eckhart tolle and jesus

It seems that Eckhart Tolle compared to many of today's esoteric teachers  is most influenced by Jesus Christ. Even his name was changed from Ulrich Leonard  to Eckhart Tolle after Meister Eckhart a 13th century Christian German Mystic. In his recent book "A new Earth" there are 29 references to Jesus and one to the Apostle Paul. This in itself is quite a decisive measuring stick as to where a Christian may place ET on the Liberal / Conservative spectrum. ET clearly makes no reference to the Pauline theological view of salvation but lays much more emphasis on the teaching of Jesus. It is not his death and resurrection but his teaching in the gospels that Tolle uses in this book. The term 'Salvation' is not used in relation to a moral infringement of God's law but rather the liberation from the 'egoic self' and it is not through the death and resurrection of Jesus that this salvation is procured but rather through a shift in perception from unconsciousness to consciousness. Like I said the Christian vewpoint you hold will determine how much you can adopt the teaching of ET. Two extremes can be seen when we look at Father Richard Rohr and The Moody Church. Father Richard Rohr has just brought a book out called 'The Naked Now' which I am still reading (see my google books in the sidebar) I hope to do a write up on it. Richard mentions Tolle quite alot and it is good to find a book that is up to date enough to include him. Furthermore he has also published a defence of ET here.  On the other end of the spectrum we have the Moody church check this out.  
The thing about ET is that he manages to describe an approach to personal spiritual growth which hitherto Christians had claimed for themselves and only through the help of Jesus. Tolle seems to bypass the need for salvation in its most conservative form to produce the same results at least in terms of how one relates to self others and the world. The Present Moment takes the place of the Cross. For the Christian it is the Cross that eliminates the self. 'I am crucified with Christ'  says the Apostle Paul 'Nevertheless I live yet not I but Christ lives in me'. For ET it is the Present Moment. He claims that the egoic self (which is to the Christian the "old life", the "flesh", or the "self life") draws its strength from thought forms which are related to past achievements or future dreams. The NOW which transcends thought form and is not perceptible through the egoic mind thus frees us from the self in that it disconnects us from past and future wherein the egoic mind draws its strength. (I guess one question is: 'Does the egoic self have to be solely related to past or future? ... or cannot the egoic mind still operate in the immediate present?') If the Christian would wish to join hands with ET he could argue that the NOW (or The Present Moment) is identical to the Cross in how it relates to the self or the egoic mind. In a Cross like way it pierces vertically through the horizontal layer of time thus bringing consciousness / salvation. Of course this negates any real purpose of the sufferings of Jesus Christ. Why bother to die for our sins (our egoic mindset) if a simple repose in the NOW would suffice? The only reference I have found by ET regarding the Cross is in a transcript from an interview with Oprah winfrey in her book club:

I'd like to share with you something, I had an insight some years ago, I was walking in England into a village church. It was all very quiet. I was the only person in that 600-year-old church, and I saw the cross and the altar and Jesus on the cross. And this is an image that we are so used to, we don't question it, but at that moment, I saw it as if I had just arrived on this planet and had never seen it before. And I was struck by the strangeness of that symbol. And I looked, there's a suffering human being in agony on this cross. And at the same time, there was another cross without Jesus on it, and I saw this golden cross was the same cross. That cross that is the torture instrument is at the same time a symbol for the divine. And suddenly I saw a very deep significance in that that can be appreciated and recognized, I believe, by anybody, even in they are not Christians. Jesus on the cross stands for humanity. Jesus represents every human being that has ever lived or will ever live. Jesus represents something that is part of the human condition, and this—what he experienced at that moment, I saw when I was looking at the cross in the church, I saw that what this represents is a human being who experiences an extreme form of limitation. He's totally unfree, totally limited, in deep suffering, and, at the same time, the words are suddenly remembered from what is said on the cross, "Not my will, but thy will be done." And that was the act of complete acceptance of suffering. He went to the depths of suffering and then totally accepted suffering. And through this total acceptance of suffering, sudden transmutation happened, and the very torture instrument, the cross that had produced the suffering, was transformed and became a symbol for the divine. And that explained the paradox that I had seen when I went into that church as if I had never been to a church before and I saw, how can the torture instrument at the same time be a symbol of the divine? And so in every human being's life, every human being will experience some form of suffering, sometimes very intense.

