Wasn't there a bit from Illuminatus, something like: "If all is one, then all violence is masochism". "Yes", ? replied nastily, "and then all sex is masturbation". Also see here.
You actually make Tolle's work sound more worthwhile than my extremely superficial impressions of it led me to believe.
I have trouble considering something like "you are god" an error or lie, exactly. Both "you" and "god" have highly indeterminate meanings and may not refer to anything concrete at all; so equating them represents a certain attitude of mind, but not (in my view) a factual error. It's not necessarily an interesting or productive or enlightening attitude, so it may be a spiritual error, I suppose.
Maybe I'll pose that as a challenge to to you (or a suggestion for a topic/page in your evolving treatise) to address the meta-level issue of how exactly do you evaluate and filter these sorts of spiritual/metaphysical ideas? What standards are there, other than personal taste, or consquentialism (people who believe in monism are more unhappy or start more wars, or something like that) or authority?
Please keep posting this kind of challenge (if you keep reading!). I can't give a very good answer yet, because I'm still in the phase of presenting the background conceptual machinery needed to make sense of the central points.
The issue of evaluation of my critique, in this case, is closely connected to the difficulty, which I sketched, of replying to Tolle. He makes (almost) no factual claims and presents (almost) no arguments. It's just a string of assertions.
Coming from any sort of intellectual background, it would seem that it would be sufficient to say "the burden of proof is on Tolle, so everyone should reject what he has to say out of hand."
But it appears that tens of millions of people have been persuaded by him. If one thinks that matters—which I do—then a burden-of-proof argument is a non-starter.
Instead one has to ask why do those people buy what he is selling, if not due to evidence or reason?
And the answer seems to be that he issues a series of promises that people really, really want to believe, and they accept them because the monist framework has replies to objections that have a convincing logic once you are inside.
So a critique has to be couched within that logic; and it has to present an alternative that is more plausible or more attractive within the world-view.
The critique has to show that monism can't deliver on its promises even in its own terms; but that my brand can (partly).
The first part is the sense of "error" that is relevant.
Let me sketch one example. One of monism's promises is to eliminate the alienation people feel that results from social separation. Its purported method for doing this is to get you to realize that All is One, so in fact there is no separation in the first place. In fact, you are token-identical to everyone else.
Now, we have to set aside the obvious point that you are not token-identical to everyone else; and the implausible claim that you can get yourself into a mind-state in which you "realize" that (short of severe dysfunction). Those are the kinds of specific, reality-based observations that monists blind themselves to.
A better approach may be to ask: Suppose you were token-identical to everyone else, and you "realized" that; would that actually address the social isolation you feel?
My hope is that, with a bit of Socratic dialog, this could lead people around to the answer "No."
I am ashamed to say I never heard of Tolle until twho weeks ago when a Zen blogger said he loved his writing. I ignored this until today and then I saw your post. Wow, what have I been missing. It shows the limited demographics I run in nowadays. But after reading your article,
I still don't know anything about Tolle except that he offers monistic dribble instead of dualistic dribble. But wait, you thought he lots of stuff right. Oh and you did say it was "system free" (I loved that concept), and you exposed his technique of just saying something over and over without evidence. But are you going to write a follow-up "post" on this, or did you just want to tell us that Tolle is example of the monism which you are going to tell us more about later?
The Wiki article on Tolle helped. You tell us that Tolle's falsity is just obviously false -- but this seemed a bit of a cheap move since it is not "obvious" to millions -- including that Zen blogger. Mind you, having read you, I deeply suspect you are right. But I was hoping for more substance.
You then mention 2 ways to deal with Tolle's monism: (1) show it has bad consequences -- but that sounds like it is a tough strategy. I must say, the major problem I have with many religions is the dualism which results in exclusivism (we live forever, you burn in hell) and thus my Atheist site. But liberal Christians and New Agers and probably Tolle monists strike me as tolerant and not as harmful to society from the exclusivist angle. Yet I have not liked the intellectual habits of these folks though I have had a hard time pinning it down. I wondered if those habits would have long term consequence that could be exposed. But such a venture is far to ambitious, I am afraid.
So that leads to your 2nd option -- present a better alternative to monism and dualism. So I guess we wait. But a few examples of internal inconsistencies would have be nice, since you hinted at that (I think) as a 3rd method. One more post, please.
Also, though Zen would seem a very natural home for me within Buddhism since I am a Japanophile to some degree (speak Japanese, play Go, practiced Japanese martial arts, love some anime [especially the monistic/animistic stuff...), nonetheless, many American Zen authors and practitioners seem to have many of the traits you allude to in criticizing monism. And it is for that exact reason that I find them unfortunately unpalatable for a large part. Do you have any of this experience. How deeply has monism affected American Buddhism? I kind of remember reading about an academic that discusses Buddhism's adaptation to the West -- and thus its evolution away from Asian Buddhism. The evolution probably incorporates pragmatism, German idealism (monism) and scientific flavoring. Do you know the name of that text or one like it that you'd recommend? [or are you writing it?] Smile
I must say that after your teaser-review, I am a bit tempted to read him just to see how this apparent best-seller which escaped my demographics is such a temptation to others. I guess a lists of the strengths of Tolle was something else you did not offer. But it sounds like it is coming. Sounds like the first commentor found nothing of value.
Do you know the demographics of those enthralled with him?
As I said in my last blog post, I don't think you can argue with religion, generally speaking. But it isn't just a matter of personal taste either, some stuff does seem to be better than others, and some of it seems downright fraudulent, but I don't really know how to characterize the differences.
I do think it is an error (maybe just a tactical one) to call monism an error or a lie. Because there are senses in which it is true. I prefer Minsky's quip that it is a "mind-destroying idea", except with the non-Minskyean twist that sometimes destroying your mind is exactly what you want to do...in a manner of speaking.
If monism leads to an inability to make any distinctions, or to complacency, or ennui, then it's an error. But if it is instead employed judiciously, as an antidote to taking boundaries too seriously, too fixedly, then it may be useful.
So, monism as a system may be an error, but monism as a tool, maybe not so much.
