Thread: "The Power of Now" audio book

A friend started hosting a dream remote viewing game for me but asked me if I knew about Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now". I gave him the copy I bought, years ago, after reading about it on Dreamviews. I told him I wasn't much of a reader.

Then he offered to read me (20 to 30 minutes at a time,) when he could. So now we get together 2 or 3 times a week and he reads to me while my phone recorder app is on. Later, I listen to the recording, usually before going to sleep.

Copyright 1994.

1997 (Namaste Publishing)1999 (New World Library)

Since Eckhart Tolle has read his (7 and a half hour) book onto Youtube and made it freely available. I guess he has made as much money as he needs from it, so I can transcribe it (or the parts I like) with out making him angry at me.


About the Author

Eckhart Tolle was born in Germany, where he spent the first 13 years of his life.

After graduating from the University of London, he was a research scholar and supervisor at Cambridge University.

When he was 29, a profound spiritual transformation virtually dissolved his old identity and radically changed his life.


He devoted the next few years to understanding, integrating, and deepening that transformation, which marked the beginning of an intense inward journey.

Eckhart is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition.

In his teaching, he conveys a simple and profound message with the timeless and uncomplicated clarity of the ancient spiritual masters: there is a way out of suffering and into peace.


Eckhart is currently traveling extensively, taking his teachings and his presence throughout the world. He has l7ved in Vancouver, Canada, since 1996. (...)



The next bit will be the "Author's Preface"

I feel like he's a good introduction to Alan Watt's style of Zen Buddhism. You should listen to Alan Watts as well if you haven't already. There's hundreds of hours of his lectures on youtube, I keep finding new ones.

Originally Posted by tommo

I feel like he's a good introduction to Alan Watt's style of Zen Buddhism. You should listen to Alan Watts as well if you haven't already. There's hundreds of hours of his lectures on youtube, I keep finding new ones.

Hey tommo

Feel free the put link/s to your favorite Alan Watts Youtube/s for me to watch. And thanks for the "like" and reply.


Brown

Author's Preface

The Power of Now continues to play its part in the urgent task of the transformation of human consciousness. Although I was privileged to give birth to it, I feel that the book has taken on a life and momentum of its own. It has reached several million readers world world wide, many of whome have written to me to tell me of the life changing effect it has had on them.

Due to the extremely high volume of correspondence I receive, I am regretfully no longer able to send personal replies, but I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest gratitude to all those who have written to me to share their experiences. I am moved and deeply touched by many of those accounts, and they leave no doubt in my mind that an unprecedented shift in consciousness is indeed happening on our planet.


Nobody could have predicted the rapid growth of the book when Namaste Publishing in Vancouver published the first edition of 3,000 copies in 1997. (...) ...Then, ... when Oprah Winfrey, who had been deeply affected by the book, preceeded to tell the world about it.

5 years after it was first published, it reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and is now available in 30 languages. It has been very well received and become a best seller even in India, a country considered by many to be the birthplace of humanity's quest for spiritual enlightenment.

(...)

... However, despite a certain amount of misunderstanding and critical dissent, the response to the book around the globe has been overwhelming positive.

I feel confident that in the years to come millions more will be drawn to it, and that The Power of Now will continue to make a vital contribution to the arising of a new consciousness and a more enlightened humanity.

-- Eckhart Tolle
Vancouver, BC.



Next is the Introduction.

I've never read the book but i've heard about it.

Thanks for the brief introduction about the author.

Hey tropicalbreeze

Originally Posted by tropicalbreeze

I've never read the book but i've heard about it.

Thanks for the brief introduction about the author.

I will probably copy all of the Introduction (pages 3 to 10)


Introduction

The Origin of this Book

I have little use for the past and rarely think about it; however, I would briefly like to tell you how I came to be a spiritual teacher and how this book came into existence.


Until my 30th year, I lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression. It feels now as if I am talking about some past lifetime or somebody elses life.

One night not long after my 29th birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. I had woken up with such a feeling many times before but this time in was more intense than it had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing train -- everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it created in me a deep loathing of the world.

The most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence. What was the piont in continuing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live.


"I cannot live with myself any longer."

This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was.

"Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the 'I' and the 'self' that 'I' cannot live with."

"Maybe," I thought, "only one of them is real."


I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts.

Then I felt drawn into what seemed a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words,

"resist nothing",

as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection what happened after that.

More of the introduction, later (we're upto page 4 paragraph 4)

♡♡♡♡

I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window. I had never heard such a sound before. My eyes were still closed, and I saw an image of a precious diamond. Yes, if a diamond could make a sound, this is what it would be like.

I opened my eyes. The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains.

Without a thought, I felt, I knew, that there was infinitely more to light than we realize.

That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself.

Tears came into my eyes. I got up and walked around the room, I recognized the room, and yet I had never truely seen it before. Everything was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence. I picked up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and aliveness of it all


That day I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world.


Page 5, paragraph 1

The above exert of The Power of Now reminds me of what Rodrodrod wrote in post #86

Originally Posted by Rodrodrod

You know you are a dreamer when you wonder if the world is being created and populated as necessary when you move through it.

Of this thread:

♥

http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...er-when-4.html

♥(104/ 4,946 views)

For the next 5 months, I lived in a state of uninterrupted deep peace and bliss. After that, it diminished somewhat in intensity, or perhaps it just seemed to because it became my natural state. I could still function in the world, although I realized that nothing I ever did could possibly add anything to what I already had.


I knew of course, that something profoundly significant had happened to me, but I didn't understand it at all. 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.

I understood that the intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind. This withdrawal must have been so complete that this false, suffering self immediately collapsed, just as if a plug had been pulled out of an inflatable toy.

What was left then was my true nature as the ever present I am: consciousness in its pure state prior to identification with form.

Upto page 5, paragraph 3, line 14.