This article is one persons reflection on the consequences that ensue when persons go overboard in spiritual practice, become ego identified with being 'ego less' and in believing they have dropped their story, become enslaved to a more subtle and insidious story.

Life as Story but Not Quite So Fast

[enlightenmentward.wordpress.com]

Thank you, Christa, for sharing!

I must say I have always gotten a really creepy feeling from Kim Eng. There has been something there that has always seemed fishy to me. Also, Tolle seems to have changed drastically even since the Oprah series. I was really amazed to see that eckhart.tv charges $75/6mo of service. A lot of people who want to spread the word do basic videos and post them on youtube so everyone can see.

Being in a leadership role, even if randomly assigned and for only a couple of hours can change a person.

If someone has actually SOUGHT leadership and then been in that role for years (doesnt matter if they call themselves 'teacher' or 'life coach' or 'author)..years of having an entourage, years of being looked up to, the cynosure of all eyes..
that, in the light of what I call the Stanford Cookie experiment, can change someone.

[www.google.com]

And I do not believe any amount of enlightenment (whatever that is) can ever immunize a human being against the insidious temptation of a years long leadership role in which there are no checks and balances.

Ken Wilber has spent years imagining frameworks of human evolution assuming one can reach some exalted point where one is immune to temptation. His own career and the Wyatt Earpy rant demonstrate this is an exercise in futility.

Wilber -- Wyatt Earpy rant

[www.kenwilber.com]

(later he claimed this was just a joke, an exercise in humor and if one was offended that meant one was not evolved enough to see it as a joke)

[www.integralworld.net]

[www.kheper.net]

(I threw this in, since Wilber and Tolle seem to show up together on various projects)

[www.google.com]

bump

When Ken Wilber gives a guru his seal of approval and even pimps for him, the guru is bad news. Wilber never promotes non-tyrants and/or con-artists. First it was Adi Da, Trungpa, Coen, now it's Tolle and Genpo Roshi. Here's what he says about Genpo Isn’t Genpo Roshi about the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen? It’s not just Genpo as a human being and as an Enlightened human being. He’s a deeply, deeply decent human being. Which is much harder than being enlightened, incidentally.”

The fact that he promotes "crazy wisdom" as a legitimate method of spiritual teaching puts him a very bad crowd of criminals. And yes those who practice "crazy wisdom" are criminals. If some one came up to you and slapped you about on the street then proceeded to scream at you then demanded you perform sexual acts for him, the perp would arrested and spend a years in jail.

The fact he either cannot or will not see it, shows he has zero concern for the mental and physical well being of those who read his books and follow his advice.

Oh yeah he's a rotten scholar that routinely lies and alters the truth to suit his vanity. He wouldn't last a half hour in a community college philosophy class.

Tolle gave an interview to The Guardianthat was published in April 2009 and mentions he did have means of support in the early days.

Do note that Wanderer77 first posted in February 2009 giving a description of ET's early career & family background that was quite different from the Tolle publicity that had been on offer (the epiphany on the park bench, no info on how he survived during that time).


(to be exact--W77's first published post is here--02/20/2009 01:29AM )

All posts by Wanderer77

[forum.culteducation.com]

The interview given in Bedsite Epiphany was published in The Guardian two months after Wanderer77 first posted on this message board. However, there is no information about when the interview took place.

All we can say with confidence is that spring of 2009 is when ET did mention that he had had means of support during his time of bliss sitting on park benches.

That is most important, because if one is in an altered state of consciousness that has so total an impact, one's ability to survive may be compromised and may never live to pass teachings on unless others step forward to offer care and support.


Saturday interview
The bedsit epiphany

Eckhart Tolle, Oprah Winfrey's favourite guru, has sold more books than almost any other spiritual author. So what's his Easter message?
·
·
·Oliver Burkeman The Guardian, Saturday 11 April 2009

[www.guardian.co.uk]

Quote

Tolle's transformative experience, which happened in 1979, didn't lead to instant global stardom: commercialising his insights was apparently the furthest thing from his mind.