@Sabio, thanks for the long, detailed comment. It raises several different points. I think I'll reply to them separately...
Maybe what I've failed to emphasize is that the project in this blog series is one of intellectual history. I started out thus:
I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if tens of millions of people suddenly started spouting nonsense. I fear something terrible has happened.
I could be wrong. I have no statistics. But in the past few years, suddenly I hear seemingly sensible people going about saying “ultimately, it’s all one, isn’t it?” and “when you find your true self, you find the whole universe,” and “all religions teach the same truth.”
If that's right, a huge cultural shift is occurring; one that hardly anyone else seems to have noticed. I view this with alarm (because I think monism is wrong). In order to respond to it, I first want to understand how and why it has happened.
My guess is that a big part of the "how" is Eckhart Tolle's invention of the sleek new system-free version of monism. It's a brilliant invention. Like many brilliant inventions, it is obvious in retrospect; monism tries to slough off specifics anyway, so dropping them is a natural move.
I wasn't trying to write a review of the book here; as of today, you can find 1,555 of those on Amazon.
About "obvious falseness". Eventually I'll write out a detailed critique of monism. (That will be in the "book", not here in the blog.) But for now, in the case of Tolle, it's straightforward. He says, explicitly, that you are (1) God and (2) the entire universe. Then he doesn't really explain further. Are these claims not obviously false?
Being a liberal intellectual gets in the way here. You are tempted to say "well, there might be some sense in which those claims are true—and since they are obviously false if taken literally, and he is a nice and smart guy, he must have in mind some interesting metaphorical meaning for 'you' and 'God' and 'the universe' according to which these are useful claims."
The old German approach was to take this "speaker's benefit" and run with it, trying to pull the wool over your eyes by generating thousands of pages of vague abstract philosophical-sounding prose that elaborated on what was meant by "you are God". That strategy collapsed when the bluff was called; in the end, it turned out that there wasn't an interesting metaphorical sense in which it was useful (= "pragmatically true").
Tolle, recognizing that the obfuscation strategy no longer works, doesn't even try. (Except in the two one-page passages I mentioned, where he just can't resist his lineage.) He simply says "you are God", and either you say "Oh, wow, now I get it! I was blind, but now I can see! Now I am enlightened! I'm God! I'm One with Everything", or you say "Whoa! Something really bad is happening here if people are buying this stuff."
the major problem I have with many religions is the dualism which results in exclusivism (we live forever, you burn in hell) and thus my Atheist site. But... Tolle monists strike me as tolerant and not as harmful to society from the exclusivist angle. Yet I have not liked the intellectual habits of these folks though I have had a hard time pinning it down. I wondered if those habits would have long term consequence that could be exposed. But such a venture is far too ambitious, I am afraid.
I'm the sort of fool that occasionally rushes in where angels fear to tread... So I plan to do this.
Yes, I think that monism's apparent tolerance is a big part of its appeal. Technically, this is called "Perennialism"—the idea that all religions have value and are ultimately One Faith. This is one aspect of the Unity monism promises.
This sounds very nice, and monism attracts nice people—i.e. those who are so frightened of conflict that they avoid it in situations in which it's actually called for.
Monism sees all religions as having some value—but only to the extent that they agree with monism. Monism sees all other religions as distorted versions of monism, which is the One Faith. It is actually an extremely aggressive, hegemonic strategy. (It's interestingly similar to the Microsoft "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy for destroying competitors.)
Monism is highly intolerant of anyone who says "no, actually, my religion/philosophy is not the same as yours." Because monism presents itself as nice and inclusive, it is impossible to say "no, I disagree"—however politely—without being painted as aggressive and narrow yourself.
The book you are thinking of is David McMahan's The Making of Buddhist Modernism. It is brilliant and I can't recommend it highly enough.
McMahan follows up on another brilliant piece, by Thanissaro Bikkhu, an article called "Romancing the Buddha", which appeared in Tricycle, Winter 2002 issue. Thanissaro raised the first alarm about German Romantic Idealism infecting Buddhism. McMahan traces the history of this in more detail. I've spent much of my time in the past six months following their lead; this metablog series on the intellectual history of current pop monism is an early output from that.
Skipping a lot of fantastically interesting details, the essence of the matter is this:
In the 19th Century, Asian states realized that they were being crushed by the West, and that Western power derived largely from Western ideas. Several states decided to appropriate those ideas to use as weapons in turn. Japan was the clearest example. Japan took Germany as its model, and imported German ideas wholesale. By state decree, Zen was reformed to make it consistent with then-current German philosophy, which meant Romantic Idealism, which is monist through and through.
Buddhism traditionally was explicitly hostile to monism; but under pressure, some sort of synthesis was developed, mainly in Zen and some versions of Theravada. Buddhism also was reconfigured to make it more compatible with the scientific/rational worldview and with Western social/ethical values.
These "modernist" versions of Buddhism were, naturally, the forms that have been most influential in the West. Because they come from Asia, and since much of the work of synthesis was done in the 19th Century, very few Westerners realize that they are not traditional, and are based largely on Western ideas, sold back to Westerners are "timeless Eastern wisdom." Timeless Eastern wisdom that feels very comfortable because it mainly recycles Thoreau and Emerson and Schelling.
On the one hand, I'm really glad to see Buddhism reformed to remove traditional claims which science makes clear are nonsense—for example, the belief that the Buddhist hells are caves beneath the earth that you could physically reach simply by digging. Science is, actually, right.
On the other hand, I'm alarmed to observe that many famous mainstream American Buddhist teachers are promulgating monist ideas, without even realizing that these were considered anti-Buddhist before they were forcibly incorporated into Buddhism just over a century ago. That's because monism is, actually, wrong.
But if it is instead employed judiciously, as an antidote to taking boundaries too seriously, too fixedly, then it may be useful.
Yes. That's part of the "resolution" I will offer to the monism-dualism opposition.
Each confused stance is attractive in part because it has an accurate insight. And what you wrote here is the accurate insight in monism: that we are not separate from each other, from the natural world, or from the sacred. Those are the dualistic errors, which monism is right to reject.
