Review of book Power of Now by EKHERT TOLLE

THE POWER OF NOW: My views

One-Sentence-Summary: The Power of Now shows you that every minute you spend worrying about the future or regretting the past is a minute lost, because really all you have to live in is the present, the now, and gives you actionable strategies to start living every minute as it occurs.

The Power of Now by EKHERT TOLLE 

The article is a sort of review on a very important and popular book THE POWER OF NOW BY EKHERT TOLLE. It has been divided in five parts A to E.

A. About the writer and the book and it's reception. B. Why we need this book. 3rd point and also sapiens facts on brain....

C. Summary in three points and three exercises. D. Further understanding some terms like surrender, forgiveness, clock time and psychological clock, E. Some Q and A, about is it imaginary, 2nd if other person is not responding in relationship, 

Part A, writer and the book: 

The writer of the world famous book "The Power of Now" and a Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle believes in the practice of staying present. Published in the late 1990s, the book was recommended by Oprah Winfrey and has been translated into 33 languages including Hindi and Arabic.  As of 2009, it was estimated that three-million (30 lakhs) copies had been sold in North America. But the book became popular due to Winfrey Oprah appreciating it more and more. In 2000, the book was listed as recommended reading in Oprah Winfrey's O magazine and, according to Winfrey, the actress Meg Ryan also recommended it. During the television debut of “Oprah and Eckhart Tolle: A New Earth,” a 10-part series presented by “Super Soul Sunday,” Tolle explains how people can condition themselves to slow down and appreciate the present. It all begins with one question. 

The beauty of the book is that writer has not written it by copying good material from scriptures and self hell books. It's based on his real life experiences. fLeading a very troubled and problematic life, coined by many periods of serious depression, Eckhart Tolle found peace overnight, quite literally.

Plagued by depressing late-night thoughts, he started questioning what it is that made his life so unbearable and found the answer in his “I” – the self-generated from the power of his thoughts in his mind. The next morning he woke up and felt very much at peace because he’d somehow managed to lose his worrier-self and live entirely in the now, the present moment.

After spending several years doing nothing but enjoying his new-found peace, eventually people started asking him questions – so he answered. Eckhart started teaching and published The Power of Now in 1997, which eventually went on to become a New York Times bestseller in 2000 after Oprah Winfrey fell in love with it and recommended it.

In popular culture

When Paris Hilton was incarcerated at the Century Regional Detention Facility in California in June 2007 she brought with her a copy of The Power of Now. Singer Annie Lennox chose The Power of Now as one of her "desert island books", as did the comedian Tony Hawks. Singer Katy Perrystated that she was inspired to write "This Moment", a song from her 2013 album Prism, after she heard the audio book of The Power of Now.

Overview

The book draws from a variety of "spiritual traditions", and has been described by one reviewer as "Buddhism mixed with mysticism and a few references to Jesus Christ, a sort of New Age re-working of Zen." It uses these traditions to describe a "belief system based on living in the present moment". Its core message is that people's emotional problems are rooted in their identification with their minds. The author writes that an individual should be aware of their "present moment" instead of losing themselves in worry and anxiety about the past or future.

According to the book, only the present moment is important, and both an individual's past and future is created by their thoughts. The author maintains that people's insistence that they have control of their life is an illusion "that only brings pain". The book also describes methods of relaxation and meditation to aid readers in anchoring themselves in the present. These suggestions include slowing down life by avoiding multi-tasking, spending time in nature, and letting go of worries about the future. Some of the concepts contained in The Power of Now, such as the human ego and its negative effects on happiness, are further elaborated in the author's later books, in particular A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (2005). In the talk show with Oprah he  also offers two shockingly simple exercises that anyone can do to truly live in the now — anywhere, at any time.

1. Exercise:“Ask yourself, ‘Am I still breathing?’” Tolle says in the above video. “You suddenly feel the air flowing into your body and out of your body... At that moment, you’ve entered the state of presence. Even if it’s only five seconds.”

2. Exercise 2:  Tolle suggests involves using all your senses when going through habitual, everyday motions, such as washing your hands. "Do it consciously,” Tolle instructs. “For example, [when] you wash your hands, feel the water. Smell the soap. Becoming acutely conscious of sense perception means looking, hearing, touching. It brings you into the present moment.”These exercises may take a little effort at first, but Tolle says that they do end up becoming second nature. “The more you bring those moments of presence into your life, the more your old conditioning becomes eroded, gradually,” he says. "I got it now,” on this Oprah says. “Just learning to do the simple things begins to retrain your mind.

