categories.spirituality

The Power of Now

Eckhart Tolle

A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

  • 5.0(1 ratings)
  • 10 key ideas
  • Text
  • Published 1997

Introduction

The Power of Now is a spiritual teaching, not a scientific study, and this summary presents what Eckhart Tolle claims. He starts from a simple idea: much of human suffering comes from living inside the mind, in the endless commentary about past and future, and mistaking that commentary for who we are. His remedy is to bring attention to the present moment, which he says is all that ever exists.

The book is written as questions and answers, drawn from his talks with people who came to him as seekers, and it builds step by step: how the mind and the ego hold us, why time is the trap, how old pain lives on as the pain-body, and how presence, the body, silence and surrender lead out. The later chapters apply the same teaching to relationships and to the difference between happiness and peace. Tolle draws on Buddhism, Zen, Sufism and Christian teaching, quoting Jesus, Rumi and Meister Eckhart, and he asks readers to test his words in their own experience rather than simply believe them.

This is a spiritual teaching, not a treatment. If you are struggling with heavy sadness, anxiety or depression, please talk to a doctor or counsellor.

  1. 1Tolle teaches that you are not the voice in your head
  2. 2Tolle says the ego is a false self built from identification, and it runs on fear
  3. 3Tolle describes the pain-body as old pain that needs fresh pain to feed on
  4. 4Tolle holds that only the Now is real, and psychological time is the trap
  5. 5Tolle says much of ordinary life is a way of avoiding the Now
  6. 6Presence cannot be understood by thinking; Tolle says understanding it means being it
  7. 7Tolle says feeling the inner body keeps you in the Now, and silence and space are further doors
  8. 8Tolle claims that without presence relationships go wrong, and with it they become practice
  9. 9Tolle says inner peace differs from happiness because it does not depend on conditions
  10. 10Tolle says surrender means accepting the Now inwardly, not giving up the effort

This book is for Premium members

The introduction is free. Premium opens every key idea, in audio and text.

See Premium