I've been trying to find the thread started by the fellow whose wife was interested in this stuff. He wanted to know if he should be concerned.

I would say yes. And my advice would be...Be there for her. Listen to her. (It may be tempting to try to debunk it. I wouldn't come on too strong with that. Her having to defend it will only get her further entrenched because she'll be focusing on reasons why her newfound beliefs are so 'wonderful'.) And..this is REALLY important. Do things with her, go out together, do stuff, socialize, talk. Keep her involved in life, keep her involved with you and with other family and friends (because she will be inclined to detach from all of you, especially if she feels you are being "too negative") . She may lose her connection to groundedness and you'll need to be that for her. Her studies may encourage her to stop watching the news. Talk to her about stuff that's going on in the world. Try really, really hard to maintain her connection to here, to other people, to life, to love. A lot of good things and funny things and heartwarming things happen out there in the world of reality, too. Keeping that in mind can help keep a person connected rather than detaching.

It would really help if she could read webpages like this one, and I don't know how one would get a person to just happen upon that in a subtle way. For me, it was the conduct of the 'oh so very spiritual' that got me thinking, the behavior of the supposedly enlightened, which didn't seem all that 'enlightened'. It only takes a little wee fray in the fabric of one's belief in a cult's teachings. If a person can tug on that and keep tugging, the whole thing WILL unravel. I had to figure it out on my own, however. Most people do.

Oops, that was "Andrew Morton", not "Andrew Norton". :-)

There are also some people out there....who appear to be quite disturbed and are making posts even at the Oprah forum.
Does anyone who puts out these books and programs about Identity Destruction, and getting rid of the Egoic Mind, and all the other stuff, ever think about the HARM it could cause to vulnerable or disturbed people? There are people who messing with this stuff can send them over the edge.
Here is a disturbing post from the Oprah website...

[www.oprah.com]
______________________________
Apr 9, 2008 11:40 PM
"I watched the show today and after watching the show I felt I should say I am sorry............. I almost killed alot of people friday night in an attempt to hurt myself. I did stop and after 45 mins. I received assistance that helped the "Presence" but if I had continued where I was going. But I am on chapter 6, I am sure it has to get better. Thanks should go to the Florida Highway Patrol and Hillsborough Sheriff I let them save you. I won't do that again to the public, I am sorry. D____
_____________________________________

unfortunately "America", and in large part Canada too, don't realize that not only will they lose their egos, they will also lose their minds... we are already in a mental health crisis, and it is going to get worse, with all these poor trusting souls detaching from their egos, and turning into a bunch of sniveling lunatics!

of course you are right Anticult, Oprah is not an evil person, just a poor little rich girl who has been sucked in by all this propaganda...it will be interesting to see .... if she ever gets her air-brushed photographs of herself off the covers of her magazine....talk about ego!! -- i think she has completely lost her way....she has become a pawn of the t.v. networks. It is just a matter of time before she crashes or before someone sues her over this Tolle nonsence...just you wait and see...

with regrets (because i really used to admire Oprah)
Shad

[www.foxnews.com]

That's a decent article, for once. It mentions the shady past of Tolle, and the corporate connections to the various product promotions.

Tolle just took the same warmed-over New Age stuff, and just pretends he made it up himself.
The man is simply a New Age fraud.

Quote
The Shadow
unfortunately "America", and in large part Canada too, don't realize that not only will they lose their egos, they will also lose their minds... we are already in a mental health crisis, and it is going to get worse, with all these poor trusting souls detaching from their egos, and turning into a bunch of sniveling lunatics!

Actually, it is quite the opposite. Isn't the world currently insane? Look around as it speeds to its end. This is not due to a lack of ego, but its reinforcement and empowerment. We can destroy ourselves and our environment more quickly and efficiently than ever. Tolle recognizes that our insane thought-forms and identification with mind ("I think therefore I am") is what perpetuates this endless cycle of destruction that no widespread, implemented philosophy, religion, government, culture or psychology has been able to solve.

"However, if you look at what is actually here you will discover that even these thoughts only happen now. In fact, all life—all action—only happens now."

Quoted from [shambook.blogspot.com]

(C muses):

What happens now was made possible by a chain of cause-and-effect that goes back into the past. There are disputes about where the chain of cause and effect started, but that is another topic. altogether.

The present, the now moment is not a free-standing, inherantly separate entity. Its embedded in a network of cause-and-effect.

If some teacher who babbles about Now as inherantly separate were to develop an illness that required modern treatment with an antibiotic, he would be obliged to see a physician who would prescribe a medication tested for efficacy in a double blind clinical trial ...which is based on observation and an accumulation of past experience.

