There is an ever-present temptation for human beings to try to fix things by entirely eliminating the possibility of them ever breaking.

Take Marxism, for an example. Human greed causes great human misery, especially the grinding and inhumane oppression of the poor. At the twisted heart of such greed is the desire to possess. Why not rid ourselves of the desire to possess, by ridding ourselves of all possessions? If there were no private property, no ownership of anything, then there would no longer be either rich or poor. So thought Karl Marx.

The problem with such logic, as the history of Marxism amply testifies, is that in the zeal to eliminate private property, Marxists had no compunction about eliminating the owners of the property—millions of them. Such good intentions paved the way to hell in the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin.

What does this have to do with the soft-speaking, pop Buddhism of Tolle?

Buddhism deals with personal problems by eliminating the person, not the problem. It tries to fix the human condition by entirely eliminating the possibility of real human beings. In this, it sets itself dead against Christianity, which in contrast to the very human temptations of Buddhism, affirms with the greatest possible energy, the reality of God, human beings, and everything else.

Boiled down to its spiritualist bones, Tolle's lesson is this. There is only one thing, which itself is both formless and divine. All particularity, every distinct form, is an illusion. Your identification with your own particularity—be it with your thoughts, your individual history, your body—is the source of all your suffering. Your problem is you—not in you, but you.

The goal of "enlightenment" is this: To rid yourself of this personal attachment to your person (your ego, your mind) and become "conscious" of your complete identity with the formless and divine essence behind all illusory form.

Ironically, what begins in humble self-destruction ends in shameless deification. "When forms around you die or death approaches, your sense of Beingness, of I Am, is freed from its entanglement with form: Spirit is released from its imprisonment in matter. You realize your essential identity as formless, as an all-pervasive Presence, of Being prior to all forms, all identifications. You realize your identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness has identified with. That's the peace of God. The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am."

Tolle's message comes down to: annihilate yourself and you become God, "I am," Being Itself. The result is a great shift of how evil is understood. Evil is attachment to the particular. Salvation is annihilation of it through the recognition that one is not really particular after all, but rather, one with the formless divine. "Ego is no more than this: identification with form, which primarily means thought forms. If evil has any reality—and it has a relative, not an absolute reality—this is also its definition: complete identification with form—physical forms, thought forms, emotional forms".

For those familiar with early Christian history, Buddhism appears to be merely another incarnation of Gnosticism.  This view denies the reality and goodness of the material world, and posits salvation as an escape into divinity. It would probably be more accurate, however, to say that Tolle's Buddhism has more in common with the modern pantheism.  Pantheism sees all particularity, including particular human beings, as ephemeral bubbles on the surface of the ebb and flow of energy and matter.

Tolle violates common sense. We know that we are both particular and real. We experience ourselves as real, distinct persons, and feel deep down in our very particular bones that our annihilation would be evil. That is why a violation of common sense is also a violation of sound doctrine. In Judeo-Christian terms, what Tolle is calling the annihilation of creation and especially the human creature by collapsing everything into the Creator. This is not only blasphemous, but foolish.

At the heart of the Genesis account is the radical affirmation of the fundamental distinction between Creator and creature. Following upon this is the no less important affirmation of creation as real, the divinely-intended, true reality of everything from plants to planets, hamsters to human beings. When God pronounces all "good," He is simultaneously and emphatically declaring it all both real and distinct.

In so doing, the Bible is affirming common sense against the possible confusions of misty philosophical or theological speculations, whatever their source. As G. K. Chesterton rightly said in his classic The Everlasting Man, "Christianity does appeal to a solid truth outside itself; to something which is in that sense external as well as eternal. It does declare that things are really there; or in other words that things are really things. In this Christianity is at one with common sense; but all religious history shows that this common sense perishes except where there is Christianity to preserve it."

But Tolle is out to destroy Christianity by coopting it, by reforming Christ in Tolle's image. The difficulty is that those who swallow Tolle's books also ingest his false presentation of Jesus as cheerfully compatible with Buddhism, and in so doing, will likewise lose their grip on common sense.

Hearing the considerable buzz about Oprah's favorite guru, Eckhart Tolle, author of A New Earth, Pastor Greg Boyd weighs in on the conversation

"But this is also why this book deeply concerns me. For, while Tolle is a master at identifying the universal human problem, the solution he offers to address this problem is, from a Christian perspective, as misguided as any proposed solution could be. "

"First, Tolle is promoting (without any supporting evidence or argumentation) an assortment of very particular religious beliefs about Jesus and Christianity that he clearly believes are the only true ones—in sharp contrast to all the wrong beliefs that Christians have embraced throughout history. Now, I honestly would have no problem with any of this if Tolle was simply upfront with what he was doing. If Tolle came clean and admitted, “Folks, I’m trying to sell you a religious belief system that contradicts Christianity in the most profound ways imaginable,” I’d applaud his effort and honesty! I’d think his alternative doctrines silly, of course. But I’d respect the candor. Unfortunately, whether by intention or just lack of self-awareness, Tolle is not forthright about the religious beliefs he promotes.

