search under this name, 'The Anticult' and reading his posts.

I've copied one such post, (as for some reason I can't work out how to use a link):


Re: Eckhart Tolle made me a zombie and brainwashes people
Posted by: The Anticult
Date: June 18, 2010 02:40AM

You have described what goes on perfectly.

Eckhart Tolle has constructed his HOURS of internet videos to do exactly that.
Build rapport with the viewer, put them into a light-deep hypnotic state, and deepen the rapport.
Then install post-hypnotic SUGGESTIONS to buy his books, DVD's, CD's, seminars, and dozens of his other products.
Tolle now sells his own online TV-video channel, all ET all the time.

Tolle has done the exact same thing done by countless other "enlightenment salesmen".
Tolle wanted to be rich, and also have a following of people looking up to him (from afar) for his "wisdom", while he lives on his private estate.

Eckhart Tolle is very skilled in New Age brainwashing.

By the way, the swearing and anger would be a healthy thing coming out of a sham-scam like Eckhart Tolle. That is probably about reinstalling healthy, natural boundaries, which were violated by Eckhart Tolle's techniques.

Once a person has experience and training in this area, its quite easy to see exactly the scam being pulled by ET. Of course, ET probably believes most of his own bullshit, due to his own egomania.


Quote:
Brainwashed90
I am glad that I have been "awakened" to all of this information. If this guy really has no ego and has no needs or desires then why doesn't he give his sacred information out for free? Or why doesn't he give the millions he made to charity? How the FUCK did I or anyone else buy into this stuff? He just seemed so honest and innocuous. I would actually watch this guys videos for hours feeling somehow "connected" to him and what he was saying. I felt like I had to buy his next book. Like I was somehow in debt to him for revealing to me the truth. What a load. "clear your mind from everything...and buy my next book" what i am hearing now

Great, thank you. I'll be sure to check it out.

@Andy.Mo18: ego-phobic is a great way to put it. I do think Tolle has had the awakening experience he described, but he drew the wrong conclusions from it. That awakening experience (sometimes called 'the initial awakening') has to do with a sudden change in brain functioning. The process of habitual thought patterns that involve and maintain the self-concept is suddenly drastically reduced. This process is called the Default Mode Network (DMN)in neuroscience. The self-concept was always assumed to be the observer of experience, the thinker of thoughts, the feeler of feelings, and the doer of actions. When it falls away, and the experiences etc. go on, it becomes evident that the self-concept you believed to be yourself was never more than just that: a concept. You never were it. This realization is (or can be) tremendously liberating.

The DMN is responsible for most of the normal thought-activity, so when the DMN activity is drastically reduced, the amount of thoughts you have is drastically reduced, which results in significantly increased inner peace.

When this awakening experience happens to people who have practiced meditation for years, and even more so when they've been reading e.g. Buddhist texts about the illusion of self for years, they know how to contextualize the experience and they may even be able to maintain the new found inner peace to some extent, instead of it only being a temporary state.

In other people, like Tolle, the initial awakening wasn't triggered by any acquired discipline, but by a deep need to escape overwhelming psychological pain. When the intensity of pain caused by holding on to the self-concept becomes greater than the usual fear of letting go of it, letting go can happen—the awakening experience is triggered.

In this case it's hard to contextualize the experience and to maintain the newfound inner peace. What often happens is that the DMN along with the self-concept starts back up after some time, and the awakening experience gets integrated into the self-concept. The self is then conceptualized as "enlightened". Of course, believing yourself to be enlightened makes you feel like you are superior, and you have something to teach others. If you had narcissistic tendencies to begin with, this goes double. That's why the self-proclaimed spiritual teachers are often of this type: they are narcissistic people who've had an awakening experience that was co-opted by the ego. They now have a big "spiritual ego," and maybe even a messiah complex.