The problem is that monism just flips it, and asserts identity. It rejects distinctions and differences and all details and specifics. That's also entirely wrong.
A highly condensed statement of the resolution:
There isn't any objectively correct way to partition the world into objects. However, it is non-uniform, and therefore pragmatic partitioning is often valuable or necessary for action. Different partitionings may be useful on different occasions. It is useful to look for non-obvious connections, but not useful to insist that everything is connected (especially not without specifying what the connection is).
I think the reason so many people find Tolle's books appealing is that he addresses a problem characterisic of our modern age: that of the incessant stream of patterns of conditioned thinking leading to anxiety and worry. His books help one cope with these types of thinking. Being so popular and commanding a pretty wide range or admirers, I am sure that people find different things in his teachings, but fundamentally, he mainly address these sort of mental overthinking problems that people are prone to and gives concrete advice on how to overcome them.
So I don't think you need to look too far, if you are trying to understand Tolle's appeal.
I don't see much difference between Tolle's teaching and Buddhism at a fundamental level.
As David Loy argues in the article below, if an attempt is made to describe emptiness from an external, objective point of view the conclusion "All is Self" may be arrived at, whereas if it is described from a first-person, phenomenological perspective there is no self.
I find the claims that "All is Self" and "there is no self" are both absurd, the claim that they mean the same thing is absurdity squared, and his argument is thoroughly unconvincing. Your mileage may vary, obviously.
Yes I came across your other comments after I posted. But like your comments above, I did not find much of an actual argument against Loy's reasoning.
I find his analogy with Wittgenstein and the view that if there is only one thing, described from the outside (which of course strictly speaking is impossible) this will be One but from the inside it will be nothing (because there is nothing to contrast it with) makes some sense.
Part of the problem here is the implicit "metaphysics of grammar" and the falsifications and distinctions it creates between nouns and verbs, subjects and predicates and so on- Loy has another article somewhere on Nietzsche, Nagarjuna and the limits of language which I also found interesting.
There are not that many Western trained philosophers who are also conversant with Buddhism. Along with Jay Garfield, I think David Loy is well worth checking out.
Hmm. Yes, I haven't explained what is wrong with Loy in any detail. More importantly, I haven't yet explained what is wrong with monism in general. I hope to get back to working on this site in a few months, and that's the next major chunk of it I plan to write.
In the mean time:
if there is only one thing...
If warthogs were rocketships...
described from the outside (which of course strictly speaking is impossible)
In that case, can't we stop right there?
if there is only one thing ... this will be One
That seems profound... Capital letters always add an air of elevated metaphysical grandiosity to a tautology.
Part of the problem here is the implicit "metaphysics of grammar" and the falsifications and distinctions it creates between nouns and verbs, subjects and predicates and so on
Yes, I do think this one is a valid point. It's extremely difficult to use language in a way that doesn't suggest that the world is objectively divided up into independent objects.
This is the correct intuition behind monism—that the world isn't objectively divided into objects.
The error of monism is to suppose that this implies there is only One thing instead.
I'm sorry that I can't write out a proper explanation of what's wrong with Loy (and monism generally) right here right now. It's not all that complicated, but it will take several web pages to develop the philosophical machinery. Part of that is, as you suggest, building up roundabout ways of speaking that avoid implying objective objectness.
Thank you for your patience! We apologize for the inconvenience while this argument is under construction.
Good luck in your project of abolishing the Hindu-Monist abomination. This is important work you are doing.
To seriously address monism from the perspective of Analytical Philosophy, you would need to address the work of Jonathon Schaeffer, the leader in the field (the new age fundies are not on to him yet but they soon will be): http://www.jonathanschaffer.org/monism.pdf
It's from the analytic mereology literature, some of which I have read before, and which is indeed highly relevant here. I didn't know Schaffer's work, though. It's too long to read right now, but a quick scan shows I definitely need to go through it carefully.
The Indian caste system is indeed an abomination. It bothers me that Western lefties were so much into condemning South African apartheid, but mainly appear to be unbothered by essentially the same institution in India. It seems hypocritical.
I'd like to believe that Hinduism has some redeeming features, and that it could be separated from the caste system. I'm not sure whether that's true.
It seems that monism is a different problem, since it is about denying differences, whereas the caste system is about rigidifying them.
It is really strange to read someone who actually just flat out declares that the concept "You are God" is "wrong."
You think your intrinsically limited and overreaching intellect is superior to the point where you can actually definitively say whether that concept is "right" or "wrong"?
You seem unaware of your hypocrisy, where you attack Tolle for saying his "truth" plainly and without bothering to defend and explain it from some intellectual/historic/sociological/ religious stance. And yet you can state your equally simple truth "he is wrong" and also give absolutely no explanation.
If someone says, "we are all God" and you say "no, we're not" -you are different from them, how?
And if they say "we are all God" because they had the experience of understanding that inside themselves, and you say "no we're not" because you have not had that experience, you attempt to negate and refuse another's experience, and believe everyone else should as well. But from what wisdom are you speaking?
You feel a need to assert your intellect in a place that is explicitly and by definition beyond the intellect, encompassing it, but not limited to it or contained by it or defined by it.
The understanding that "we are all God" is, regardless of how your mind perceives it, something countless human beings have arrived at, and saying it in this way is as simple and elegant as the realization can be expressed in words.
What I like about Tolle's Power of Now (I haven't read his recent book that you are attacking but I feel confident it is based entirely in the same principles) is that he simply discusses Being, without embellishment or unnecessary explanation, and this is definitely the only way to say it, because anyway you can't entirely and satisfyingly and rationally explain why the teaching is true to someone who needs that kind of explanation, and whose ego is positioned to say "it is wrong" anyway -- needs to believe it is wrong.
Also it seems your application of a critique of "monism" - even though you haven't actually provided it yet -- really doesn't make sense as Tolle is not promoting a faith or religious system, but affirming the potential for a conscious experience of Being, which transcends all systems.
You write:
I find the claims that "All is Self" and "there is no self" are both absurd, the claim that they mean the same thing is absurdity squared, and his argument is thoroughly unconvincing.