This perception of the Cross by ET reflects again the contemplative mystical side of the Christian faith. Many Christians I know when thinking of the Cross stop simply at its substitutionary work where Jesus takes the punishment of mankind upon himself. This for them is sufficient in all its simplicity. "Jesus died for my sins and now I am right with God" - "nothing else is needed". For others this simply will not do. While they may agree with the former statement there is a deep hunger for for greater imtimacy with the Divine which cannot be satisfied by a mental assent to the forensic theory. Life is just not that simple. The mystic finds meaning not just in the fact of the death of Jesus (symbolised by the 'blood') but also in the manner in which He died. ET picks up on this when he sees in the Cross the acceptance of suffering with which we can be participants in our daily lives and thus become partakers of the Divine. It seems that ET is embracing a deeper aspect of the meaning of the Cross without embracing distinctive Evangelical theology.
This poses a problem. If for one moment we were to assume that there is a personal God 'out there' looking down on us what would he actually be looking for? A mind that embraces a 'right' theology or a heart of all embracing love? If we were to accept the latter then the God 'out there' might well favour those who reflect the spirit of the Crucified One who have no knowledge of biblical doctrine whatsoever. ET could be more of a Christian than many churchgoing Bible students who own the title!
Of course we need not introduce a dualism where there need not be one. It is quite possible to embrace both. Leon Morris speaks of "Inclusive Substitution" where the one who embraces "Jesus died for me" must also accept "I died with him". The one necessitates the other.

Further thoughts on the Non-dualistic position

Non-dualism valuable but not ultimate
To the Buddhist and to many Christians influenced by esoteric ways of thinking 'non-dualism' (or 'and/also' as opposed to 'either/or' thinking) is an ultimate goal. To me from a Christian perspective non-dualism is not an end in itself but a means to a higher calling. I refer not to our ultimate end after death or in the Apostle Paul’s words “The mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus”.  I refer to our calling here on earth. A passage which comes to mind in this context is that of the experience of the 3 disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration -  the great mystical experience of seeing the transformed  Jesus was immediately contrasted by what followed - a (dualistic) confrontation with the demonised child. This seems to be also how Jesus operated. He came as a light shining in the darkness and the darkness was not able to contain it. Spending time with his Father was the source of His power to do his His will and advance His kingdom. (the Lords prayer). Jesus was acting out an aware dualism due to his time with God his Father and this too is the Christian calling.
Onenesswith God not equivalent to non-dualism
 I’m not sure if oneness with God is identical with the non-dual way of thinking. It does not seem to me to be how Jesus viewed it - his praying and fellowship with God seemed to not be reducible to an internal impersonal enlightenment but more an objective personal relationship with a God who was ‘out there’.  Perhaps that is why we have recorded in scripture an external voice saying 'This is my Son in whom I am well pleased' also at the Mount of transfiguration and at our Lord’s baptism. I’m sure non-dualism was an important aspect of Jesus thinking which we should recapture but to extrapolate it to being equivalent to our ultimate end or goal seems to be overdoing it a bit. Non dualism was made for man not man for non-dualism. Whatever unity with God means it will transcend and eclipse any concept we can come up with that relates to our internal experience. From a biblical viewpoint it will be personal – we will see Him and be like Him which is our Christian hope (1 John 3).
Grace the foundation of relationship with God
This leads to my other point in that the Trinitarian relationship towards which we are called through Jesus and his Cross allows for objectivity and reciprocal relationship available to the poor and the outcast, the afflicted and the powerless through grace. This is a far cry from the elitism of higher consciousness implied by Ken Wilber’s Integral Model. I am sure I would be placed well down the scale. 
Christianity more suitable for proactive Love
I believe that Buddhists are seeking to move away from a more passive state. However as much as I know about western Buddhism and modern esoteric teachers we are to love unitively loving you as me because I am one with evrything - there are no (dualistic) distinctions - just perfect oneness. As with her relationship with God the Christian’s love has to do with loving the other who is different from me. The one is subjective and unitive embracing isness, the other embracing 'otherness' and difference. Some have said that love can only exist if there is another to love – hence the Trinity. Perhaps it is for this reason that Buddhism tends towards introspection, quietism, divine egoism and social indifference But by insisting on the transcendence of God (the qualitative distinction between divine and human) we get wonder, astonishment, fear and trembling, curiosity, moral and political adventure, righteous indignation and social justice – Christianity.

