A New Earth
Eckhart Tolle: A New Earth, awakening to your life's purpose
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We consider Eckhart Tolle's book "A New Earth, awakening to your life's purpose" as a valuable new contribution to our understanding of the human condition and a worthy sequel to his "The Power of Now". In our view it is one of the contemporary books that no doubt help to prepare the way to the Point Omega transition. That is why we discuss it here.
Tolle describes the sub-optimal neurotic states most of us are in. These states pass for "normal" and he explains in great detail the alternatives that are possible and available to us instead of those sub-optimal states. He also presents a number of practical methods to enhance the development in oneself of those more agreeable alternative states of being. As such, it is another guide to enlightenment, and a rather effective guide at that.
In order to increase the effectiveness of Eckhart Tolle's book, we will give below a number of additional facts and notions that can make the story of "A New Earth" more complete, easier to fully understand and thus more effective.
We will point out a couple of blank spots of missing information in his book, which we will fill out and also some issues that we interpret in a somewhat different way in order to make the total picture still more comprehensive and easier to understand from an evolutionary point of view.
Tolle stresses that it is of the utmost importance that people (re)gain the capacity to be in the "here and now" more often and that being more often in the "now" also brings about better feelings and better development and growth. Being in the "now" produces more awareness and a better understanding of oneself and of one's situation. Being in the "now" stills the ever blabbering radio in one's head and reduces the needs of the ego.
In terms of "Reversal Theory" and of our CEL model (Cognition Energy Learning model) what Tolle describes with "being in the now" is basically the Paratelic State, one of the always alternating antagonist emotional - motivational states. The "Telic" and the "Paratelic" state continuously reverse into one another, but in most people the Telic state (goal directed and re-active) is the most dominant emotional - motivational state.
Tolle advertizes a shift from living in egoïc states in which the brain is continuously pre-occupied with thoughts about the past or about the future, to living in the "here and now" in which awareness grows and feelings can expand to eventually merge with the whole. From Reversal Theory we can however derive that being in the "here and now" is just one of the two basic meta-motivational states and that both of these two states, the "Telic" state and the "Paratelic" state do need to alternate in order to function properly and to develop properly. Tolle's description of the usual, ordinary state of human beings (neurotic, egoïc, full of fears) basically is a description of the usual, ordinary human state of mind, in which the "Telic" state is highly dominant over the "Paratelic" state and in fact to such an extent, that most people have hardly any awareness at all about the characteristics of the paratelic state. Taking into account the dynamics and the mechanisms of the meta-motivational reversal system in human beings and in fact in any animal with a distinct learning capacity, Tolle's message becomes easier to grasp and in particular it becomes clear how it exactly operates.
Having arrived at the point of understanding Tolle's message better with help of Reversal Theory we still should answer the question of why on earth we humans usually find ourselves in a condition in which the paratelic meta-motivational state seems to be relatively suppressed and malfunctioning (being very little in the here and now and if so, not being aware of it). According to Reversal Theory and to the CEL, alternating continuously between the paratelic state (the here and now) and the telic state (goal directed and re-active) is needed for a proper development and in fact is our birthright. According to our basic design, we humans should be in the here and now quite regularly and in fact during an important part of the time. How can it be that a whole species functions sub-optimally? This sounds outragious and highly improbable at the very least. Translated in terms of Tolle's message: why is it that human beings mostly have lost their capacity to be in the "now" regularly and to enjoy broad and sharp awareness of everything ? If Tolle is right, then it is very strange that such an attractive and in many many respects superior state of mind has not always been the standard rather than the exception.
The why of this unpleasant state of the human species is explained in Point Omega. Since the emergence of a superior level of intelligence in early hominids, an awareness block regarding our own behaviour was built into our (hardware)system making it utterly difficult to apply our newly gained intelligence to modify our own (social) behaviour. Without such an intelligence block against the application on the own behaviour, intelligence could never have evolved to the present level in humans. Apart from and on top of that, the agricultural revolution released the development of ever stronger power structures, which are basically information (software) packages, competing evolutionarily with one another. Therefore, since some 10.000 years, humans have been subjected to a very strong selection pressure to be able to function as agents of such impersonal power structures, rather than as individuals in their own right (in the classical evolutionary sense, as is the case in any other species). We are selected as Meme-carriers, rather than as members of a species in its own right, as were still our hominid ancestors. It can be shown that the neurotic, egoïc, unaware state of mind, battered continuously by an incessant flow of compulsive thought processes, is an unavoidable result of the selective pressure on human beings during the last 10.000 years, which selection to a high degree makes use of the typically human propensity for blindness regarding its own behaviour (see Point Omega and The significance of the Point Omega transition).
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