Of course it's not as black-or-white as this—even very experienced meditators will probably have some "spiritual ego" effect from an awakening experience, and even people like Tolle can have a genuinely awakened perspective that's often but not always overshadowed by their spiritual ego. But Tolle's notions that you should just try to think less and be here now are oversimplified at best and dangerously delusional at worst.

Following up on my previous post about why especially narcissistic and psychologically troubled people become problematic spiritual teachers after an awakening experience:

I think it's important to add that if deep psychological wounds play a role in triggering the awakening experience, this opens up a tempting opportunity for escapism. During the awakening, you see that you never were the self-concept, and that the psychological problems that belong to the self-concept don't belong to what you really are.

That's why in these cases (e.g. Tolle, Mooji) you so often see a complete dismissal of the self-concept and the whole conceptual level of reality. They were briefly free from the self-concept and its trouble, but life goes on. Even if you've seen that what you ultimately are is free from conceptual reality, you still have to function in conceptual reality. This requires 'embodiment' of the awakening. That means accepting everyday reality (including pain) without resisting it. It means accepting the deep psychological pain stowed away somewhere deep inside because it was too painful to handle when you encountered it. It means letting that hidden side of yourself (the shadow) come to the surface and resolve it by actually feeling it instead of pushing it away. It means accepting that just like you're not the self-concept, neither is anyone else, and no one is more worthy than anyone else. This means: being humble and compassionate.

But these people who've interpreted their awakening experience in a delusional way and are all too happy with their newfound "enlightened" self-concept, what do they want? Do they want to feel and accept all that pain or do they want to take seat on a throne and be worshipped, preferably even being paid to do that, so that they don't have to muster the humility and strength required to actually be a contributing member of society?

Roughly speaking, the awakening process consists of two stages, as I've been writing about in the Mooji thread: 1. transcendence, 2. embodiment.
The problematic spiritual teachers tend to get stuck in the first stage, for the reasons mentioned above, in a dissociative, escapist state of being, denying their ego while being totally identified with their ego. And it's this very dissociative, escapist state of being that they're marketing and selling. That's not real spiritual maturation. It's a dead end, a delusional state in which millions of people seem to be stuck (e.g. people like these teachers and their followers). Good for you, Andy, that you've seen through it!

Hey Andy,

I, like you, have come to the conclusion that Eckhart’s “teachings” are not for me. I will try to put my experiences into a nutshell-

I read the Power of Now for the first time when I was 21. I was going through a very messy breakup with a girl that I thought was the “one”. Dealing with loss of my best friend, and grandfather, Eckhart’s book definitely helped me look at the thoughts as just thoughts and lessened their control over me. I learned later that this is not a good approach at all. From Psychologists and numerous books on CBT, Trauma, Narcissism, and more, I’ve learned that there is a period of Grief that is essential to process when dealing with loss.

Basically, the grief process is important, and there is no skipping it. It will follow you and come out sooner or later, or can result in a wound psychologically.

TPON has a part where it says “This book has nothing to teach you, it is all within” or something of that nature. I think that this could be an old psychological trick to implant the authors message inside you. It breaks down barriers of skepticism for many people, even some skeptics.

I had read TPON, A New Earth (which is the equivalent of a Christian end world prophecy for the new age), and listened to many of his talks. Some talks were quite benign, and contained information from J Krishnamurti, Nisgaradatta Maharaj, Tao Te Ching, Sartre, Nietzche and The Bible. I thought it was strange that he would claim to know little in the world of knowledge, but quote all of these authors works at will. He is widely read and was a scholar in the UK when he was young. He lied about this to lower people’s resistance to him, I think.

I followed Eckhart for a number of years. I am 32 now, and no longer obsess over New Age authors like Eckhart. It’s hard to let my guard down and know what information to trust, but I’ve found if the information has certification by a large scientific body, like the WHO, American Psychiatric Association, CDC, or some other recognized body, things are many times more likely to be safe.

