Watermark

A New Earth ~ Week 1

It is customary when writing on spiritual matters to tell stories -- parables or koans -- to help illuminate the unenlightened. Tolle does this, and these parts of the book, I like. Yesterday I happened across this in an old Readers Digest (March 2006) and it expresses, on so many levels, the difficulties I have with A New Earth:

During the Cold War, I was an interpreter in the Air Force. We were testing a computer that purportedly could translate Russian into English, and vice versa. We began by uttering this English phrase, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

The Russian translation came out, "Vodka horosho, no myaca slabie." Or, in English, "The alcohol is good, but the meat is poor."

SAM CONNER

Ah, yes -- translation. Translation from the 'spiritual' to the 'material' (or, as Tolle would say, formless and form.) Or: I want to be willing, to be open and receptive -- but I keep wanting evidence, something palpable, something testable. Something like alcohol and meat.

A teacher once told me that many people are processed cheese and pale beer, whereas I am sharp cheddar and dark ale. Perhaps this means I am all too much form. Here, I am wanting fine brandy and rare, bloody steak, but tasting mostly fumes and charcoal.

I have had many teachers. Most people, many other animals, countless trees. I am determined that this book will teach me. But determination, of course, is the entirely wrong stance from which to receive such teaching. At once, of course, I realize that there is nothing new here; this is all recycled philosophy, opinion, revelation -- as even the author confesses.

But such critiques are essentially pointless. The author protects himself well:

This book is about you. It will change your state of consciousness or it will be meaningless. It can only awaken those who are ready. not everyone is ready yet, but many are . . .

If you don't get it, you're not ready. So why are so many (over half a million, Oprah tells us) trying to glean wisdom and enlightenment from this?

In The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, Chapter 9: Divinity With or Without God, Jonathan Haidt tells us:

In all human cultures, the social world has two clear dimensions: a horizontal dimension of closeness or liking, and a vertical one of hierarchy or status. . . . one day, you see a person do something extraordinary, or you have an overwhelming experience of natural beauty, and feel lifted "up." But it's not the "up" of hierarchy, it's some other kind of elevation. . . . My claim is that the human mind perceives a third dimension, a specifically moral dimension that I will call "divinity." . . . I am not assuming that God exists and is there to be perceived. . . . Rather, my research on the moral emotions has led me to conclude that the human mind simply does perceive divinity and sacredness, whether or not God exists.

And, as is his habit, he refers us to various studies that support his hypothesis.

So here we are, these half-million of us who have had such experiences a few times in our lives, and want to know what such experiences mean, or simply want more of them, and we sign onto Oprah.com at the assigned time to learn how to elicit them and crash even her (presumably impressive) technological resources. [Kudos to her for the attempt, nonetheless. With her, I do believe it's possible, and if anyone can pull it off, it's Oprah.]

Yesterday, I downloaded the webcast and watched it. Today, I don't remember much about it. He seems like a nice, kind man. Entirely inoffensive, and, I think, entirely sincere. His ideas are much easier to take from him on video than from the page, where he tends to be a bit opaque. What I remember (in my own [borrowed] words):

• The only moment we have is this one.
• Resistance (to this singular moment) is futile. (Resist nothing.)
• We are not our thoughts; we are the space in which our thoughts occur.
• Ego is the unobserved mind, the unhappy story.
• Ask not what you want from life (God, Consciousness) but what life wants from you.
• A bit of unsubstantiated (and unacknowledged as unsubstantiated) theory about energy fields and the evolution of consciousness.

So. Nothing especially new or earthshaking. Nothing, really, that might not benefit a willing spirit, were the flesh strong enough to pay ongoing attention, and the mind sufficiently engaged to doubt.

What interests me, though -- that thinking, egoic me -- is how this effort to move us toward peace, serenity and awareness has resulted in a flurry of angry, angst-ridden postings on the Oprah message boards; how this action has provoked its opposite in reaction. My guess, from reading post titles (I rarely dip into the posts themselves, after a few quick readings) is that there is some email campaign going on in religious right communities. I don't know how else to account for the number and vehemence of posts attacking Tolle (and Oprah) as anti-Christian; even as Satan, Beelzebub, or the Anti-Christ himself. 

Really, if one's religion, or faith, is so fragile as to be seriously threatened by this inoffensive man and his restatement of ancient concepts, I'd say it's time to reassess that religion, that faith. It's time to explore some new -- or old -- ideas.

Here is a very cogent and funny post: Yeah, I read it too:

While it’s still fresh in my mind, I thought I would offer my two cents. Well actually, I was thinking of offering my twenty-five cents worth of opinionated review but in an effort to keep my conscious-self in check, I’ll stick with pennies. Perhaps a quarter is a bit egocentric. . .

So with that, I send you off to explore, and turn my own ego toward less substantial preoccupations. For a few days, anyway. Poetry, maybe. Or science fiction.