Again, this isn't an area where intellectual "argument" is useful or meaningful at all, which is why you can't transmit this kind of knowledge through words and books successfully alone, though if someone is engaged in their own spiritual development/practice/awareness, the words can be tremendously powerful and useful at just the right moment, when they can be "heard." You can call it "God" or "Being" or "Self" or something else, or nothing, but it isn't something experienced through the mind and in the realm of time and polarity.
So you seem to be someone who can't "hear" it, because you haven't had any experience of it yourself yet, so you really appear foolish trying to intellectually argue for or against any of these teachings. Because even if you don't believe something is true, what do you know about it? Do you really know? No, you don't actually know, so honestly who cares whether you find it true or not? You are ignorant and in the dark about your true nature, like most people, so it would be better to admit it and seek your own knowledge without expounding blindly as a self-important intellectual. We are talking in realms that transcend the ego and intellect.
Thank you very much for your comment! It comes at a good time. I wrote this page about Tolle more than two years ago, expecting to continue the topic to a detailed explanation of where his approach goes wrong. Since then I have been distracted by other things. So I have repeatedly apologized for not following up; which is inadequate, as you point out. Just yesterday I started working on this material again. Any promise I make now would also be empty. However, I again hope to give a full explanation within a few months. In the mean time, your comment gives me the opportunity to say something.
We agree that Tolle is brilliant; I hope I said that in my original post. He writes exceptionally simply and clearly, and he side-steps all -isms, whose time has passed.
Absolutely certainty is impossible, about anything. I cannot be absolutely certain that Tolle is wrong. We can be sure enough about some things, though; I am drinking coffee as I write this, for example.
If something is controversial, there are reasons to believe, and reasons not to. So, what are the reasons to believe, and not to believe, you are God?
I did give reasons not to believe you are God in the original post. For example, God is omniscient and omnipotent; you aren’t.
You mention two reasons for believing you are God: countless beings have arrived at that understanding, and an experience. (I hope that’s an accurate summary; did I miss something?)
Countless people have also arrived at the opposite understanding: that God is something utterly greater and utterly different from themselves. This is the mainstream Christian understanding. You think that is wrong, and so do I! But it shows that “millions of people came to this conclusion” does not mean it is true. All it can tell us is that it’s a possibility worth considering seriously. (Unlike most non-monists, I think monism is worth considering seriously. Most Dualists, such as Christians, think it is wicked, and most secular people consider it idiotic.)
Experiences can be good reasons to believe some things. I’m pretty sure I’m drinking coffee, because I can see it and taste it.
On the other hand, many people say they have directly experienced God as utterly different from, and greater than, themselves. I am an atheist, so I think there must be some other explanation for those experiences. I don’t doubt they experienced something—but probably not God.
Some people say they were abducted by UFO aliens who performed medical experiments on them. Some of those people are obviously crazy, or liars. Some seem perfectly sane and honest. I am sure they experienced something—but it was almost certainly not UFO aliens.
Spiritual experiences are tricky, because we mostly can’t talk clearly about them—and probably we can’t think clearly about them, either. It’s pretty clear what coffee is, but it is not at all clear what “God” or “enlightenment” are. People seem to mean quite different things by words like those. If it turned out that by “God” you meant “part of the physical universe,” I would not doubt your claim to be God. (Some people do mean that!)
I don’t doubt that there are experiences of Oneness—because I’ve had them. But I don’t think they imply what monist mystics think they imply.
Since All is not One, they don’t imply that. Oneness experiences might simply be meaningless confusion or illusion. Many typical drug experiences are like that. If you take LSD, you will probably directly experience walls breathing. That does not mean that walls breathe.
I think the Oneness experience does contain an important insight. It’s just that mystics misunderstand it. What the experience actually points to is the fact that there is no objective separation between you and your immediate surroundings.
I haven’t had an experience of being God. However, I suspect that one’s interpretation of experiences depends on beliefs. If I had believed in God, when I had a Oneness experience, I might well have interpreted that as being God.
Those who believe we are all God usually explicitly reject all reason and evidence:
Proponents of “All is One” usually explicitly reject rationality. They have to, because the story falls apart instantly if they don’t. Instead, they insist that in a “trans-rational” enlightenment experience, the truth that All is One is revealed. When you’ve had that experience, then you know, and rationality is irrelevant.
The problem is that experiences can be mistaken. Crazy people experience all sorts of things that aren’t true.
I don’t think experiences of being God make you crazy. I do think you should consider the possibility that there are other interpretations of what you feel, which may be more accurate. I wrote about this in the “Should experience remove doubt?” and “Non-ordinary experiences and insight” sections:
I’ve had dramatic, non-ordinary spiritual experiences myself. I can’t doubt that they exist. I do have questions about their meaning and value…
I’ve had intense meditation experiences that included insights that seemed right for months or years after—but that I eventually decided were wrong after all. There’s others that I still think were profound and correct, a decade or two later.
My conclusion from this is that overwhelming meditation experiences can be valuable sources of insight, but they are unreliable. They can convince you of things that aren’t true. You need to test them against other ways of knowing.
Once you admit that experiences are not absolutely reliable, you have to consider other reasons to believe, and disbelieve. There are many. You might start by asking “what do I mean by ‘God’? What sort of thing is that? Am I, in fact, that?” If “God” includes “omnipotent,” then you have a problem—you have to explain why you appear to have limited abilities when really you can do anything at all. Monists do come up with explanations for that, of course. Are they plausible? Are they the best explanation for “being God” experiences? I don’t think so.
If you decide to believe, regardless of reasons not to, and you act on your belief, then you risk making big mistakes. It does matter whether or not you are God. In the discussion of monism, I will explain why that belief is actively harmful, and not just factually wrong. Basically, it forces you to withdraw from physical reality, because so much of everyday experience contradicts your Godhood.
If you are open to questioning, then you have to figure out which reasons for believing and disbelieving are best. This may not be easy. It may be painful. I think it’s worth the effort.
