I was quite amazed. Eckhart Tolle is definitely an enlightened teacher and for his book to sell 3.5 million copies is almost beyond belief. Enlightened teaching for the great majority of people will always be esoteric if not nonsense. Are people really going to be able to connect with a teaching on this level? I went over to Oprah's site to find out.NEW YORK (AP) -- Even for an Oprah Winfrey book pick, ''A New Earth'' has been a sensation. About 3.5 million copies of Eckhart Tolle's spiritual self-help guide have been shipped since Winfrey, host of ''The Oprah Winfrey Show,'' announced her selection four weeks ago.
The book has topped the best-seller list on Amazon.com virtually from the moment Winfrey's choice was revealed, and it is the fastest-selling pick ever at Barnes & Noble Inc., according to a statement issued Thursday by Winfrey.
The first thing I discovered is that she is offered an interactive web event over the next ten weeks featuring Eckhart and his teachings.
http://www.oprah.com/obc_classic/webeve ... ation.html
That is pretty ambitious. Enlightenment for the masses, who would ever have thought?
Then I found her message boards. Here is the one for discussions on Eckhart's book:
http://www.oprah.com/community/communit ... iscussions
I sampled some of the threads. It turns out that a lot of people don't get Eckhart. To some, he is actually the devil, which is quite amusing. The dogma of Christians is never to be underestimated. But some people do get him. It is interesting to look at these threads in comparison to what I've been used to. You can call them "virgin territory," people who are pretty much novices to spirituality but who nevertheless have a deep yearning for "the truth." I'm considering going over there and doing some posting and see how it would be to interact with people whose idea of spirituality is more on the plane of "God said so" than the Tao.
I'm wondering what you might think, of Eckhart (has anyone read his two books, The Power of Now and A New Earth?), of Oprah, and the millions of people whose spirituality they are trying to reach. Oprah is definitely a marketing machine but what happens when the machine tries to market enlightenment? Does it all just get lost or can people really get a grasp of what is being offered? Can enlightenment ever be mainstream? Would it inevitably be corrupted? Is it worth trying to reach so many people? But given the state of current affairs, is it perhaps a necessity?