Instead, he embarked on a doctorate in Latin American literature at Cambridge. But it felt meaningless; he dropped out after a year. He spent the next two years in London, sleeping on friends' sofas, and spending the days on park benches in Russell Square, or sheltering in the British Library. When money ran out, he took a temp job doing office admin for the Kennel Club. "Externally, one would have said 'this person is completely lost'," he says. "My mother was very upset, because in her view, I had thrown everything away. And from a logical point of view, that looked quite correct." His father helped him pay for a flat, and he began to run small group teaching sessions in friends' living-rooms. But there were many more years to come of what looked, from the outside, like drifting - including a long spell on the west coast of the United States, where he started to write The Power of Now. It was first published in 1997, with a print run of 3,000 copies. (It would be 10 years and one Oprah endorsement later before Paris Hilton would be spotted carrying a copy on her way to jail.)

and

Quote

He never made a conscious decision to promote himself, he maintains, and it's hard not to believe him: he isn't surrounded by a loyal band of followers, and he seems to live, Vancouver penthouse flat notwithstanding, much as he ever did. "I go to the supermarket, I do my laundry, I do my tasks," he says. "My external life only looks big when I do some event and a car comes to pick me up. But even then, I don't think 'I'm going to give a big talk tonight.' I step into the car, and there is just that step. I look out of the window, there is just that moment." Gurus who preach the transcendence of ego are prone to having some of the biggest egos around, but it's a fate Tolle seems genuinely to have avoided.

Tolle's quiet presence has a way of burning up people's cynicism, mine included, and yet I still can't quite believe that life inside his head is as constantly peaceful as he claims. Doesn't he ever get irritated? "I can't remember the last time it happened," he says. "I think maybe the last time it happened ..." Earlier today? Yesterday? "I think it was a few months ago," he remembers, after a while. "I was walking, and there was a big dog, and the owner wasn't controlling it and it was pestering a smaller dog. I felt a wave of irritation. But what happens is it doesn't stick around, because it's not perpetuated by thought activity. It only lasted moments." And he smiles amiably again.

He lives in Vancouver with his partner of nine years, a Canadian woman named Kim Eng, who often teaches alongside him. (They have no children.) Do they ever have arguments, as in ordinary relationships? "I can't remember what ordinary relationships are like," he replies. "Occasionally there are differences of opinion. But we don't fight. It's like Obama says - you don't need to be disagreeable when you disagree. That sounds lighthearted, but there's a profound truth behind it, because it implies that you don't need to be totally identified with your mental positions."

Tolle grew up in circumstances that were decidedly less zen.

He was born Ulrich Tolle, in a town near Dortmund, to a matter-of-fact mother and an eccentric, head-in-the-clouds father; they fought, then divorced, and his father left the country.


At 13, he says, he abruptly refused to go to school - "I hated having to study things that were not compatible with my inner being" - and his exasperated mother eventually sent him to live with his father in Spain. "My father said: 'Do you want to go to school here?' I said, of course, 'No.' Then he said: 'Well then, don't. Do what you like. Read.'"

Tolle credits his unconventional upbringing with broadening his mind. "Spain at that time was very different than Germany, almost medieval. So I didn't get totally conditioned by one culture. If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it. My conditioning got completely broken, so there was an opening to other world views."

(After his experiences at 29, he marked his transformation by adopting the first name Eckhart, after 13th-century German mystic Meister Eckhart.)

This provision of support by Tolle's friends who let him stay with them, and by his father who supported his explorations when young deserve to be given credit, for without their support, Tolle would not have made it.

He says nothing about whether his father and his supportive friends had any special conscious state, beyond that of friendship.

Unlike enlightement, one can learn to be a good friend without having to pay to attend lectures.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2018 11:23PM by corboy.

For a compare and contrast on how someone can change from a shy and talented young person into someone who runs a personality driven inner circle, get and read

Secret Germany:Stefan George and His Circle by Norton (the surname is pronounced “gay-org-uh”) "

[www.google.com]

This book can feel painful to read. George discovered early that he had homosexual longings, and lived in a place and time where one faced the grave risk of criminal persecution and total loss of civil rights (Paragraph 175 of the Wilhelmine German code of law). This sensitive man was placed at war with his own true self and at odds with his surroundings.