David, I am so glad I follow these comment threads. This reply was written superbly -- any atheist would admire this -- and such admiration may help them read further and be challenged.
By email subscription
By RSS feed
Follow me on Twitter
Comments
I am he and you are me and we are all together
Wasn't there a bit from Illuminatus, something like: "If all is one, then all violence is masochism". "Yes", ? replied nastily, "and then all sex is masturbation". Also see here.
You actually make Tolle's work sound more worthwhile than my extremely superficial impressions of it led me to believe.
I have trouble considering something like "you are god" an error or lie, exactly. Both "you" and "god" have highly indeterminate meanings and may not refer to anything concrete at all; so equating them represents a certain attitude of mind, but not (in my view) a factual error. It's not necessarily an interesting or productive or enlightening attitude, so it may be a spiritual error, I suppose.
Maybe I'll pose that as a challenge to to you (or a suggestion for a topic/page in your evolving treatise) to address the meta-level issue of how exactly do you evaluate and filter these sorts of spiritual/metaphysical ideas? What standards are there, other than personal taste, or consquentialism (people who believe in monism are more unhappy or start more wars, or something like that) or authority?
Evaluation
Please keep posting this kind of challenge (if you keep reading!). I can't give a very good answer yet, because I'm still in the phase of presenting the background conceptual machinery needed to make sense of the central points.
The issue of evaluation of my critique, in this case, is closely connected to the difficulty, which I sketched, of replying to Tolle. He makes (almost) no factual claims and presents (almost) no arguments. It's just a string of assertions.
Coming from any sort of intellectual background, it would seem that it would be sufficient to say "the burden of proof is on Tolle, so everyone should reject what he has to say out of hand."
But it appears that tens of millions of people have been persuaded by him. If one thinks that matters—which I do—then a burden-of-proof argument is a non-starter.
Instead one has to ask why do those people buy what he is selling, if not due to evidence or reason?
And the answer seems to be that he issues a series of promises that people really, really want to believe, and they accept them because the monist framework has replies to objections that have a convincing logic once you are inside.
So a critique has to be couched within that logic; and it has to present an alternative that is more plausible or more attractive within the world-view.
The critique has to show that monism can't deliver on its promises even in its own terms; but that my brand can (partly).
The first part is the sense of "error" that is relevant.
Let me sketch one example. One of monism's promises is to eliminate the alienation people feel that results from social separation. Its purported method for doing this is to get you to realize that All is One, so in fact there is no separation in the first place. In fact, you are token-identical to everyone else.
Now, we have to set aside the obvious point that you are not token-identical to everyone else; and the implausible claim that you can get yourself into a mind-state in which you "realize" that (short of severe dysfunction). Those are the kinds of specific, reality-based observations that monists blind themselves to.
A better approach may be to ask: Suppose you were token-identical to everyone else, and you "realized" that; would that actually address the social isolation you feel?
My hope is that, with a bit of Socratic dialog, this could lead people around to the answer "No."
Never heard of Tolle
I am ashamed to say I never heard of Tolle until twho weeks ago when a Zen blogger said he loved his writing. I ignored this until today and then I saw your post. Wow, what have I been missing. It shows the limited demographics I run in nowadays. But after reading your article,
I still don't know anything about Tolle except that he offers monistic dribble instead of dualistic dribble. But wait, you thought he lots of stuff right. Oh and you did say it was "system free" (I loved that concept), and you exposed his technique of just saying something over and over without evidence. But are you going to write a follow-up "post" on this, or did you just want to tell us that Tolle is example of the monism which you are going to tell us more about later?
The Wiki article on Tolle helped. You tell us that Tolle's falsity is just obviously false -- but this seemed a bit of a cheap move since it is not "obvious" to millions -- including that Zen blogger. Mind you, having read you, I deeply suspect you are right. But I was hoping for more substance.
You then mention 2 ways to deal with Tolle's monism: (1) show it has bad consequences -- but that sounds like it is a tough strategy. I must say, the major problem I have with many religions is the dualism which results in exclusivism (we live forever, you burn in hell) and thus my Atheist site. But liberal Christians and New Agers and probably Tolle monists strike me as tolerant and not as harmful to society from the exclusivist angle. Yet I have not liked the intellectual habits of these folks though I have had a hard time pinning it down. I wondered if those habits would have long term consequence that could be exposed. But such a venture is far to ambitious, I am afraid.
So that leads to your 2nd option -- present a better alternative to monism and dualism. So I guess we wait. But a few examples of internal inconsistencies would have be nice, since you hinted at that (I think) as a 3rd method. One more post, please.
Also, though Zen would seem a very natural home for me within Buddhism since I am a Japanophile to some degree (speak Japanese, play Go, practiced Japanese martial arts, love some anime [especially the monistic/animistic stuff...), nonetheless, many American Zen authors and practitioners seem to have many of the traits you allude to in criticizing monism. And it is for that exact reason that I find them unfortunately unpalatable for a large part. Do you have any of this experience. How deeply has monism affected American Buddhism? I kind of remember reading about an academic that discusses Buddhism's adaptation to the West -- and thus its evolution away from Asian Buddhism. The evolution probably incorporates pragmatism, German idealism (monism) and scientific flavoring. Do you know the name of that text or one like it that you'd recommend? [or are you writing it?] Smile
I must say that after your teaser-review, I am a bit tempted to read him just to see how this apparent best-seller which escaped my demographics is such a temptation to others. I guess a lists of the strengths of Tolle was something else you did not offer. But it sounds like it is coming. Sounds like the first commentor found nothing of value.
Do you know the demographics of those enthralled with him?
Monism as a tool
As I said in my last blog post, I don't think you can argue with religion, generally speaking. But it isn't just a matter of personal taste either, some stuff does seem to be better than others, and some of it seems downright fraudulent, but I don't really know how to characterize the differences.
I do think it is an error (maybe just a tactical one) to call monism an error or a lie. Because there are senses in which it is true. I prefer Minsky's quip that it is a "mind-destroying idea", except with the non-Minskyean twist that sometimes destroying your mind is exactly what you want to do...in a manner of speaking.