The mode of transportation, the computer and programs used by Tolle others like him to market their ideas are based on past research. Their versions of Excel are based on past versions of Excel, written in computer codes based in past versions of such code, based on various kinds of mathematics, each with its past pedigree, based on engineering, alphabets, that go back to the Phoenicians, thousands of years in the past.

If you deny that 'Now' depends on what happened in the past, you cut yourself off from the benefits of science, the products of which might some day save and prolong your life....let alone make possible rapid mass marketing of your ideas to an adoring public.

A guru such as Tolle has to hire book keepers and accountants. The accountants have to keep records that stretch back into the past. When they use Excel to make projections of future earnings they use financial data from the past when computing those projections.

(Doing a future scenario in this manner using Excel requires using something called the IF function. By the way, wanna know how to insert the current date and time into your Excel spreadsheet? Go to the cell where you want this to appear. Type an equal sign followed by NOW or now =now Its all great fun.)

And...you cannot run a business based on Tolle's books or any guru or LGATs material unless you have people keeping records from the past.

You dont have the marketing savvy to do what these people do unless you make use of stuff that you, or someone you hire learned IN THE PAST.

What good is a CPA or financial analyst who lives solely in the 'Now'?

Many of these gurus find themselves needing to employ professsionals (eg accountants) who use patterns of mental activity that run counter to what the guru teaches...critical thinking, analytic thinking, logic, keeping accurate records of past transactions.

An IRS auditor (or whoever does the same job in Vancouver Canada) would not appreciate it if you explained your lack of records as irrelevant, because only now exists. (Try that folks, and see what happens.)

All gurus tend to have to hire someone who does critical and discursive thinking for them. The ability to figure out whom to hire requires discursive thinking. The ability to hire a personal assistant requires discursive thinking, and to do that you have to exit the enlightened NOW state. No one is in it 24-7, or they couldnt function.

That's why gurus need entourages.

The rest of us dont have entourages. So, we cant live in the Now all the time. We need to recall stuff that happened in the past and keep records, medical, financial, plus how much time we have left on the parking meter when shopping downtown.

If we dont remember what happened in the past, and fail to keep our commitments, we get the reputation of being flakes, or worse. Unless we get people convinced we are enlightened.

Someone who has a hired driver to take care of the car doesnt have to bother his or her well coiffed head about how much time is left on the meter.

In my town, if you goof and forget that, and youve parked your car in our core downtown area, tow fee starts at $250 USD. If the tow truck needs a special gadget to hitch up the back of your car, its an additional $150.

So, its easy to feel like a failure if one has to use discursive thinking and not be able to live in the NOW all the time, unless you forget that you dont have an entourage to take care of this for you and that the guru who is getting you to feel like a failure does have a support staff to which he or she can outsource all the record keeping that relates to the past.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2008 10:28PM by corboy.

This points to several of the many fallacies of Eckhart Tolle.

First off, trying to get rid of the so-called "ego" is VERY dangerous for people with mental health issues. Most of those people need to do the opposite and build up some "Ego-Strength" to be able to cope. If they took the Tolle book seriously, many of them would end up on park benches like Tolle says he was, not living in a multimillion dollar condo with cleaning staff, like Tolle does now.
Doesn't anyone see the hypocrisy of these folks?
Oprah and Tolle?

Oprah earns close to 1 million dollars a DAY. That's right. 1 million a DAY.
So she can hire people to do everything for her. Take her money and fame away, and put her into the real world, and she is going to sing a different tune. She has been distorted by the Power of her fame and money...Power corrupts.

Also, look at all the products being sold tied to Tolle and Oprah. Rampant commercialism. That is the kind of thing that is wrecking the ecology of the planet. But its OK when Oprah and Tolle do it, to sell millions of plastic pens that will end up in landfills. Hypocrisy, self-serving. Its ok for them, but not for you.
Its good to be the King, as they say.
Oprah can use her show to shill for car companies on one hand...and on the other hand do this stuff?
Welcome to America... :-)

Also, the world is NOT currently "insane". That is a distortion made by Tolle by his own warped cognitions. Parts of the world are in very serious trouble, but vast other parts are fine. Part of Wisdom is accepting imperfect reality, which Tolle and Oprah are against. They are VERY Unwise people, actually.

Also, what they are trying to do is IMPRACTICAL. The people who are running around killing, warring, and destroying are NOT going to read Tolle's book or watch Oprah on TV! They are too busy warring and pillaging. The way to get to those people is by other Leaders talking about Ethical Leadership and Enlightened Self-Interest, and also fear of punishment by the wider community.