B. Why we need to study this book:  

Mental problems are increasing these days. It has taken the shape of an epidemic. Anxiety, melancholia, Depression are forms of this malaise. After accidents it is one of the major cause of deaths of young people. The book suggests s sure shot way out of this problem, a man made problem. Peace of our times and how suicides are increasingly. Let me quote from another most popular book of our times rotten by Prof. Harare: 

“In the year 2000, wars caused the deaths of 3,10,000 (three lakh 10 thousand ) individuals, and violent crime killed another 5,20,000. Each and every victim is a world destroyed, a family ruined, friends and relatives scarred for life. Yet from a macro perspective these 8,30,000 victims comprised only 1.5 per cent of the 56 million people who died in 2000. That year 1.26 million (12 lakh 60 thousand people died in car accidents (2.25 per cent of total mortality) and 8,15,000 people committed suicide (1.45 per cent).

The figures for 2002 are even more surprising. Out of 57 million dead, only 172,000 people died in war and 569,000 died of violent crime (a total of 741,000 victims of human violence). In contrast, 8,73,000 people committed suicide. It turns out that in the year following the 9/11 attacks, despite all the talk of terrorism and war, the average person was more likely to kill himself than to be killed by a terrorist, a soldier or a drug dealer.

The reasons is human intellect is a marvellous thing. It is just two  to three percent of our body and intellect ratio but brain consumes 25 % of total energy, not only in awakened status but also during sleep. So if it's not properly used, it's a havoc. Though these data aren not in this book, but conclusion is the same.  That's why reading and practising such a book is of paramount importance.

C.  Three important lessons of Tolle: Here are 3 lessons from it to help you worry and regret less:

Life is just a series of present moments.

All pain is a result of resistance to the things you cannot change.

You can free yourself from pain by constantly observing your mind and not judging your thoughts.

Ready for a trip to this beautiful place called the present? Let’s go!

Lesson 1: All life is a series of present moments.

If I asked 100 people to name the two most common bad feelings they can think of, 99 of them would probably respond with regret and anxiety. Wouldn’t you?

The reason we regret and worry about a lot of things lies in the way our minds work. The constant stream of consciousness and thoughts in our head, which plays 24/7 in our heads, is mostly preoccupied with 2 things: the past and the future.

Example on of regret...: When you wake up 10 minutes too late in the morning, what’s the first thing you think? “Shit, I overslept, I wish I hadn’t hit the snooze button.” closely followed by “Oh no, now I’ll be late for work, I’m sure my boss will yell at me!” – and voilà, ( An exclamation, there it is, or there you are)you’ve ruined at least the first half of your day. Therefore, living in any other moment than the present is useless. Or second example is: If your task is to hand in a research paper in 14 days, neither regretting all this time you procrastinated nor worrying about the big workload that’s to come will actually help get you there. But if you just start solving the first tiny problem and come up with an outline, it’s all downhill from there.

Tolle says that the only important time is the one we think about the least: the present. The reason only the present matters is that everything happens here. Everything you feel and sense takes place in the present. When you think about it, the past is nothing more than all present moments that have gone by, and the future is just the collection of present moments waiting to arrive. (Is it also the power of concentration)

Two important exercises he shares with Winfrey Oprah and the third of cat and mouse for the next thought.

Lesson 2: mental problems or pain bodies are our mental creations and thus curable.

Any pain you feel results from resisting the things you can’t change. I’m a big fan of stoicism. Part of their philosophy includes the idea that the only pain you really suffer is the one you create yourself.

Tolle argues that pain is nothing more than the result of you resisting to all the things you cannot change. We think a lot about the future and the past, but can live only in the present and have therefore no means to change many things from the other two that we’re unhappy about.  Then we fill the gap between these by developing a resistance to these things, which is what we experience as pain, whether psychological or physical.

When you’re angry, that anger usually makes you think and act less rational, which more often than not results in a worse situation and thus, more pain – but it’s really all in your head.

Lesson 3: You can free yourself from pain by constantly observing your mind and not judging your thoughts.

How then, can you get rid of pain? Tolle recommends 2 things:

Constantly ask yourself: “What will my next thought be?”

Stop judging your thoughts and urges.

The first strategy is based on an effect from physics, called the quantum zeno effect. It says that you can freeze any system in its current state by constantly observing it. Asking yourself this question over and over will usually delay your actual next thought, thus giving you enough time to realize how much time you actually spend in autopilot mode. This way you can start interrupting your mind and thus separating from it.

The second method is meant to help you listen to your body and learn to accept the constant, nagging thoughts in your head, about what you should be doing or not doing. The next time you do wake up late for work, just listen to that voice that says “You should’ve done better!”, but don’t act on it. Notice it, see it, accept that it’s there, but don’t give in to its advice.

These two tools will help you separate your body from your always-on, thought-driven mind, after which you’ll be in less pain because you resist the things you can’t change a lot less.

D. Further understanding some terms like surrender, forgiveness, clock time and psychological clock which the writer uses several times..