If monism leads to an inability to make any distinctions, or to complacency, or ennui, then it's an error. But if it is instead employed judiciously, as an antidote to taking boundaries too seriously, too fixedly, then it may be useful.
So, monism as a system may be an error, but monism as a tool, maybe not so much.
Intellectual history
@Sabio, thanks for the long, detailed comment. It raises several different points. I think I'll reply to them separately...
Maybe what I've failed to emphasize is that the project in this blog series is one of intellectual history. I started out thus:
If that's right, a huge cultural shift is occurring; one that hardly anyone else seems to have noticed. I view this with alarm (because I think monism is wrong). In order to respond to it, I first want to understand how and why it has happened.
My guess is that a big part of the "how" is Eckhart Tolle's invention of the sleek new system-free version of monism. It's a brilliant invention. Like many brilliant inventions, it is obvious in retrospect; monism tries to slough off specifics anyway, so dropping them is a natural move.
I wasn't trying to write a review of the book here; as of today, you can find 1,555 of those
on Amazon.
(I have written a page about Eckhart Tolle and Buddhism elsewhere. But I wrote that before I started to understand the roots of this stuff in German Romantic Idealism, which is key to understanding it.)
Monism: "obviously false"
About "obvious falseness". Eventually I'll write out a detailed critique of monism. (That will be in the "book", not here in the blog.) But for now, in the case of Tolle, it's straightforward. He says, explicitly, that you are (1) God and (2) the entire universe. Then he doesn't really explain further. Are these claims not obviously false?
Being a liberal intellectual gets in the way here. You are tempted to say "well, there might be some sense in which those claims are true—and since they are obviously false if taken literally, and he is a nice and smart guy, he must have in mind some interesting metaphorical meaning for 'you' and 'God' and 'the universe' according to which these are useful claims."
The old German approach was to take this "speaker's benefit" and run with it, trying to pull the wool over your eyes by generating thousands of pages of vague abstract philosophical-sounding prose that elaborated on what was meant by "you are God". That strategy collapsed when the bluff was called; in the end, it turned out that there wasn't an interesting metaphorical sense in which it was useful (= "pragmatically true").
Tolle, recognizing that the obfuscation strategy no longer works, doesn't even try. (Except in the two one-page passages I mentioned, where he just can't resist his lineage.) He simply says "you are God", and either you say "Oh, wow, now I get it! I was blind, but now I can see! Now I am enlightened! I'm God! I'm One with Everything", or you say "Whoa! Something really bad is happening here if people are buying this stuff."
Monism and tolerance
I'm the sort of fool that occasionally rushes in where angels fear to tread... So I plan to do this.
Yes, I think that monism's apparent tolerance is a big part of its appeal. Technically, this is called "Perennialism"—the idea that all religions have value and are ultimately One Faith. This is one aspect of the Unity monism promises.
This sounds very nice, and monism attracts nice people—i.e. those who are so frightened of conflict that they avoid it in situations in which it's actually called for.
Monism sees all religions as having some value—but only to the extent that they agree with monism. Monism sees all other religions as distorted versions of monism, which is the One Faith. It is actually an extremely aggressive, hegemonic strategy. (It's interestingly similar to the Microsoft "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy for destroying competitors.)
Monism is highly intolerant of anyone who says "no, actually, my religion/philosophy is not the same as yours." Because monism presents itself as nice and inclusive, it is impossible to say "no, I disagree"—however politely—without being painted as aggressive and narrow yourself.
I need to find ways to minimize that problem.
Monism in Zen and Buddhism generally
The book you are thinking of is David McMahan's The Making of Buddhist Modernism
. It is brilliant and I can't recommend it highly enough.
McMahan follows up on another brilliant piece, by Thanissaro Bikkhu, an article called "Romancing the Buddha", which appeared in Tricycle, Winter 2002 issue. Thanissaro raised the first alarm about German Romantic Idealism infecting Buddhism. McMahan traces the history of this in more detail. I've spent much of my time in the past six months following their lead; this metablog series on the intellectual history of current pop monism is an early output from that.
Skipping a lot of fantastically interesting details, the essence of the matter is this:
In the 19th Century, Asian states realized that they were being crushed by the West, and that Western power derived largely from Western ideas. Several states decided to appropriate those ideas to use as weapons in turn. Japan was the clearest example. Japan took Germany as its model, and imported German ideas wholesale. By state decree, Zen was reformed to make it consistent with then-current German philosophy, which meant Romantic Idealism, which is monist through and through.
Buddhism traditionally was explicitly hostile to monism; but under pressure, some sort of synthesis was developed, mainly in Zen and some versions of Theravada. Buddhism also was reconfigured to make it more compatible with the scientific/rational worldview and with Western social/ethical values.
These "modernist" versions of Buddhism were, naturally, the forms that have been most influential in the West. Because they come from Asia, and since much of the work of synthesis was done in the 19th Century, very few Westerners realize that they are not traditional, and are based largely on Western ideas, sold back to Westerners are "timeless Eastern wisdom." Timeless Eastern wisdom that feels very comfortable because it mainly recycles Thoreau and Emerson and Schelling.
On the one hand, I'm really glad to see Buddhism reformed to remove traditional claims which science makes clear are nonsense—for example, the belief that the Buddhist hells are caves beneath the earth that you could physically reach simply by digging. Science is, actually, right.
On the other hand, I'm alarmed to observe that many famous mainstream American Buddhist teachers are promulgating monist ideas, without even realizing that these were considered anti-Buddhist before they were forcibly incorporated into Buddhism just over a century ago. That's because monism is, actually, wrong.
Monism as antidote
Yes. That's part of the "resolution" I will offer to the monism-dualism opposition.
Each confused stance is attractive in part because it has an accurate insight. And what you wrote here is the accurate insight in monism: that we are not separate from each other, from the natural world, or from the sacred. Those are the dualistic errors, which monism is right to reject.
The problem is that monism just flips it, and asserts identity. It rejects distinctions and differences and all details and specifics. That's also entirely wrong.
