Excerpt from Eckhart Tolle ‘s : A New Earth Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Oprah #61)

Eckhart Tolle who wrote “A New Earth” compared the enlightened beings like the Lord Buddha and the Lord Jesus as flowers who blossomed before us and only a few people were receptive of their wisdom, of their consciousness (1). He goes on to challenge the readers of his book that as they read, their consciousness too will change, will awaken to a “new earth”. As more and more shift to this new consciousness, the collective consciousness of the human race will easily affect the others as well. It is important to identify and understand the ego and how it operates in the unconsciousness , only awaiting to be awakened.

According to Tolle, we have an “inherited dysfunction” which he breaks down to the different religions:

Hinduism: “The mind is maya (illusion)” - Ramana Maharshi, an Indian guru

Buddhism: The mind’s normal state is dukkha (suffering, unsatisfactoriness, misery)

Christianity: collective state of humanity is original sin (sin inherited from Adam and Eve)

Good news is that awareness of this “inherited dysfunction” arises the possibility to arise from it:

Hinduism & Buddhism: this is called enlightenment

Christianity: this is called salvation

There is a challenge made by the author to established religions, their dogma, and their structures. For him the new consciousness will arise as a new spirituality which he describes like this:

“The new spirituality, the transformation of consciousness, is arising to a large extent outside of the structures of the existing institutionalized religions.”

- Eckhart Tolle

Meaning, this new consciousness is something that is beyond religion and beyond the exclusivity of belonging to one religion.

For the remaining parts of the book, the author delves deep and itemizes the human ego and from it he develops or rather “awakens” a new consciousness within the reader --- which is reflective of our collective consciousness at large as the “the new earth.”

Reference:

(1) Tolle, E. (2005). A New Earth Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. New York: Penguin Group