A New Earth: Create a Better Life

Tolle defines the ego as “identification with form” (22). In turn, form is a name that Tolle gives to transitory phenomena, such as the thoughts, feelings, and roles that people use to separate their sense of self from the timeless collective whole that is Being. Once a person identifies with forms and the state of ego, they seek definition by making false distinctions between themselves and others. The result of this illusion of separation is conflict, which harms others as well as the self.

For Tolle, ego is a serious malfunction in humanity. He describes the “forgetfulness” of one’s “intrinsic oneness with every other as well as with the Source” as “original sin” (22). Here, Tolle’s concept of original sin picks up on the theme of Satan, Eve, and Adam’s sense of separation between themselves and God in the Judeo-Christian creation myth of the Garden of Eden (22). While “forgetfulness” of one’s relationship with God led to all humanity’s ills in the Judeo-Christian story, Tolle asserts that dominance of ego has created today’s conflict-ridden world (22).

Tolle’s “new earth” is named after a biblical prophecy that “speaks of the collapse of the existing world order and the arising of ‘a new heaven and a new earth’” (23). However, Tolle makes an important distinction between his philosophy and the biblical concept when he states that the new earth is not an utopian future location but a reflection of “a transformed state of human consciousness” that is accessible in the present moment, as more people awaken to a sense of connectedness (23). Importantly, Tolle repeatedly comments that the new earth is already present among groups of conscious individuals, and that as one person rises to consciousness, others follow in their wake. He thus emphasizes that replacing the existing world order with a new one is more a collective effort than individual work.

Tolle defines the pain-body as the “accumulation of old emotional pain” that “almost everyone carries in his or her energy field” (140). Although babies are born into this world with pain-bodies, the pain-body grows in childhood and adulthood, given the mind’s repetition of negative stories from the past, which the body then reacts to “with negative emotion” (134). When the negative emotion is not “fully faced, accepted, and then let go of,” it forms “an energy field that lives in the very cells of your body” (142). As people with dense pain-bodies become fully identified with their pain, they seek solace in “negative thinking as well as drama in relationships” (143-44). Pain-bodies “mutually-energize” each other, both in conflict-ridden personal relationships and in groups who identify themselves as wronged (148). Tolle teaches that the pain-body is the ego’s emotional counterpart, as it loves to make wrong, blame, and position the bearer as separate from the rest of creation. Paradoxically, the pain-body can become so intolerable that it functions as an “awakener,” which forces the bearer to disidentify with it and seek a new way of life (180).

As with the ego, Tolle believes that one can liberate oneself from the pain-body by regarding it as a “psychic parasite” and refusing to identify with it (148). One can also refuse to engage with others’ pain-bodies by bringing one’s alert presence to their upset state, without seeking to make further conflict.

Tolle defines Presence as the type of “alert attention” in which there is “no wanting” or agenda for a desired outcome (84). He argues that Presence “is the prerequisite for any authentic relationship” because it is one’s awareness and connection with the other in the present moment, without any egoic, future-orientated desire (84). Similarly, Presence is essential for aligning one’s inner purpose of awakening with one’s outer goals, if goal-setting is not to fall into the trap of the ego’s psychological time. Presence is also a healer of the pain-body, as “every time you are present when the pain-body arises, some of the pain-body’s negative emotional energy will burn up, as it were, and become transmuted into Presence” (180). Presence is ultimately the counterpart to Being and the truth of human consciousness beyond the ego’s myriad distracting forms.