1. CLOCK TIME AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TIME : You need clock time for everyday actions. Psychological time is harmful because it traps you in the past or future. You learn from the past and use it in the now. If you set up a goal and work on it in a focussed manner, you are using clock time. If you become excessively focussed on the goal, perhaps because you are seeking happiness, fulfilment, you are not honouring the now. Then it is psychological time. Your life’s journey is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to “make it”. You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside either, nor are you aware of the beauty and miracle of life that unfolds all around you when you are present in the now. To alert you that you have allowed yourself to be taken over by psychological time, ask yourself: Is there joy, ease, and lightness in what I am doing? If it isn’t, then the time is covering the present moment, and life is perceived as a burden or a struggle. .....If there is no joy in what you are doing, it does not necessarily mean that you need to change what you are doing. It may be sufficient to change the how. “How” is always more important than “what”. As you honour the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out of the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love-even the most simple action. ........So do not be concerned with the fruit of your action-just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord. Karma Yoga of Bhagvad Gita-oldest and most beautiful spiritual teachings in yoga.

2. Surrendering...Q. What to do if really I am in problems? Change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness. ...If you find your ‘here and now’ intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of these three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity. No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear. ...If you take any action- leaving or changing the situation, drop your negativity first, if at all possible. Action arising out of insight into what is required is more effective than action arising out of negativity. ...,Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing. Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear can’t prevail against it. If there is truly nothing that you can do to change your ‘here and now’, and you can’t remove yourself from the situation, then accept your here and now totally by dropping all inner resistance. This is called surrender. It is not a weakness. There is a great strength in it. The false, unhappy self that loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself can no longer survive. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through this you are internally free from the situation. You may find that situation changes without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free. ....Or is there something that you “should” be doing but are not doing? Get up and do it now. Alternatively, completely accept your inactivity, laziness, or passivity at this moment, if that is your choice. Go into it fully. Enjoy it. Be as lazy or inactive as you can. Done consciously, you will soon come out of it. Or maybe you won’t. Either way, there is no inner conflict, no resistance, no negativity. 

3. IMPORTANCE OF FORGIVENESS:The moment you forgive, you have reclaimed your power from the mind. Non-forgiveness is the nature of mind, just as ego can’t survive without strife and conflict. The mind can’t forgive, only you can. “ That is why Jesus said, before you enter the temple, forgive. “ 

E. Some Questions and Answers in the book (FAQs):

1. Why we work effectively in life-death emergencies:  The hope is what keeps you going, but hope keeps you focussed on the future. This perpetual denial of Now creates unhappiness. Your life situation exists in time. Your life is Now. Your life situation is mind-stuff. Your life is real. Your life situations may be full of problems-most life situations are-but find out if you have problems at this moment, not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but now. Do you have a problem Now? .....When you are full of problems, there is no room for anything new to enter, no room for a solution. So whenever you can, make some room, create some space, so that you find the life underneath your life situation. .....When you create a problem, you create pain. (The story of young executive in hot country and car's four nuts lost) All it takes is a simple choice, a simple decision: no matter what happens, I will create no more pain for myself, I will create no more problems. Although it is a simple choice, but it is very radical. ....If you have ever been in a life-or-death emergency situation, you will know that it wasn’t a problem. The mind didn’t have time to fool around and make it into a problem. In a true emergency, the mind stops; you become totally present in the Now, and something infinitely more powerful takes over. This is why there are many reports of ordinary people suddenly becoming capable of incredibly courageous deeds. In an emergency, either you survive or you don’t. Either way, it’s not a problem. 

2. Q. What to do if really I am in problems? Change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness. ...If you find your ‘here and now’ intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of these three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity. No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear. ...If you take any action- leaving or changing the situation, drop your negativity first, if at all possible. Action arising out of insight into what is required is more effective than action arising out of negativity. ...,Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing. Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear can’t prevail against it. If there is truly nothing that you can do to change your ‘here and now’, and you can’t remove yourself from the situation, then accept your here and now totally by dropping all inner resistance. This is called surrender. It is not a weakness. There is a great strength in it. The false, unhappy self that loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself can no longer survive. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through this you are internally free from the situation. You may find that situation changes without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free. ....Or is there something that you “should” be doing but are not doing? Get up and do it now. Alternatively, completely accept your inactivity, laziness, or passivity at this moment, if that is your choice. Go into it fully. Enjoy it. Be as lazy or inactive as you can. Done consciously, you will soon come out of it. Or maybe you won’t. Either way, there is no inner conflict, no resistance, no negativity. 

3. Q-This sounds to me like denial and self deception. When something dreadful happens to me or someone else close to me-accident, illness, pain, or death- I can pretend that it isn't bad, but the fact remains that it is bad, so why deny it? A- You are not pretending anything. You are allowing it to be as it is, that's all. Remember that we are not talking about happiness here. For example, when a loved one has just died, or your own death is approaching, you can't be happy. It is impossible. But you can be at peace. There may be sadness, tears, but provided that you have relinquished resistance, underneath the sadness you will feel a deep serenity, a stillness, a sacred presence. This is the emanation of Being, this is inner peace, the good that has no opposite. ...Somebody says something that is rude or designed to hurt. Instead of reacting, let it pass through without resistance. That is forgiveness. You can still tell that person that the behaviour is unacceptable