Second, as is clear to anybody with even a cursory understanding of the original context in which Jesus’ lived and even a modicum of information about Church History, Tolle’s claims about Jesus and Christianity are demonstrably wrong. Indeed, a little sound exegesis (on the meaning of what Jesus taught) and historical research (on the early church) reveals his claims to be, frankly, comical. The only thing that is perhaps more comical is his apparent lack of awareness that he’s espousing an alternative set of religious dogmas in the first place—and this from a man whose whole agenda is about becoming self-aware!"

Oprah/Tolle Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDeLYSu8RPE&feature=related

Read the complete review at::
http://www.brentcunningham.org/?p=615

"In fact, we are now undergoing an even more profound change than in the sixties, though it is less noisy, with the emergence of mass "spirituality" at the end of the twentieth century. This change is the equivalent of a "soul earthquake" that leaves nothing unshaken and many individuals hurt or destroyed."

Dallas Willard
Renovation of the Heart

Tolle’s Truth Detector

While clergymen and biblical scholars have debated the meaning of Scripture for centuries, Tolle has figured out a uniquely economical way to get to the true meaning of the text. Basically what Tolle does is to read Scripture and see if it “clicks” with an inner voice inside himself. If he gets a peaceful sensation then Tolle believes he has hit upon a deep truth, no matter how his interpretation might differ from traditional understandings of Christianity.

"Yes. The texts I came in contact with—first I picked up a copy of the New Testament almost by accident, maybe half a year, a year after it happened, and reading the words of Jesus and feeling the essence and power behind those words. And I immediately understood at a deeper level the meaning of those words. I knew intuitively with absolute certainty that certain statements attributed to Jesus were added later, because they did not 'emanate' from that place, that state of consciousness, because I knew that place, I know that place. But when a statement emanates from that place, there is recognition. And when it does not, no matter how clever or intelligent it may sound it lacks that essence and it does not have that power. In other words, it does not emanate from the stillness. So that was an incredible realization, just reading and understanding 'beyond mind' the deeper meaning of those words."

When an interviewer asked Tolle, "What would lead you to believe that your realization is 'true' and that it can be realized by others?" the self-denying yet self-authorized guru responded without a hint of irony, "The certainty is complete. There is no need for confirmation from any external source. The realization of peace is so deep that even if I met the Buddha and the Buddha said you are wrong, I would say, 'Oh, isn't that interesting, even the Buddha can be wrong.' [Laughter] So there is just no question about it. And I have seen it in so many situations when there would have been reaction in a 'normal state of consciousness'—challenging situations. It never goes away. It's always there. The intensity of that peace or stillness, that can vary, but it's always there."

Read more of this interview:
http://www.inner-growth.info/power_of_now_tolle/eckhart_tolle_interview_parker.htm

While Eckhart Tolle claims to be following in the Eastern footsteps of the Buddha, he really may simply be treading in the ruts of Western pantheism, the collapse of God into nature, and nature into God.

One of the most important proponents of pantheism was the immensely influential Jewish philosopher Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677). Spinoza was part of a radical philosophical circle in the Netherlands that spread its ideas all over Europe.

How did Spinoza collapse God into nature and nature into God? In his foundational philosophical work, the Ethics, Spinoza turned pious sounding phrases to strange ends. Spinoza asserted that God by definition is “an absolutely infinite being; that is, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence.” While this may have an orthodox ring considered by itself, Spinoza soon demonstrated what he really intended: “There can be, or be conceived, no other substance but God.” Underneath its appearance, everything you see is God.

Hence, pantheism. There are no separate, distinct things—God, butterflies, rocks, helium, sand, human beings, trees. Everything is really one thing, God. Or more accurately, all the seemingly distinct things we see every day are merely modifications of the one substance, God.

Nor did Spinoza shrink from applying this to human beings as well: “The being of substance does not pertain to the essence of man; i.e., substance does not constitute the form of man,” because “the essence of man is [merely] constituted by definite modifications of the attributes of God.” Translation: you are God; God is you.

Sounds like Tolle, doesn’t it?

Buddhism is not at heart really a religion, but a kind of philosophy that has slowly grown into a religion. It is not the worship of anything. Rather, it is a kind of discipline of the mind and body undertaken with such devotion that it has become devotional—somewhat as if a gymnasium were slowly made over into a cathedral.

Its founder was Siddhârtha Gautama, who lived about five centuries before Christ in India, but it could well have been any of a number of other philosophers who, wary and weary of the world, likewise turned inward and entirely away from it.

Gautama was a rich young man, but just before he turned thirty, was struck by the inevitable suffering of old age, sickness, and death. Hence, he began his life-long goal to escape from suffering. Like many philosophers, he discovered that much suffering is caused by our desiring things we either cannot or should not have. His response—somewhat like certain Stoics in the West—was simply to extinguish all desire through meditation and discipline. Going even further, he found that through certain meditative techniques, he could extinguish even all notions of the self that desires.

The extinction of the self meant the disciplined elimination of the cause of all suffering, the self that can suffer. It is the “realization” that all is ultimately illusory because everything including the self is impermanent. All is merely stream of becoming and passing away, and suffering is caused by grasping at the impermanence by the self, the ego, the “I.” Release from suffering—Enlightenment, "Buddha" meaning "enlightened one"—is the realization that “I” have no permanence, but am simply part of the endless flux. That is Nirvana.

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