This said, and allowances made, Stefan George's method of arranging his professional and social life has so very many similarities to personality cult process that his career is worth our attention. George's method of arranging interviews are worth comparing with how Gurdjieff stage managed meetings with potential recruits. Recruiters looked for like minded people, vetted them, aroused feelings of anticipation, and George making himself aloof and secretive added to the allure.

Early in his travels, George was in Paris and earned the trust of the young artists who were allowed to visit the poet Mallerme. In this section of Norton's book, one is given a description of how tightly organized the Mallerme gatherings were--very similar to a guru receiving disciples.

[books.google.com]

The 'Globe Room' George's meeting room was set up just so for his reception of aspirants. Its worth contrasting this with how Gurdjieff stage managed early meetings.

A meeting with Stefan George

[books.google.com]

Secret Germany: Stefan George and his Circle-page 424 Back at the Globe Room, Steiner was asked to put on a camel-hair robe, while George and Gundolf, who was also present, both wore white.

More descriptions of how George lit his room

[books.google.com]

Contrast with Gurdjieff in his early recruiting days as Prince Ozay

Quote

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:m4zXG3OFS_UJ:[www.gurdjieff-legacy.org] evening, rather late, he said: "There is someone I want you to meet. Come along with me."

He gave no explanation except to say that the person we were going to see was one "of whom there are but few in the world." He also enjoined strict secrecy regarding our visit, because the man concerned was "in hiding." Why, he didn't explain.

He led the way to a house at the bottom of a small street not far from the Nicolas station. Here at a door on a bare staircase suggesting modest bourgeois dwellings he rang a bell. We were admitted to a very plain apartment. Lev Lvovitch greeted the woman who let us in, but did not introduce me. He walked straight down the passage of the flat and opened a door at the end. This doorway appeared to have been knocked through the wall of the flat beyond, which was larger and more sumptuous. There was a marked oriental touch in its decorations. The walls of the hall were adorned with carpets, wrought-iron lamps with coloured glass hung from the ceiling. Evidently completely at home, the Lion peeped into one of the rooms, then signalled to me to follow.

The room, fairly large, was draped with curtains and other hangings, with lamps to match. In one corner was a large low divan piled with coloured cushions. On this divan two men sat cross-legged, playing chess with a set of ornamental pieces. On an octagonal table beside them were coffee and cups. From time to time the players reached out to take a sip. Judging from their looks neither of them was European. One, wearing a patterned silk dressing-gown and a turban, was thickset, dark, with a short, bushy black beard. The other, dressed in a slack lounge suit with a scarf in place of collar and tie, had tan-coloured leathery skin, high cheekbones, slanting eyes, and a little goatee beard. Except for a curt nod neither of them paid the slightest attention when we entered. They went on playing their game, exchanging comments in a language I couldn't understand.

"Coffee?" asked Lev Lvovitch, signalling me to a stool.

He poured it out and then looked on at the game. It was soon over, amid a discussion presumably as to what the loser ought to have done at a critical juncture. Apparently the man in the turban had won. He turned, and, seeing me, said, as if I had been there all the evening: "You play?" He spoke Russian with a marked accent.

"Not very well," I replied, "but I like it."

For answer he made a gesture inviting me to take the place of his late opponent, who got up to make way for me and started to talk volubly to Lev Lvovitch.

"Take your shoes off if you would be more comfortable," said my host.

I did so, and was ashamed to find I had a hole in my sock. I tried to hide it when I doubled my feet under me, but to my embarrassment he pointed at it, smiled, and said: "You believe in ventilation! Good thing—nothing like fresh air! ... Black or white?"—and he held out his closed hands with two pawns in them. When I had picked white I noticed that the other hand had held a white pawn too.

One factor that makes Stefan George's career worth studying and comparing with other, crasser gurus is that George had little interest in money. He chose to work through a small network of supporters, and preferred governance over a small group of initiates whom he could trust to adore him and over whom he could feel secure.



Stefan George was renowned as a poet. Until Norton published this biography, little on George was available in English and what little of it was shrouded in the mythologizing that originated with George himself.

