"Personally, I have been 'beat up' by life enough. 2007 was a challenging year and I don't know how yours went but I am still recovering! Somehow, I don't think I am alone.

"A New Earth comes at a time when so many people are experiencing difficult changes in the economy, politics, and even war, and I believe the effort to reach the public at a level of critical mass could not be more timely. It has occurred to me that some very powerful healings in a variety of arenas are going to come from this effort. I am hopeful. We will see."

If you think that 2007 was a challenging year, wait until you see what the next four years have in store for us!

Tolle's books are based upon a kind of "Buddhism Lite" conception of his attempt to restate for the masses the profound insights found in the original thesis provided by Gotama Buddha in the fifth century B.C.E.

For some, this repackaging (through the media of Tolle's written works) of the Buddha's message will be just what many are looking for, in terms of somewhat being able to come to terms with the massive amount of rapid changes that the near future has in store for us, except that it is without the ability to actually affect any permanent changes in their psyche or thinking. Because the general reader is never "encouraged" to penetrate any deeper than the surface ideas presented by Tolle's material, s/he never learns about what might make any kind of real lasting change upon their views of reality and hence a more effective way to deal with impending change.

"[Oprah's] support of Eckhart Tolle's work in this groundbreaking world wide effort, may have the effect of rocking our world as millions of people wake up seemingly over night."

That all depends upon what it actually is that they "wake up" to. Simply making the connection that "all life is interconnected" is not any kind of great awakening feat (although, granted, it is a very good start in the right direction for most people). What really makes a difference is the development of people's ability to begin to see "things (phenomena) as they really are." That is, in a way and manner that is confirmed by others who are also able to penetrate past the surface aspects of phenomena and to not allow their perception of their "feeling" to become affected by all the "feel-good" promotion going on.

If you truly understand the mind and how it works, you understand that what the five aggregates of personality view and see as being a "human being" is not the same as how a truly enlightened so-called "person" views these same aspects of phenomena. People who are caught up in the personality view of the five aggregates are for the most part blind to the reality that a "person" with the level of understanding and comprehension of someone like the Buddha, or any of his so-called "arahants", is. This is not always an easily arrived at realization by most, which is the reason why the historical Buddha, at first, was so hesitant to speak about his discovery.

When I speak about the Buddha and what he taught, I am not speaking about what most colloquially consider to be the "religion of Buddhism," but rather the teachings themselves to be found in the Pali canon of discourses of the Buddha. One needs to be able to separate the teachings themselves from what is commonly perceived to be the "vehicle" of those teachings, namely the various sects and schools of "Buddhism" in particular, as these can tend to skew the view or perception of the onlooker in ways that Gotama would have abhorred.

Personally, I am not as "hopeful" as most may be who read and become enthralled by books like "A New Earth." While such books serve their purpose in the journey that we, collectively and individually, are all on, they also end up obscuring the real profound insights that would ultimately free people from the chains that bind them to what the Buddha called "samsara" or the worldly illusion of existential life. Only the difficult process of arriving at the realization and penetration of personal observations such as dependent co-arising will help to undo the mental conditioning that so many of the world's inhabitants seem to have so readily bought into.

That the world's populations have bought into these false views of existence and the world is not unusual in and of itself. People, when they were born, basically never had a chance to escape these views. These views were intricately woven into the fabric of societies and civilizations from the very beginning. What is unusual is the struggle that some have undergone to free themselves from this mental conditioning, and the ongoing struggle to help others to also free themselves.

Anyway, these are just my own careful observations surrounding the phenomenon of books such as Tolle's. I realize that I may be in the minority on this. But such is a fact of life and of living in these turbulent and often confusing times in which we find ourselves.

Thomas