 | At the encouragement of someone who has in the past shown interest in Objectivism, I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. While I did not consider the reading a complete waste of time, I did consider the author so profoundly wrong about so many things that I cannot honestly recommend the book. His thesis that "mind identification" serves as the source for all strife in the world stands squarely at odds with reason as man's only means of knowing and his method of survival.
When I kindly informed my acquaintance of this, he replied that he agreed with Tolle's thesis of "mind identification" as the source of all evil. He shared that he considers Objectivism and any other philosophy that assigns labels to experiences as violent because labels truncate and compartmentalize the experience of the whole, thus violating that whole into parts. I kindly responded that in that case, I no longer had interest in conversing with him. I added him to my block list in the chat program we used and have not talked to him since that time.
Much of Tolle's material draws on the teachings of the Buddha.
The only nice comments I can make about the book regard the author's challenge to the reader to remain focused on the present moment rather than obsess with a fictional salvation in the future. When a person says, "When I do _____, I will be happy," it interferes with his enjoyment of the now. This does not mean a fall into whim worship. It does mean sharpening the conscious awareness of the now so that you can gain full enjoyment of it before it becomes then.
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The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