Stefan George appeared to have had an emotionally impovrished upbringing.

He sustained himself by a feeling of destiny and specialness, but kept aloof, unable to have friends except on his own terms.

But when in Paris, he was able to meet the symbolist poet, Mallerme. Mallermet had exalted views of poetry and the true role of the poet and that art when real is only understandable to a small elite with sufficiently elevated understanding.

Mallerme held regular scheduled talks. He would hold forth, brilliantly. None dared question him. People were not even allowed to attend unless one of Mallerme's disciples vetted the person and decided the person had the right attitude.

Anyone who dared ask an insensitive question would be frowned on by the gathered disciples.

In short,, though Mallerme was an artist, a poet, with no pretensions to offer salvation or even a political programe, and was quite generous to new talent, he had arranged his own gathering to function much like a guru centered satsang.

Young Stefan George was electrified by this and even if unconsciously, sensed this was how to live his own life and ensure emotional support, while keeping the friendships under his own control and on his own terms. He started his poetic career inspired by Verlaine and Mallerme and only later and rather painfully, decided to forge his campaign to arbitrate over the German poetic world.

Anyone who did not like George's poetry even if it was mild and tactful disagreement, was instantly rejected.

Cut cold.

Gradually, over years, George did assemble a circle (known as the George-Kries) and published a magazine. He spent much time in Munich and Mt Veritas area. As the years passed and he lived in his safe controlled environment, in charge of it at all times, he became more and more ego driven, convinced that he was not merely a poet but an arbiter of destiny. One of his statements was that to write poetry was to reign. Meeting him was difficult, and one had to be subject to quizzing by his inner circle before being permitted to visit and submit to further questioning/interrogation by The Master himself.

In short, Stefan George was a small time dictator over a poetry circle he regarded as the true, secret Germany.

Yet, with all this, he became honored as a poet. Schoenberg set some of George's compositions to music.

Several of George's disciples tried to assassinate Hitler in 1945. But what may have given them fortitude was a view that they served the true Secret Germany, and that Hitler had proved himself unworthy.

In the German speaking areas, there were others who led charisma driven movements.

Frithjof Schuon. One area where he is strangely similar to George is that both were in love. From afar, Schuon adored a woman named Madeleine.

When both George and Schuon lost contact with their adored ones, they made their adored lost loves the focus of devotion.

Quote

A new focus for George's work emerged: the series of Maximin-Gedichte center on George's belief in the transcendence of Maximin's earthy life - his idealized figure becomes for George the Stern des Bundes, "one of the new awakened spirits who would one day form the new kingdom on earth--see below

Quote

Schuon required that his followers in the Alawiyya (Schuon's purportedly Sufi order.)join him in this “unhappy love.” “Whoever does not love Madeleine is not of the order!” Against the Modern World, page 119 Mark A Sedwick

[books.google.com]

Rudolf Steiner. One most remarkable similarity is that Steiner designed type fonts and Stefan George went so far as to design a type font of his own, as well.

Reading the way George arranged the social patterns and his dominence over his small circle can give clues on how larger guru centered cults operate.

Quote

George's belief that he was writing for, and indeed could only be appreciated by, an audience of the elite. To this end, he began to gather around him a circle of admirers, selecting at first amongst his peers and contemporaries, and only later restricting his attentions to the young disciples who sought him out. This group of friends and followers, known from its beginnings as the George-Kreis, gradually took on almost cult-like rituals and symbolism, emphasizing the renewal of culture through the power of youth and beauty.

The strength of George's belief in this cult of beauty is reflected not only in many of his later, quite monumental works, such as Der Stern des Bundes and the prophetically titled Das neue Reich, but in the decisive `Maximin-Erlebnis,' which provided the poet with inspiration and material for much of his later poetry: In 1903 George, during one of his frequent stays in Munich, became acquainted with the 15-year old Maximilian Kronberger. After encountering him on the street several times, George simply approached the young boy and introduced himself. Maximilian became George's close friend and companion over the next year, and was admired by many members of the George-Kreis not only for his youth and beauty, but for his poetic talent as well. Indeed, George saw in Maximilian such perfection that he considered the boy to be an incarnation of the godhead, and worthy of absolute devotion. In 1904, Maximilian died of meningitis at 16.

