Eckhart Tolle

A colleague at work recommended Eckhart Tolle's latest book, A New Earth, and told me that it had been chosen for Oprah Winfrey's book club and that Oprah herself was an ardent fan of the guy. I was naturally suspicious but she was persistent so I did a little research. It turns out he knew my old guru Barry Long and had sought his advice after his own "transformation". His ideas, as presented in the Wikipedia article about him, seemed very much like Barry's and I wondered if he'd simply ripped off his advisor's ideas and refashioned them slightly.

However, after reading further, I was impressed by what he had to say and decided today to go out and buy his first book, The Power of Now, that he wrote in 1999 and which became an international best seller. I'm reading it at the moment. Tolle was born in Germany on February 16th, 1948 as Ulrich Tolle and changed his name to Eckhart probably in deference to the famous German mystic Meister Eckart. This struck me as a little pretentious (if true) but I'm prepared to read his book and reserve judgement for the time being.

Others have passed judgement however, and there is an amusing account of et as he is referred to in this article by Avery Wiseman. I'm quoting from the final part of the article:

so to sum up, et goes from....

• being a terminally depressed, emotionally wrecked, failed would-be academic, sitting in his darkened room with his head stuck in dusty volumes of mediaevel theological texts.

• career prospects: very grey indeed

• chances of getting laid: zero

• prognosis: pills or the noose

to......

• internationally most famous guru of all time. primetime talking head.

• record book sales. big venues. own limo.

• pretty asian girlfriend, twenty years younger than him, good figure, she likes swimming, keep fit and bodywork, agrees with everything he says, doesn't argue with him cos there's no one to argue with, and is even awakened herself (by him)!
  

so, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, i put it to you:
if that's not enlightenment, then what the fuck is?

This highly cynical and sarcastic article appears on a rather strange website called Sarlo's Guru Rating Service but Sarlo himself gives Tolle the top rating (in terms of credibility as a spiritual teacher) and his reference to an interview by John W. Parker caused me to start taking the guy seriously.