I just wanted to put up this post based on the Eckhart Tolle post on this forum. Phil posted an interesting criticism by a Catholic Professor which can be found at the bottom of this original post.

I think its important to see what everyone here thinks. In the ocean that is God, are we sponges or drops of water???

So many mystics and theologians of antiquity, that I have read, speak about the divine spark within and that we are inherently drops of water.

The more outer based logic/reason using theologians say we are sponges.

I guess the defining question for me would be...what animates us to be alive = the soul, what animates the soul to be alive????
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quote:What, then, is the verdict? My reading of Eckhart Tolle is that there is a real difference between his God and the God of Christianity, as most of us, even most of the Christian mystics, understand that God. For Mr. Tolle, God is in the world in a more radical way than for the Christian. Mr. Tolle sees persons as being like water drops, and God as being like the ocean from which the drops come. For him our inner nature, our tiny morsel of Being, is literally and completely divine. It is of the same substance as God. As Fr. Keating sees it, however, we are not like drops of water; rather we are like little sponges in the water. We are completely saturated with the water, but we are not the water.

Theological differences between Mr. Tolle�s God and the Christian�s will loom as important for some Christians, and they have a right to know what they are in for if they tune in to the show. Other Christians may not notice or care. Frankly, I wouldn�t worry about them. Mr. Tolle�s theology is only a footnote to the therapy he holds out to his audience. What�s essential, as he sees it, is the experience of God in our depths, not the way we think about God. After all, thinking is the problem. Both Mr. Tolle and the Christian mystics agree that to know God we must get beyond thinking, beyond creeds, beyond belief and experience his presence. If enough people did that, the world would be new indeed.

Dominicus:

Phil will probably give you the more informed response to all of this, but I'd offer this much:

My old Hindu teacher's teacher, Shri Dyanyogi Madhusudandasji, lived to be 116 years old. He could alter the weather, and seemed capable of other siddhis. He was, by all accounts, a profoundly loving man. In his eighties, about 40 years after his complete enlightenment, he underwent a near death experience in which he was taken by angels to God as he worshiped Him (Vishnu I believe). Now, if we were mere drops of water in the ocean of Divine Being, I doubt Dyanyogi's report of his NDE would have suggested otherwise. And even though he seemed to extend his life because of the way kundalini coursed so fully through him, he couldn't overcome death, or raise the dead, or for that matter wasn't omniscient or omnipresent.

The way I see it, we participate in these powers, but do not originate them - just as we do not create out of nothing. Dyanyogi certainly participated deeply, to the point of being a master of the siddhis, yet who made light of them as he was such a huge, awakened heart. I certainly would attribute these limitations to Tolle as well. Why he doesn't point them out as obvious distinctions between God and creatures may have to do with his own bias. So much for not thinking!

So as for thinking being a problem, you and Phil seem to know experientially this has more to do with the affective ego, where the false self creates chaos in the internal dialogue that none of us is free of until our will is completely taken up and purified by God.