This shattered George's stability and after driving him to the brink of suicide brought a change in his poetry, which became increasingly transcendental, prophetic, and obscure. A new focus for George's work emerged: the series of Maximin-Gedichte center on George's belief in the transcendence of Maximin's earthy life - his idealized figure becomes for George the Stern des Bundes, "one of the new awakened spirits who would one day form the new kingdom on earth."

George's subsequently famous Kreis (Circle) of like-minded friends was beginning to rally about the same time. George considered his circle to be the embodiment and defender of the "real" but "secret" Germany, opposed to the false values of contemporary bourgeois society.

Some of his disciples, friends, and admirers were themselves historians, philosophers, and poets. Their works profoundly affected the intellectual and cultural attitudes of Germany's elite during the critical postwar years of the Weimar Republic. Essentially conservative in temperament and outlook, George and his circle occupy a central place in the cultural history of Germany with their political vision of a secret Germany, antagonistic to humanism, to democracy, and to progress.

The George-Kreis , his elite circle of friends and admirers, was in some ways a cultic group with hermetic mysticism and rituals.

and

Quote

At the surface, there were doubtless some similarities between George's programme of a hierarchic reformation based upon a new aristocracy of mind and spirit, and the ideologies of the fascist movements as they were beginning to flourish in several European countries during the nineteen-twenties. Though to him, for his attitude and sentiments, it was impossible to identify his cause with the Nazism that was to take over Germany, the ambiguity became clear in 1933, when some of his followers embraced the upheaval wholeheartedly, while others, like his oldest companion, the Jewish poet Karl Wolfskehl, were forced to emigrate. George himself, who was already fatally ill, declined all honours by which the new rulers tried to gain his support, and, silent but demonstrative, left Germany to end his life elsewhere. He died on the 4th of December 1933, in Locarno, Ticino, Switzerland, several months after the Nazi takeover.

bump

> That is most important, because if one is in an
> altered state of consciousness that has so total
> an impact, one's ability to survive may be
> compromised and may never live to pass teachings
> on unless others step forward to offer care and
> support.

Hello all,

The quote above is important, definitely, and what also strikes me is that in Eckhart’s chosen self professed state, as he describes it, there is no point or need in passing on any teaching. That’s the reality.

As lovely as he comes across and may have been, he is a blatant liar. So obvious, that the fact that he is lying escapes many.. that is often the trick of lying isn’t it? The more incredible the claims the more credible it is likely to be perceived since people dare not challenge such a story.

I mean it’s not like David Gest style lying, of which the main purpose I believe was to extinguish the paparazzi at the time (I though that was great), with Eckhart it is lying to a groups of vulnerable people seeking answers and solace.

From reading much of the rest, and noted this in various spiritual practice, parting ways with your ‘old’ self is attractive.. but the fact is it goes nowhere and people create a split within themselves which really results in poor health eventually. Is there any form of denial that contributes to anyone’s personal growth?

It seems like Eckhart (as many others) has created this split within himself. We are left with the super controlled monotone drone that he presents that is just not who he is, and that’s a sad story. If his support was in fact what helped him achieve this state, then it really isn’t support is it?

Let’s also not forget that by now many others also make money through Eckhart. It isn’t just him, it is the publishers and events people and the advisors etc.

These people will keep him in his state only to support their own needs anyway. No support for Eckhart at all, just the machinery.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2020 11:35PM by facet.

corboy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This provision of support by Tolle's friends who
> let him stay with them, and by his father who
> supported his explorations when young deserve to
> be given credit, for without their support, Tolle
> would not have made it.

The money from his father must have lasted quite a while, as Eckhart Tolle was still living off it when he finished writing The Power of Now, in the mid-1990s:

Quote

He was living on his sparse savings, which were swiftly running out. Yet, "everything fell into place beautifully. I ran out of money just when I was getting close to finishing writing. I bought a lottery ticket and won $1,000, which kept me going another month."

The National Post, 6 January 2009, quoted on [www.robertfulford.com]