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Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth — Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, is the focus of more than two million people world-wide. These masses of people are participating live in a free on-line course with Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle. Although the book was first published in 2005, it is now the #1 selling book on Amazon.com, thanks to this hugely popular interactive course. And it’s not too late to sign up, either. You can still watch the videos from the first two weeks. Great stuff. Go to Oprah.com.

It’s wonderful hearing Eckhart Tolle, in his gentle voice, and in his gentle ways, elaborate on points in the book in response to questions from Oprah and people calling in or connecting in to the conversation via Skype.

Tolle makes a big emphasis on ego and its transcendence. Here is a real mystical passage from chapter one on the subject:

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. This results in a total unawareness of my connectedness with the whole, my intrinsic oneness with every “other” as well as with the Source. When this delusion of utter separateness underlies and governs whatever I think, say, and do, what kind of world do I create? To find the answer to this, observe how humans relate to each other, read a history book, or watch the news on television tonight.

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating fundamentally the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

These identifications, or impressions, create that voice in the head that makes us feel either inferior or superior. This voice is nothing but the mind, which much like a stylus on a turntable, gives voice to that which is recorded in the grooves of a record. As long as we live in a pattern or mental impression, we will continue to live life with the same limitations, played over and over, just like a record being played over and over. As Tolle said, this recreates basically the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

So how do we escape the pattern? How do we transcend identification? The first prerequisite step is to gain the awareness that there is a pattern. The awareness, with sincerity of effort, goes a long way to the elimination of the identification.

Tolle puts a big emphasis on the breath. He says when we focus on our breath, we are focusing on the present moment. He said that breaks the spell of being focused in thought conceptualization. It helps to break the habit of identifying with the past, and to identify with the present moment.

And it is only in the present moment, free from conceptual thought, that love is truly born. It is the power from that love, once awakened, that can destroy our mental impressions and our thought forms like a flame that sets ablaze a house made of rice paper. If you want an example, read about the lives of St. Francis, Hafiz, and Rumi. In so doing, you will discover how ordinary mortals can become embodiments of infinite power, infinite knowledge, and infinite bliss.

I remember over 30 years ago when I first heard these words from Meher Baba: “Live more and more in the Present, which is ever beautiful and stretches away beyond the limits of the past and the future.” Those words made a big impression on me because I realized then that to be totally free of the past – to have no identification with it at all — would be total perfection. There would be no fear, no prejudice, no hatred, no narrow-mindedness, and no barriers or obstructions to the Source of all Being.

Can I do that in the course of a lifetime? It’s impossible and yet only the impossible is divine. I do know that a single match, or a bolt of lightening, sometimes burns entire forests to a crisp. But even a little progress on that front, perhaps the burning of a twig, would bring me a step closer to my ultimate goal. For with even small progress, I feel encouragement, encouragement stemming from heading in the right direction.

Eckhart Tolle, in response to a question from Oprah, said he no longer has an ego in the sense that he no longer identifies with concepts of thought. Is that true? Is he beyond ego? Did he experience a forest fire? Indeed he might have. There is a quiet joy that emanates from him. He has mastered to a great degree, if not entirely, the art of presence, of living in the present moment, with great awareness.

So what does he mean by his statement about ego and identification with form? He means that the ego identifies itself with not only physical form, but with thought forms.

For instance, if I asked you to tell me who you were, you would give, to some degree, a biographical sketch of yourself. You’d talk about your career, your religion, your education, your nationality, your economic status, what kind of house you live in, what kind of car you drive.

But what would you say, after all of that, if I asked you again, “But who are you?”

You might fill in even more details. You might say you were a gentle person, a spiritual person, a generous person.

But then I would ask you again, “But who are you?” And then you might say, “I’m somebody who likes to punch annoying people in the nose.” And then you would punch me in the nose.

But this is not just some idle game testing your limits of patience. It’s an exploration of who you are, right now. It’s an exploration of consciousness, of awareness, of the present moment.

I remember in the movie, The Peaceful Warrior, the last scene, when gymnast Dan Millman is competing at the U.S. Olympic trials. He hears in his mind, his old spiritual mentor, named Socrates, asking him: “Who are you?” We then hear Millman’s voice answer: “This moment,” as he completes a flawless gymnastic event on the rings.

I liked that answer, “This moment.” It’s true. I am not who I was yesterday. I am this moment. If I am not aware of being this moment, I would be living in conceptual thought. I’d be living in my head. I wouldn’t feel the energy within me inspiring me to write. I instead would be limited to my thoughts of who I was 10, 20, 30 years ago. I’d be driven by thought forms, not the living energy that animates my body, not the awareness, not consciousness.

All advancements in states of consciousness are comprised of a progression in becoming free of these limiting identifications — these identifications with physical forms, thought forms, and emotional forms. In so doing, a more complete embrace of the present moment is possible. Each embrace of the present moment leads to deeper and deeper embraces, culminating in that final embrace, the embrace of God, of pure consciousness, the source of all being, the Highest of the High – an embrace where we realize the answer to the question, “Who am I?” with the answer, “I am God.”
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