Unless you have something to add?

05 march 02008 snapshot poem

the moon is a sliver of silver
be still, you tell me
i sit

snow comes
thick, soft, glittery
i cannot catch it

it catches me
it grows around me
a pale and quiet burial

this is the only moment
snow comes
i am a stillness in the snow

i am
this darkness in the white world
i am sitting still

sparrows in the snow
sun comes, snow goes
i sit

A New Earth Live Web Event

From Oprah.com:

We are are experiencing technical difficulties due to internet congestion. We recommend that you come back tomorrow to watch the entire webcast easily on Oprah.com. You can even download the podcast on Oprah.com or iTunes.

[Folks are landing here searching for info on this, so I thought I'd post and save you more searching.]

A New Earth, The Happiness Hypothesis, Oprah, and me

Well, although I'm still not sure why I'm doing this (possibly just to set myself a task) I've decided on an approach.

I have finished The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, by Jonathan Haidt; and quickly read A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, by Eckhart Tolle. Quickly, because I'll be participating in Oprah's Online Web Event, a chapter a week for the next ten weeks, and documenting that slower reading here. I'm going to move back and forth between these two books (and perhaps some others) and explore the differences in how they look at human spirituality, psychology, and 'happiness'.

I'm hoping that you folks will chime in with your own perspectives and experiences.

[I'm also, by the way, still trudging through Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions, by Lisa Randall, because I must keep going or I'll have to begin again at the beginning, as I have several times with Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. It's odd -- I'm reading along, and mostly not getting it, except that every so often some part of my mind says WOW! -- even when most of my mind seems confused. So is one part of my mind getting it, while the rest is still in the murk?]

The differences between A New Earth and The Happiness Hypothesis are apparent at even a brief look.

Both Tolle and Haidt have NOTES.

Haidt has many notes, fifty or more per chapter, and a thick (over twenty pages) section of REFERENCES. Some few of these are references to philosophers, prophets, and scriptures of varied traditions, but most are references to scientific studies of human genetics, biology, and behavior.

Tolle's NOTES are few (about seven per chapter) and virtually all are scriptural. There are no REFERENCES, and no index.

Both use metaphors to express their ideas. Haidt tells us "this is a metaphor"; Tolle's metaphors are presented as if they are established reality. To make sense of Tolle's book, one must accept the premises (not made explicit until near the end of the book) that there is some Universal Intelligence; that the goal of evolution is Human Consciousness; and that our Purpose is to manifest that consciousness.

Now, I read science fiction, so I am accustomed, as a reader, to making that leap of disbelief into the story, the world that the author has created for the reader. Two things, though: the book is labeled fiction; and, once the initial leap is made, all must follow logically from there. Everything within that world must be coherent.

I'm not sure that everything within Tolle's A New Earth passes that test, even if one accepts the premise. But more about that as we go along.

Haidt is careful, when he presents an idea, to tell the reader what is supported by substantive research; what is supported by early research; and what is purely speculative. He also takes some time to explain his terms.

Tolle doesn't care about research. Tolle seems to care about intuition, which, as much research has demonstrated, is not necessarily reliable. Tolle uses language in ways unfamiliar (and elusive) to those not steeped in New Age thinking. Sometimes his writing is graceful and endearing; sometimes it is dense and obscure. For any reader, I suspect, it will be a challenge.

I've taken some time to peruse the MESSAGE BOARDS at Oprah.com. Postings seem to fall into three general areas: debates about whether A New Earth is or is not anti-Christian, and/or is simply a rip-off of Buddhism; testimonials; and complaints of confusion. I've seen only one post that questions whether Tolle understands basic scientific theory that he uses to support his arguments. I would like to see a great deal more of this last. I am feeling, sharply, the limitations of my own education, as I try to make sense of -- and recognize both accuracy and errors in --Tolle's reasoning.

So. The class begins tonight, and I'll be posting at least once a week on this topic.

I'll try to keep writing poems, too.

Has Oprah Learned?

I can't believe I'm doing this. At the encouragement of a friend, I am reading a New Age book, and participating in a New Age event.

Next Monday, Oprah's Book Club is presenting a Live Web Event: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, with author Eckhart Tolle. This is from Tolle's invitation to the ten-week online course:

I invite you to join Oprah and myself in our weekly online sessions. We will be studying A New Earth, but not as an academic  subject or in order to acquire new theories or beliefs. Our aim is to explore through the teachings of the book the most important question you can ask: What is the purpose of my life and how do I fulfill that purpose? It will be a course in self-exploration and awakening. It will help you see what the dysfunctional patterns are within yourself that create unnecessary conflict and suffering and prevent you from finding true fulfillment. Hopefully, it will also help you access a dimension within yourself that perhaps you didn't know existed or only caught glimpses of on rare occasions. Don't be trapped for the rest of your life within the narrow confines of your personal history and your conditioned personality and allow your life to be transformed from within, through the power of consciousness itself.

