Manos Vasiliadis's Reviews > The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

This book, at its core, is another attempt to bring Eastern philosophies to the West, while making parallels to teachings of Christ.
Tolle seems to be an avid thinker and highly intelligent, so he follows thought patterns well, answering questions that will inevitably come up into the reader's head. This at first seems like a good idea, until you realize you are getting narrowed down at his own thoughts.

So, if hardly anything he says is actually new, the point of the book becomes the experiences of a man. This is where it gets really ugly. Tolle, for someone enlightened, feels really miserable to read. For someone talking about joy and connection, it feels like he is completely disconnected. Especially when he writes about humanity and its sins, he writes as someone who is not a member of that same humanity.
What really struck me was, that for the first time I was reading about Zen and inner-connectedness and not a single smile was cracked in my face. He managed to transform such delightful topics into mundane and enlightenment into a state of fear about the future of humanity.

All in all, there is essence in this book, but wrapped in an ugly package.