I'm reading Eckhardt Tolle's A NEW EARTH and also watched his DVD "meditation" in which he mentions something I wasn't aware of because I don't watch much TV nor do I keep up with popular news except when I'm reading magazine covers in the grocery line----that Opra featured his book a couple of years ago, apparently, and he is (or perhaps was, as such phenomena go) quite the rage. That in itself would have been enough to keep me away from him (since I am dubious about anything that masses of people go in for), but, as I mentioned, I was unaware of all of this when I bought his book for its subtitle (Finding Your Life's Purpose) in an airport bookstore.
What is his message's appeal? Learning to separate oneself (one's ego) from one's "stories," reminds me of my own youthful efforts (inspired by Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda's fictions that I consumed earnestly at the time) to not identify too closely with the language that builds up in our heads nor in that of others about who we "are" or even who we are not, which can be an equally appealing stance, making us feel strong and powerful in our fist-raising against the "majority" or some other group perpetrating what we perceive as wrong.
Yet Tolle reminds us to get out of our stories and to live in the present moment, to BE. Stop the incessant talking in our heads, the repetitious droning, and notice what is here, now. Experience it fully, bodily. Breathe deeply. Be open to possibility (rather than always defining it and thereby limiting it). Release yourself from the illusion that you have a future (since one can only truly experience the present; even when one remembers a past event, its memory is re-envisioned, and changed, in one's present mind).
I don't think it's "transcendence" he's proposing but total being, unless you understand his recommendation to release yourself from the mind's chatter as "transcending" the mind. He mentions four primary states-----sleep, dreaming, normal awareness (in which we are thinking and telling stories), and this state of more-than-awareness. This state is similar to that of an infant or of an animal who appears to be entirely present and unjudgmental, yet since it is accomplished by one who is learning to silence the endless mental storytelling, it's different from those who do not have words (and different from those who are ill, suffering from dementia and stranded in an eternal present moment filled with confusing pieces of stories, swirling incomprehensibly).
And I can't imagine that he proposes we remain in such a state, only that we are able to achieve it, to add this dimension of being to our awareness and to experience its many benefits to ourselves and to others.