Let's see, it's all there: belief, teachings, purpose, self- exploration, awakening, dysfunctional, suffering, fulfillment, dimension, transformation, consciousness. All the New Age touchstones. The first chapter of this book (The Flowering of Human Consciousness) even uses flowers, crystals, precious stones, and birds as metaphors for enlightenment.

I am going to write about this experience, to clarify for myself why I am annoyed -- even worried -- by much New Age thought; and why I am, nonetheless, interested in it. Two years ago, I worked through -- and wrote about -- The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. I suspect that I will encounter some of the same problems, conflicts, resistance, and discoveries with this book.

Some of you may know that Oprah has a fondness for this sort of reading. She has previously promoted a book and movie called The Secret. I have not seen the movie, I have not read the book, and I don't plan to do either. Like many other such examples of mushy reasoning, this one leaps from the power of positive thinking to you make your own reality with no apparent blushing, no bridge, and no evidence.

John Gravois at Slate writes:

Dear Oprah,

Not too long ago, one of your viewers—a woman named Kim—wrote you to announce that she had decided to halt her breast-cancer treatments and heal herself with her mind. Kim had just seen your two shows dedicated to The Secret, the self-help phenomenon that says we shape the world with our thoughts, and she was inspired to bet her life on it.

You're an optimistic lady, Oprah, but this gave even you the willies. So you went on the air to "clarify your thoughts" about the Law of Attraction, The Secret's underlying theory that mind conjures matter. You implored Kim to go back to her treatments. And you told your audience that the Law of Attraction "is not the answer to everything. It is not the answer to atrocities or every tragedy."

Courtney E. Martin at AlterNet observes:

If The Secret's logic is to be believed, then those who are hungry are not envisioning food hard enough, those without running water aren't imagining the feeling of satiation with enough enthusiasm. It doesn't matter if you are born in the Sudan or San Francisco, according to The Secret's catch-all claim; you can always fantasize your way into "massive wealth." ...

This point of view neglects the effects of government policy, class, race, gender, geography, and a host of other systemic influences on the kind of wealth -- and life -- one is able to create...

The idea that people invite abuse or oppression with their thoughts is insulting. The Secret crew only acknowledges this interpretation briefly: "Often when people first hear this...they recall events in history where masses of lives were lost, and they find it incomprehensible that so many people could have attracted themselves to the event. If people believe they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time...those thoughts of fear, separation, and powerlessness, if persistent, can attract them to being in the wrong place at the wrong time." I can't begin to imagine how offensive this claim must be to those who have lost family members under horrific circumstances, like the massacres in Rwanda or the events of September 11th.

Most scathingly, Peter Birkenhead at Salon writes:

Worse than "The Secret's" blame-the-victim idiocy is its baldfaced bullshitting. The titular "secret" of the book is something the authors call the Law of Attraction. They maintain that the universe is governed by the principle that "like attracts like" and that our thoughts are like magnets: Positive thoughts attract positive events and negative thoughts attract negative events. Of course, magnets do exactly the opposite -- positively charged magnets attract negatively charged particles -- and the rest of "The Secret" has a similar relationship to the truth ... And worse than the idiocy and the bullshitting is its anti-intellectualism, because that's at the root of the other two.

These excerpts demonstrate very well my own problems with much of the material we've seen in the last few decades on spirituality and self-improvement. So often, these writers misread, misinterpret, or misstate what we know -- or think we know -- about our world and our place in it. Usually these distortions have to do with an inflated view of individual choice and empowerment, and the significance of our (human) place in the universe. We want to feel powerful -- perhaps this feeling is necessary for our survival -- so we pretend to have more than we do; we pretend that others have more than they do; and we desperately want to believe that there is something more.

Perhaps this sense of something more is a mere trick of our biology, some genetic quirk that may contribute to our survival, or may be irrelevant. Or -- perhaps -- there really is something more, something unmeasureable, or, at least, not yet measured. We have a long history of human thought that insists so.

Like many others, caught in the net of circumstance, personality, and character -- I find myself wanting, in all the senses that implies. I find myself wanting, and so I look in the available places for something to fill that want, or repair it, or explain it, or make it go away. I try to open my heart without closing my mind, to use an old but still expressive metaphor. And, since writing seems to be part of my purpose just now, I shall record this particular seeking in this particular place, and trust you to help me see what I may be missing, or misinterpreting, or misstating, myself.

So. I begin again.

UPDATED TO ADD:  The Secret Antidote and Washington Post: "Slimy Secret" [Thank you, Thom Rutledge]

P.S. I meant to mention, the articles excerpted above are well worth a read, if these issues are of interest to you; and the comment threads are, too. The comments include many vehement defenses of both Oprah and The Secret. Not being, myself, an extraordinary person who has changed countless lives, I am not in a position to criticize Oprah, and don't mean this as such a criticism.