Something I recently learned - Don’t always trust book reviews on AMAZON! They are easily manipulated. Even books on the New York Times bestseller list can be of poor quality. Journalists may give a poor review of a book because it is fraudulent or poor quality, even though it’s on the best seller list. Just be wary!

I’ve learned to love the age we live in. Develop your “ego“ in a healthy way, invest in yourself, learn something new, read a book that is slightly above your knowledge level in Psychology, Science, or another field. This can start the recovery process to become more balanced in our thinking.

I’m still in the thick of it too however, and it might take many years to recover what was lost during that time.

A quick search takes you to the Cult Education Institute thread "Eckhart Tolle -- Comments From Someone who Knows Him."

[forum.culteducation.com]

The original post was by Wanderer77, who apparently knew him 25 or 30 years ago, before he became famous. She characterizes him from her point of view as:

Quote
Wanderer77
An extremely, and I want to say, dangerously isolated individual, who has become worse, far worse since his fame.

I agree with zizlz that "ego-phobic" is a good way to put it. Like the rest of you, I question whether this ego-phobia is really a psychologically healthy way to be.

Hi Everyone,

I read one of Tolle's books years ago - but I can't remember which one it was. I thought it was quite interesting, but right towards the end of the book, I was left asking myself "What is the practical application for all this stuff?" How do you apply these 'teachings' to everyday life?

There was a question and answer section at the end of the book and I couldn't follow Tolle's line of reasoning - it seemed confusing to me. Why? Why the confusion? I don't mean to brag or anything, but I'm an intelligent girl. If someone's reasoning seems wonky, I always notice it.

I could not see how you could possibly 'live in the moment' all day long in every situation and still get things done? Especially if you have a very demanding job? Even mundane jobs require some forward planning.

A friend of mine once tried to 'live in the now' for a period of several weeks and everyone quickly became frustrated with her because nothing was done and everyone else had to pick up the slack and it was as annoying as hell. I suppose Tolle would say "let other people become annoyed, that is not your concern". But then what if your marriage falls apart and your friends disown you and you have no job as a result of living in the moment? What if the baby isn't fed all day, and so the authorities come and take it away?

I guess someone like Tolle would then say that you are in a more 'spiritual' place - living like a beggar on the street or in a homeless shelter? And yet we see him living in a secluded mansion and raking in millions? He is implying that his teaching is going to deliver an extraordinary life! I call bullshit on his teaching!

Luckily for Tolle, a new batch of unsuspecting devotees comes along frequently - all those who are left homeless and destitute can no longer afford to buy his books, but it doesn't matter, because new people come along to replace them. Greedy Old Tolle is happy - we don't need to worry about him!

Sahara71 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A friend of mine once tried to 'live in the
> now' for a period of several weeks and
> everyone quickly became frustrated with her
> because nothing was done and everyone else had to
> pick up the slack and it was as annoying as hell.
> I suppose Tolle would say "let other
> people become annoyed, that is not your
> concern". But then what if your marriage falls
> apart and your friends disown you and you have no
> job as a result of living in the moment? What if
> the baby isn't fed all day, and so the authorities
> come and take it away?

That's a great example of the confusion Tolle sows with his anti-scientific approach. Telling people that they can achieve peace of mind by trying to be in the present moment is like telling someone that they can achieve REM-sleep by closing their eyes and moving them rapidly.

If you want to experience the present moment more consciously, it's better to look at what the problem factually is and what methods actually demonstrably work to solve that problem. So it's better to look into what scientific research has found than to spend hours reading/listening to some self-proclaimed spiritual teacher's quasi wisdom.

Quote

Many philosophical and contemplative traditions teach that “living in the moment” increases happiness. However, the default mode of humans appears to be that of mind-wandering, which correlates with unhappiness, and with activation in a network of brain areas associated with self-referential processing.

source: [www.pnas.org]

Quote

While brain default mode network (DMN) activation in human subjects has been associated with mind wandering, meditation practice has been found to suppress it and to increase psychological well-being.

source: [www.eneuro.org]