Having nothing better to do, I was browsing for inspirational and motivating books and noticed this title - along with it’s predecessor "The Power of Now" - in many of the lists of "life-changing" books that so liberally populate the net. Being a little, shall we say, ’mindful of my expenses’(my wife prefers the term’miser’), I was pretty thrilled to find this book in my local club library, whose collection till now, I had thought of pretty poorly(sadly, I was to discover that i’d been right all along!). I always believe that the only books worth buying are those worth reading twice - and, of course, I can’t buy any book till I’ve verified it’s+1 readability, but then, obviously, i’ve read it twice and don’t really need to buy it anyway! Thus, while i’m widely hailed as a’voracious reader’, my personal book collection is limited to mostly airline timetables.
Anyways, I digress. I’m here to talk about E.T.’s book, not my book-buying habits(or lack thereof). So back to "A New Earth". I started reading this highly-recommended book with much anticipation and after suitably warning all my near and dear ones of impending, radical changes in me. Two weeks, and two chapters later, all of them have given up waiting and have resigned themselves to bearing with the old me(some of them actually, openly voiced their intense disappointment).
Q. How do you take a single, overused theme and stretch it into multiple instances of presumably huge royalties? A. I don’t know(if I did, I wouldn’t be writing this review) - ask E.T.
The whole book, and presumably it’s predecessor, and also, presumably E.T.’s philosophy can be summed up in one sentence "You are not you; the real you is someone else; E.T. can help you find the real you." Period. However, single sentences do not best-selling authors(and the associated royalties) make; hence, the need to stretch this into a(second) book. And how this has been stretched! Excrutiatingly painfully - worse than the rack used by missionaries of old to convert heathens. I guess as primitive forms of torture are no longer allowed by the Geneva convention, E.T. had to come up with more modern forms(the current title being an excellent example!).
"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways", said Elizabeth Browning. E.T., before beginning this book, must’ve asked "How can I bore thee? Let me count the ways". Turns out, the number of ways was 309. Yep, 309 pages of pure, unadulterated boredom. I can guarantee this book as sleep remedy for even the most hardened insomniac - no doubts at all!
One of E.T’s points - sorry, the ONLY point E.T. makes is that the thinker within you is not the real you. Thus, to bring out the real you, you have to stop thinking. Thoughtfully, the’awakened’ Tolle, provides an easy solution for this - the book itself! Reading this book end to end is sure to make anyone completely brain dead and incapable of any thought whatsoever!
E.T.’s religious inclinations are very apparent - he liberally quotes from The Bible, Buddha, and others. The quotes however are conveniently selected to serve his point(by his own interpretation) and ignore the fact that except for Buddhism, most religions directly contradict his belief in "the real undiscovered you".
Examples of leaps of logic abound in the book. Thus, "incontrovertible evidence" for the immortality of the real you is the usage of the term "my life". Apparently, the moment one says "my life", this immediately implies that "me" is separate from "life", and thus, "me" is immortal. Hmmm. I should try that one when I next try to sell my used car that’s outlived "it’s" useful life!
I could go on, but I guess you get the picture. And, unlike E.T., I have no ability to stretch a single thought into 309 pages of mind-numbing drivel.
To sum up: is it a coincidence that an anagram of "Eckhart Tolle" is "Leech, Talk Rot"? I think not.