Nuanced Christian thinker and writer Jim Burklo, published a blog entry about Eckhart Tolle at his Musings blog. Burklo's blog focussed on the important contribution that a non-Christian writer like Tolle can make to Christian understanding and practice of faith. Burklo writes,
One of the more significant books I've read recently about the practice of Christianity was written by a non-Christian. I found Tolle's book ("A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose") to be an exceptionally good introduction to spiritual practice. The message of the book is very simple. The more often we can have what I call "out-of-ego experiences", the happier we'll be and the better life will be for human beings on planet Earth. If we can wake up to the fact that the essence of who we are is divine and one with the whole universe, if we can wake up to the fact that our egos are artificial constructions of our minds, then we can live more in harmony with the here and now, and more in harmony with each other and with the earth. Tolle describes this awakening beautifully in clear, non-sectarian, non-religious language. But he also salts his prose with quotes from the great world religions, like Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and, yes, Christianity!
I too have been impressed with Tolle's ability to open up the sense of post-egoic mind that is present in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Exponent of Christian centring prayer, Cynthia Bourgeault, uses an information technology metaphor to describe this post-egoic mind. Around five or six thousand years ago humans' sense of self-awareness came to the point where they were able to exercise judgement - to "line things up" in terms of good; better; best (or not so good, worse, worst). This "egoic operating system," though necessary for evolutionary purposes, also gave individual humans the ability to develop an unnecessary sense of separation from creation. Then around 2000 to 3000 years ago a range of actors on the world stage (among them Jesus of Nazareth) began to boldly demonstrate the ability to transcend this egoic operating system. They demonstrated a capacity to relate to all creation, and through them we became aware of the capacity for unitary consciousness. Taking her information technology metaphor further, Bourgeault suggests that at this point a new post-egoic operating system became available. However, despite the likes of Jesus making it available, society in general decided against taking the download. Mystics over the last two thousand years have tried to increase the popularity of the "new" operating system. But it is with the likes of Tolle, with his popular book, that the download perhaps might become a more common thing.
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