Also, the attack on the "I Am" part of the human mind by Eckhart Tolle...that is INSANE. Literally.
The Self-Awareness of the cognitive mind is what makes a human a human. We are not plants, we are not rodents. Even monkeys have some self-consciousness.
Self-Awareness is a miracle and wonder of Evolution. We need to embrace it.
Just because Tolle found his life too painful, doesn't mean that applies to anyone else. As many critics are saying, guess what, healthy people LIKE their wonderful minds! So in this area, Tolle is very unwise and unhealthy too.

Lastly, Tolle and Oprah yack on and on about getting rid of the Ego. The irony is both of them are literally EGOMANIACS. Look at their books and websites. Me Me Me.
It might be possible that Oprah has gotten so wrapped up in "Oprah", the mags, books, TV, that she needs to cut her Ego down. Just think, everywhere she walks, she is literally worshipped by crazed fans. So maybe she does need to tone it down a bit, otherwise a person can lose it.

But...being a mere human is not enough for them, they want to be Godhumans...they want to BE the Christ Consciousness. That is the ultimate hubris, for little humans to think they are going to become literal Gods with their Gnostic beliefs. That is what they are preaching in the end...drop the human consciousness, and literally become like Christ...not in the sense of "humble", but in the sense of being able to literally work Miracles, etc.
New Thought.
People need to look into this stuff more carefully, and see where they are being lead.

I don't get the sense that Oprah is malicious, just deluded by Power, as will happen with any human.
And Tolle seems to be just a 3rd rate New Age huckster, who got lucky and picked by Oprah. But the massive exposure might backfire on him.

Also, think of the Hubris of Tolle. The guy literally thinks his little book is going to "change the world". What arrogance. He writes like a psuedo-intellectual HG Wells with pretentions to grandeur...and the amazing thing is that some people are buying it hook, line and sinker.

If Tolle had no "Ego", why would he write these long rambling books?
Why would he not acknowledge his sources? There is not one original word in his stuff...just old wine in a new marketing package. Its just a money-maker.
So the irony is that Tolle IS the very thing he is preaching against, which often seems to happen in life.

Its just like the Celestine Prophecy, and pet-rocks, and the Spice Girls, and tulip mania....the cycle of short-term public fashion trends driven by marketing hype.
This fad will pass in a few months, then on to the next marketing-hype New Age fad to move more merchandise.

Quote
csp
Actually, it is quite the opposite. Isn't the world currently insane? Look around as it speeds to its end. This is not due to a lack of ego, but its reinforcement and empowerment. We can destroy ourselves and our environment more quickly and efficiently than ever. Tolle recognizes that our insane thought-forms and identification with mind ("I think therefore I am") is what perpetuates this endless cycle of destruction that no widespread, implemented philosophy, religion, government, culture or psychology has been able to solve.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2008 11:51PM by The Anticult.

First, lets not confuse Oprah with Tolle. Two very different people operating from very different places.

Secondly, I don't think Tolle is addressing people with serious mental health issues. He's talking to the average person on the street who is realizing that there is something seriously wrong with the world and experiencing an inner tension, nagging and gnawing that something isn't right. This universal neurosis is being exploited by the pharmaceutical companies to the tune of billions of dollars with promises of sham bliss.

Thirdly, plastic pens wrecking the environment? Her webcast is also using electricity and his books are published with paper material and transported by planes and trucks. I think you have to be somewhat reasonable in drawing an "environmental" line.

Fourthly, he isn't addressing the leaders, warlords, etc. If you've listened to Tolle he states very clearly that we can only work on ourselves and not others. If enough of us change then the world will follow. Our failures as a civilization are because we put our faith in governments and leaders to make these changes when they are more interested in maintaining the status quo.

Fifthly, you are confused about self-awareness. Tolle is agreeing with you. We should be more self-aware. This aspect of his teaching is the "mindfulness" of Buddha's Eightfold Path. He says to observe our thoughts, emotions and will so that we are not identified with or lived by them. An ego-less state of being does not mean that you are without thoughts. Thoughts arise as needed and then return to silence when not needed. They are a tool, but not the totality of our consciousness. Currently, it is as if we are walking around swinging a hammer 24/7 and not putting it down when it is not needed to hammer a nail. This is all he is saying.

Sixthly, he writes the books because he was asked to. He went on Oprah because he was asked to. He is essentially a recluse dragged into the public eye reluctantly. It is also my understanding that he does not live in a multimillion dollar condo, but owns a very modest one. It could be due to the fact that real estate market values in Canada, and in particular Vancouver, have risen substantially over the past few years and maybe he has benefited from this.

Lastly, he has acknowledged his sources in his books. Not sure why you think he hasn't. He is also, in my estimation, the most authentic spiritual teacher since Krishnamurti. I've read all of his books and seen hours of video. I've watched him very, very closely to look for any hint or indication of falsity or ego and can find none. Maybe this scares some people.