A highly condensed statement of the resolution:
There isn't any objectively correct way to partition the world into objects. However, it is non-uniform, and therefore pragmatic partitioning is often valuable or necessary for action. Different partitionings may be useful on different occasions. It is useful to look for non-obvious connections, but not useful to insist that everything is connected (especially not without specifying what the connection is).
Tolle and monism
I think the reason so many people find Tolle's books appealing is that he addresses a problem characterisic of our modern age: that of the incessant stream of patterns of conditioned thinking leading to anxiety and worry. His books help one cope with these types of thinking. Being so popular and commanding a pretty wide range or admirers, I am sure that people find different things in his teachings, but fundamentally, he mainly address these sort of mental overthinking problems that people are prone to and gives concrete advice on how to overcome them.
So I don't think you need to look too far, if you are trying to understand Tolle's appeal.
I don't see much difference
I don't see much difference between Tolle's teaching and Buddhism at a fundamental level.
As David Loy argues in the article below, if an attempt is made to describe emptiness from an external, objective point of view the conclusion "All is Self" may be arrived at, whereas if it is described from a first-person, phenomenological perspective there is no self.
http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-AN/26715.htm
David Loy
Hi, Jason,
In a comment thread elsewhere, I and some others discuss this paper by David Loy.
I find the claims that "All is Self" and "there is no self" are both absurd, the claim that they mean the same thing is absurdity squared, and his argument is thoroughly unconvincing. Your mileage may vary, obviously.
David
David Loy
Hi David
Yes I came across your other comments after I posted. But like your comments above, I did not find much of an actual argument against Loy's reasoning.
I find his analogy with Wittgenstein and the view that if there is only one thing, described from the outside (which of course strictly speaking is impossible) this will be One but from the inside it will be nothing (because there is nothing to contrast it with) makes some sense.
Part of the problem here is the implicit "metaphysics of grammar" and the falsifications and distinctions it creates between nouns and verbs, subjects and predicates and so on- Loy has another article somewhere on Nietzsche, Nagarjuna and the limits of language which I also found interesting.
There are not that many Western trained philosophers who are also conversant with Buddhism. Along with Jay Garfield, I think David Loy is well worth checking out.
David Loy, again!
Hmm. Yes, I haven't explained what is wrong with Loy in any detail. More importantly, I haven't yet explained what is wrong with monism in general. I hope to get back to working on this site in a few months, and that's the next major chunk of it I plan to write.
In the mean time:
If warthogs were rocketships...
In that case, can't we stop right there?
That seems profound... Capital letters always add an air of elevated metaphysical grandiosity to a tautology.
Yes, I do think this one is a valid point. It's extremely difficult to use language in a way that doesn't suggest that the world is objectively divided up into independent objects.
This is the correct intuition behind monism—that the world isn't objectively divided into objects.
The error of monism is to suppose that this implies there is only One thing instead.
I'm sorry that I can't write out a proper explanation of what's wrong with Loy (and monism generally) right here right now. It's not all that complicated, but it will take several web pages to develop the philosophical machinery. Part of that is, as you suggest, building up roundabout ways of speaking that avoid implying objective objectness.
Thank you for your patience! We apologize for the inconvenience while this argument is under construction.
David
Stopping right here
Thanks David
Good luck with the project - I appreciate it will take some time and effort.
I am off on a week's self-retreat and the last thing I want is to get stuck in philosophising mode, so I will stop thinking about this now.
World Revolution
Hi David
Good luck in your project of abolishing the Hindu-Monist abomination. This is important work you are doing.
To seriously address monism from the perspective of Analytical Philosophy, you would need to address the work of Jonathon Schaeffer, the leader in the field (the new age fundies are not on to him yet but they soon will be):
http://www.jonathanschaffer.org/monism.pdf
We will be working with Dalit Buddhists to eliminate the Hindu abomination. Refer below for details of the foundation of the Revolutionary Party:
http://strangetimes.lastsuperpower.net/?p=2239&cpage=1#comment-13680
Mereology and abominations
Hi Justin
Thank you for the pointer to Schaffer's article!
It's from the analytic mereology literature, some of which I have read before, and which is indeed highly relevant here. I didn't know Schaffer's work, though. It's too long to read right now, but a quick scan shows I definitely need to go through it carefully.
The Indian caste system is indeed an abomination. It bothers me that Western lefties were so much into condemning South African apartheid, but mainly appear to be unbothered by essentially the same institution in India. It seems hypocritical.
I'd like to believe that Hinduism has some redeeming features, and that it could be separated from the caste system. I'm not sure whether that's true.
It seems that monism is a different problem, since it is about denying differences, whereas the caste system is about rigidifying them.
David
Schaffer
If you are willing to attack Schaffer's paper the good on you!
I attempted to have a go at it a while back but found it all so incredibly boring and tedious I just couldn't keep my eyes.
I tried repeatedly. And tried .
And tried
Till I slept
To the point of extinction.
My copy of the Tao Te Ching fell to the floor.
....
And the some shiny, happy dickhead with a sparkling copy of "The Power of Now"
woke me up.
woops
Lots of typos in that last post.
That's what Lao Tzu does to you.
How strange!
It is really strange to read someone who actually just flat out declares that the concept "You are God" is "wrong."
You think your intrinsically limited and overreaching intellect is superior to the point where you can actually definitively say whether that concept is "right" or "wrong"?
You seem unaware of your hypocrisy, where you attack Tolle for saying his "truth" plainly and without bothering to defend and explain it from some intellectual/historic/sociological/ religious stance. And yet you can state your equally simple truth "he is wrong" and also give absolutely no explanation.
If someone says, "we are all God" and you say "no, we're not" -you are different from them, how?
And if they say "we are all God" because they had the experience of understanding that inside themselves, and you say "no we're not" because you have not had that experience, you attempt to negate and refuse another's experience, and believe everyone else should as well. But from what wisdom are you speaking?
You feel a need to assert your intellect in a place that is explicitly and by definition beyond the intellect, encompassing it, but not limited to it or contained by it or defined by it.
The understanding that "we are all God" is, regardless of how your mind perceives it, something countless human beings have arrived at, and saying it in this way is as simple and elegant as the realization can be expressed in words.
