Talk to A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose like its author wrote you back.
Get the ideas that fit your life — not generic summaries.
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What it argues
A New Earth is Eckhart Tolle's follow-up to The Power of Now, applying the same framework of presence and ego-transcendence to a broader account of human dysfunction and its transformation. Published in 2005 and selected for Oprah Winfrey's book club in 2008, it sold over five million copies in the United States alone. Its core argument is that the majority of human suffering — personal and collective — stems from identification with the ego: the voice in the head that constantly narrates, judges, wants, and fears.
Tolle's diagnosis of the ego is detailed and often penetrating. The ego needs to be right, needs enemies, needs the past (to define itself through story) and the future (to project its continued existence through hope and fear). It collects grievances and resentments — what Tolle calls the "pain-body," the accumulated emotional suffering that lives in the body and periodically takes over behavior. The pain-body seeks more pain to feed itself, which is why some people seem drawn compulsively to conflict and suffering.
What it gets right
- 1.
The ego is the voice in the head that constantly narrates and judges — identification with this voice, rather than awareness of it, is the source of most human suffering.
- 2.
The pain-body is accumulated emotional suffering stored in the body, which periodically takes over behavior and seeks more pain to sustain itself.
- 3.
Presence — the background awareness in which thoughts arise — is the antidote to ego identification; it is not another thought but the space between thoughts.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Eckhart Tolle was born Ulrich Leonard Tölle in Germany in 1948 and underwent what he describes as a spontaneous spiritual awakening at age 29 while in the depths of depression. He took his first name from the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart. The Power of Now (1997) and A New Earth (2005) made him one of the most widely read spiritual authors in the world. He lives in Vancouver, Canada. His teaching draws on Christian mysticism, Buddhism, Zen, and Advaita Vedanta without formal affiliation to any tradition. A New Earth reached a new audience when Oprah Winfrey selected it for her book club in 2008 and taught it in a webcast series watched by millions.
