I've read most of the reviews and all of the negative ones. I've also left comments to them if any reader is interested. Quite frankly, all of the negative reviews are from people who don't understand the main premise of this book. Some interestingly enough were from Buddhists, who seemed uncharacteristically and extraordinarily negative. Buddhism of course is where the concept of Spiritual materialism, using one's religious identity to further support and prop up the ego, first was formalized. To this day that concept has not found much traction in Christianity where Spiritual Materialism is taken as par for the course, but I am digressing.

This book is about the forces that are present in aiding us, and how we, individually can transcend mythology and ideology. Something that either will happen for us as a species or will become extinct in the very near-- in geological time-- future. And until it happens things will only get worse. For example right now China is building up its military to invade Taiwan. An event that quite possibly and most probably will lead to a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and China. China has already publicly stated that this will be the result of the U.S. coming to Taiwan's defense. And consequently China is developing missile technology to defeat the U.S's missile defense system. This could happen in as little as a couple of years from this review date. This is only to demonstrate one way things may continue to get worse until a different sort of consciousness emerges on this planet. There is no middle ground or "political" solution, our old ways of thinking will lead to our own destruction.

Some reviewers have stated that this book has nothing to do with awakening to your life's purpose, but I disagree. What is your life's purpose other then to evolve, which means, of course, also surviving. Your purpose is to become fully conscious. We are the part of the universe evolving into full consciousness of itself. One stage on that journey was emergence of the human mind. But this mind has grown into a monstrous reality, as the twentieth century so eloquently testifies. The mind has highjacked us and we live in the world where our own inventions can and may destroy us. Part of why this is so is that the mind itself is an unconscious tool. Tolle's opinion, is that the purpose of life is to become fully conscious, to become more than the limits of your own mind. That, first this is possible, and then how one achieves it is the point of this book.

Tolle, who is a gifted communicator, articulates this message in refreshingly modern terms. It is the same message of the historical Buddha, and arguably of an historical Jesus. How you awaken to your life's purpose is simply by clearly seeing the nature of your own mind.

Lama Yeshe in his book, Make your Mind and Ocean, says as much:

Lord Buddha says that all you have to know is what your are, how you exist. You don't have to believe in anything. Just understand how your mind works, how attachment and desire arise, how ignorance arises, and where emotions come from. It is sufficient to know the nature of all that; that alone can bring you happiness and peace.

What Eckhart does in A New Earth is articulate this same old spiritual message, that few seem to truly have realized, in a way exceeding accessible for our times.