What I like about Tolle's Power of Now (I haven't read his recent book that you are attacking but I feel confident it is based entirely in the same principles) is that he simply discusses Being, without embellishment or unnecessary explanation, and this is definitely the only way to say it, because anyway you can't entirely and satisfyingly and rationally explain why the teaching is true to someone who needs that kind of explanation, and whose ego is positioned to say "it is wrong" anyway -- needs to believe it is wrong.
Also it seems your application of a critique of "monism" - even though you haven't actually provided it yet -- really doesn't make sense as Tolle is not promoting a faith or religious system, but affirming the potential for a conscious experience of Being, which transcends all systems.
You write:
I find the claims that "All is Self" and "there is no self" are both absurd, the claim that they mean the same thing is absurdity squared, and his argument is thoroughly unconvincing.
Again, this isn't an area where intellectual "argument" is useful or meaningful at all, which is why you can't transmit this kind of knowledge through words and books successfully alone, though if someone is engaged in their own spiritual development/practice/awareness, the words can be tremendously powerful and useful at just the right moment, when they can be "heard." You can call it "God" or "Being" or "Self" or something else, or nothing, but it isn't something experienced through the mind and in the realm of time and polarity.
So you seem to be someone who can't "hear" it, because you haven't had any experience of it yourself yet, so you really appear foolish trying to intellectually argue for or against any of these teachings. Because even if you don't believe something is true, what do you know about it? Do you really know? No, you don't actually know, so honestly who cares whether you find it true or not? You are ignorant and in the dark about your true nature, like most people, so it would be better to admit it and seek your own knowledge without expounding blindly as a self-important intellectual. We are talking in realms that transcend the ego and intellect.
How can we know if we are God?
Thank you very much for your comment! It comes at a good time. I wrote this page about Tolle more than two years ago, expecting to continue the topic to a detailed explanation of where his approach goes wrong. Since then I have been distracted by other things. So I have repeatedly apologized for not following up; which is inadequate, as you point out. Just yesterday I started working on this material again. Any promise I make now would also be empty. However, I again hope to give a full explanation within a few months. In the mean time, your comment gives me the opportunity to say something.
We agree that Tolle is brilliant; I hope I said that in my original post. He writes exceptionally simply and clearly, and he side-steps all -isms, whose time has passed.
Absolutely certainty is impossible, about anything. I cannot be absolutely certain that Tolle is wrong. We can be sure enough about some things, though; I am drinking coffee as I write this, for example.
If something is controversial, there are reasons to believe, and reasons not to. So, what are the reasons to believe, and not to believe, you are God?
I did give reasons not to believe you are God in the original post. For example, God is omniscient and omnipotent; you aren’t.
You mention two reasons for believing you are God: countless beings have arrived at that understanding, and an experience. (I hope that’s an accurate summary; did I miss something?)
Countless people have also arrived at the opposite understanding: that God is something utterly greater and utterly different from themselves. This is the mainstream Christian understanding. You think that is wrong, and so do I! But it shows that “millions of people came to this conclusion” does not mean it is true. All it can tell us is that it’s a possibility worth considering seriously. (Unlike most non-monists, I think monism is worth considering seriously. Most Dualists, such as Christians, think it is wicked, and most secular people consider it idiotic.)
Experiences can be good reasons to believe some things. I’m pretty sure I’m drinking coffee, because I can see it and taste it.
On the other hand, many people say they have directly experienced God as utterly different from, and greater than, themselves. I am an atheist, so I think there must be some other explanation for those experiences. I don’t doubt they experienced something—but probably not God.
Some people say they were abducted by UFO aliens who performed medical experiments on them. Some of those people are obviously crazy, or liars. Some seem perfectly sane and honest. I am sure they experienced something—but it was almost certainly not UFO aliens.
Spiritual experiences are tricky, because we mostly can’t talk clearly about them—and probably we can’t think clearly about them, either. It’s pretty clear what coffee is, but it is not at all clear what “God” or “enlightenment” are. People seem to mean quite different things by words like those. If it turned out that by “God” you meant “part of the physical universe,” I would not doubt your claim to be God. (Some people do mean that!)
I wrote recently about enlightenment experiences, and what we can know about them, and know from them. (There’s also a podcast version.) I’ve also written about whether mystical experiences are reliable evidence. You might find these interesting and relevant; they go into much more detail than I can do here. I wrote:
I haven’t had an experience of being God. However, I suspect that one’s interpretation of experiences depends on beliefs. If I had believed in God, when I had a Oneness experience, I might well have interpreted that as being God.
Those who believe we are all God usually explicitly reject all reason and evidence:
The problem is that experiences can be mistaken. Crazy people experience all sorts of things that aren’t true.
I don’t think experiences of being God make you crazy. I do think you should consider the possibility that there are other interpretations of what you feel, which may be more accurate. I wrote about this in the “Should experience remove doubt?” and “Non-ordinary experiences and insight” sections:
Once you admit that experiences are not absolutely reliable, you have to consider other reasons to believe, and disbelieve. There are many. You might start by asking “what do I mean by ‘God’? What sort of thing is that? Am I, in fact, that?” If “God” includes “omnipotent,” then you have a problem—you have to explain why you appear to have limited abilities when really you can do anything at all. Monists do come up with explanations for that, of course. Are they plausible? Are they the best explanation for “being God” experiences? I don’t think so.
If you decide to believe, regardless of reasons not to, and you act on your belief, then you risk making big mistakes. It does matter whether or not you are God. In the discussion of monism, I will explain why that belief is actively harmful, and not just factually wrong. Basically, it forces you to withdraw from physical reality, because so much of everyday experience contradicts your Godhood.
If you are open to questioning, then you have to figure out which reasons for believing and disbelieving are best. This may not be easy. It may be painful. I think it’s worth the effort.
Great Comment
David, I am so glad I follow these comment threads. This reply was written superbly -- any atheist would admire this -- and such admiration may help them read further and be challenged.
Eckhart Tolle is the TRUTH!
You have little faith.
Add new comment