Ken Wilber - The Great Search

I read an article on the Integral Life Website which is a portion from a book by Ken Wilber. In it he makes the statement that “The Great Search is the great enemy of what is”. To be searching implies that “you have not got” so to be in a searching mode you never actually arrive. It is only when you stop the search you begin to realise all you need is all you have and all you are. There is no longer any separation – no dualism – just being and connecting with all that there is. “This realization undoes the Great Search that is the heart of the separate-self sense.” This realisation affects our relationship with all that ‘is’ around us: ”… you simply are the mountain, you are the sky, you are the clouds, you are everything that is arising moment to moment, very simply, very clearly, just so.”
This is great stuff and a much needed call to awareness and to the present moment in which we become conscious of our aliveness and the goodness of all that is. It also helps us to come to terms with the pain we suffer as we in the words of Byron Katie ‘Love what is’.
As an addition and further development of these thoughts I would like to consider some words that Jesus is recorded to have said “Seek and you shall find”. In this case it is quite clear that seeking is a favourable thing and certainly not seen to be an enemy. Admittedly Ken uses the word ‘search’ and not ‘seek’ but I do not think this matters. The Greek meaning for this word ‘seek’ is actually in the present-continuous-imperative … literally ‘Seek and keep on seeking’. Sadly our own language does not have such verb distinctions so we often miss it in translation. I believe that a good interpretation of the passage above would be ‘As you keep on seeking you will keep on finding’ or  conversely ‘The moment we stop seeking is the moment we stop finding’ … almost like saying the moment the water stops flowing out the water stops flowing in. It seems in this context the enemy is quite the opposite of seeking. It is FINDING! … because once you have found you have stopped seeking and therefore you no longer are finding … Yo! Well actually to be more precise it is not the finding but the grasping that is the problem ...  finding is perfectly acceptable provided we do not seek to possess what we find for then we have returned to the egoic as our centre. There is a dynamic in Jesus view of God not dissimilar to the concept the Desert Fathers had in their perception of the Trinity in the word perichoresis which means to dance around … one part of the Trinity flows into the other in continuity … a constant movement. Another popular word used is self emptying the Greek word being  “Kenosis” used once by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Philippian Church where he says Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but (Kenosis) emptied himself. So as long as the seeking/ finding dynamic keeps moving all is well but as soon as egoic grasping and spiritual possessiveness kicks in there we have our “enemy”.
So it seems that another dualism is broken by Jesus – that is the dualism of seeking and having by making them dynamically mutually co-existent. Ken Wilber has created a dualism where there does not need to be.
“Should we simply cease the search?” Asks Ken. I would agree and answer” No”, but for a different reason. In Jesus teaching we do not have to. The activity of searching is accommodated for and anticipated by Spirit which pre-empts our searching. The moment of searching is the moment of finding.
Instead of saying the Great Search presumes the loss of God I would say the Finding of God Assumes or even CONsumes the great search.
Ken is left with the meaninglessness of all the effort made through prayer and other disciplines. If God is immediately present any act of seeking is perpetuating the lie that He is not. Eckhart Tolle perpetually makes reference to wasted effort in attempting to attain to that which is already here present in this moment. Ken’s argument is that the only use of such discipline is that it ‘speeds up the folly’ but surely better still not to enter the folly – let’s throw all the millennia of spiritual seeking away as one big collective enemy. However if we take the kenotic view above we find that we don’t have to because the seeking is the finding ... there is no dualism here.