Intermission of Fragments III - The Spirituality and Politics of the Heart

First, a personal note.

I regret that it has taken so, so long to return. The obstacles were much more significant than I anticipated. And while significant problems remain, I can now say that this blog will definitely be appearing more frequently - though a full return to the old pattern is not quite possible yet.

Due to the same obstacles, both my e-mail responses and those on the comments pages will also be limited for a little while longer.

But I want to express my deep gratitude in particular, for all the loving, thoughtful and insightful remarks that followed my previous post on the Eucharist. I WILL be attempting a response to these, when I can do some justice to them.

And now a piece on a popular New Age text, that I know will be highly controversial in some quarters at least ...



One of the most successful books of the New Age phenomenon in recent years must be Eckhart Tolle´s The Power of Now.

Since its first publication in 1997, it has been translated into thirty languages, reached millions of people and made the Number One spot on the New York Times Bestseller List.

All of this constitutes a phenomenon which - incidentally but *significantly* I think - would seem unimaginable thirty years ago.

On the back of this book, there is a recommendation by Oprah Winfrey, which exclaims "The Power of Now can transform your thinking ... The result? More joy - right now! "

The back cover blurb then goes onto inform us that:

"To make the journey into the Power of Now, we will need to leave our analytical mind and ego behind ... We can find our way out of psychological pain.

Authentic human power is to be found by surrender to the Now ... the present moment where problems do not exist.

... It is here that we discover that we are already complete and perfect."

Now this book I feel contains a profound depth of authentic experience, and summing up a profound book by its blurb is admittedly fraught with pitfalls.

But within the limits of a short space, I feel this blurb can and does suffice to give an accurate reflection of the book´s content - at least to a degree.

The author, I believe, has had a rare, deep and life-transforming experience of transcendant peace, which allows him to recommend to others an approach of transcending the mind and ego, in order to reach this peace.

I do not dispute the authenticity and profundity of his experience.

But I do take issue with the New Age ideology, it is unfortunately muddled-up with.

To take but a single example, after speaking of his transformational experience, Tolle confidently asserts:

"It wasn´t until several years later, after I had read spiritual texts and spent time with spiritual teachers, that I realized that what EVERYBODY WAS LOOKING FOR had already happened to me (Emphasis mine, pg 5)."

***Implicit*** here is a splendid example of New Age ideology, repeated so, so, so many times, that it has become axiomatic, and therefore unquestioned and unchallenged.

The implicit ideology here then, is the claim that there is ONE spiritual goal that we are ALL seeking - and as the author goes on to elaborate, that this single goal involves a transcendance of suffering.

Throughout my long New Age years, the implicit assumption Tolle is making might have washed over me ... completely unnoticed ...

Unnoticed, because I had never paid serious attention - as I strongly suspect Tolle has also never paid serious attention - to the fact that there is another profound school of spirituality, which does NOT involve what Tolle asserts ´everybody´is ´looking for´ ...

In time, I hope to expand considerably. For now, suffice it to say that Christianity - both esoteric and traditional - seeks not the transcendance of suffering, but the EMBRACE of suffering.

And that such Christianity is not about seeking 'More joy, right now´.

Rather it concerns a compassionate identification with world suffering, that may not lead at all to relieving oneself of suffering, though it will lead to tremendous depth, strength, meaning and riches, ***within*** the experience of that suffering ...

And having come to a point in my life where I now DO pay serious attention to Christian approaches beyond the New Age ideology of a single, spiritual path, I cannot help but feel that Tolle has missed a great deal. To say the very least.

That is, I cannot help but feel, that even if we turn simply to the last century alone, we will find great representatives of Christianity - from Rudolf Steiner to John Paul II - who not only do NOT go in search of what Tolle and "everybody was looking for" - but who, were they to find it, would decisively reject it.

And after my own long journey, I personally have more confidence in this approach, than that of Tolles´letting of mind and ego, for a peace that transcends suffering.

Again, I hope in time to enlarge ...

For now I will just say I am deeply concerned about the widespread popularity of a spirituality in the West with Tolle´s apparent objectives.

For these are objectives I feel, which can STUNT the heart.

That is to say, in more esoteric language, I am not at all convinced that this kind of spirituality serves the full, mature awakening of the heart chakra.

But I do believe that a collective awakening of the heart chakra, is desperately needed at this time.

Effective social, political and ecological action depends on it.

But I do not believe that Tolle´s spiritual agenda is sufficient to this awakening.

That is - to repeat for emphasis - a spiritual agenda which asks that we "leave our analytical mind and ego behind [to] find our way out of psychological pain. ... by surrender to the Now ... where problems do not exist [and where] we discover that we are already complete and perfect."

Much, much more can and must be said, I feel.

But for now I simply close this fragment with my own conviction that both Rudolf Steiner and John Paul II profoundly knew that an approach very, very different to Tolle´s was needed - for effective social, political and ecological action.

And I follow, though far, far behind them, in saying that a very different Spirituality and Politics of the Heart is needed - now more than ever.