AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO
THE PAPERBACK EDITION
Six years after it was first published, The Power of Now continues to
play its part in the urgent task of the transformation of human
consciousness. Although I was privileged to give birth to it, I feel that
the book has taken on a life and momentum of its own. It has reached
several million readers worldwide, many of whom have written to me
to tell of the life-changing effect it has had on them. Due to the
extremely high volume of correspondence I receive, I am regretfully
no longer able to send personal replies, but I would like to take this
opportunity to express my deepest gratitude to all those who have
written to me to share their experiences. I am moved and deeply
touched by many of those accounts, and they leave no doubt in my
mind that an unprecedented shift in consciousness is indeed
happening on our planet.
Nobody could have predicted the rapid growth of the book when
Namaste Publishing in Vancouver published the first edition of three
thousand copies in 1997. During its first year of publication, the book
found its readers almost exclusively through word of mouth. That was
the time when I would personally deliver a few copies every week to
some small bookstores in Vancouver, something I found enormously
satisfying, knowing that every book that I handed over had the
potential of changing someone’s life. Friends helped by placing copies
of the book in spiritual bookstores farther afield: Calgary, Seattle,
California, London. Stephen Gawtry, the manager of Watkins, the
world’s oldest metaphysical bookstore in London, England, wrote at
the time, “I foresee great things for this book.” He was right: by the
second year The Power of Now had developed into an “underground
bestseller,” as one reviewer later called it. Then, after the book
received a number of favorable reviews in various journals and
magazines, its growth accelerated and finally became explosive when
Oprah Winfrey, who had been deeply affected by the book, proceeded
to tell the world about it. Five years after it was first published, it
reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and it is now
available in thirty languages. It has been very well received and
become a bestseller even in India, a country considered by many to
be the birthplace of humanity’s quest for spiritual enlightenment.
Most of the thousands of letters and emails that have been sent to me
from all over the world are from ordinary men and women, but there
are also letters from Buddhist monks and Christian nuns, from people
in prison or facing a life-threatening illness or imminent death.
Psychotherapists have written to say that they recommend the book
to their patients or incorporate the teachings in their practice. Many of
those letters and emails mention a lessening or even a complete
disappearance of suffering and problem-making in people’s lives as a
result of reading The Power of Now and putting the teachings into
practice in everyday life. There is frequent mention of the amazing
and beneficial effects of inner body awareness, the sense of freedom
that comes from letting go of self-identification with one’s personal
history and life-situation, and a newfound inner peace that arises as
one learns to relinquish mental/emotional resistance to the
“suchness” of the present moment. Many people have read the book
more than once, and they comment that the text loses none of its
freshness upon subsequent readings, indeed that the book’s
transformative power remains not only undiminished, but actually
becomes intensified.
The more the dysfunction of the human mind plays itself out on the
world stage, clearly visible to everyone in the daily television news
reports, the greater the number of people who realize the urgent
need for a radical change in human consciousness if humanity is not
to destroy both itself and the planet. This need, as well as readiness
in millions of people for the arising of a new consciousness, is the
context within which the “success” of The Power of Now must be seen
and understood.
This does not mean, of course, that everyone responds favorably to
the book. In many people, as well as in most of the political and
economic structures and the greater part of the media, the old
consciousness is still deeply entrenched. Anyone who is still totally
identified with the voice in their head — the stream of involuntary and
incessant thinking — will inevitably fail to see what The Power of Now
is all about. Some enthusiastic readers gave a copy of the book to a
friend or relative and were surprised and disappointed when the
recipient found it quite meaningless and could not get beyond the first
few pages. “Mumbo jumbo” was all that Time magazine could see in a
book that countless people around the globe found life-changing.
Furthermore, any teaching that puts the spotlight of attention on the
workings of the ego will necessarily provoke egoic reaction,
resistance, and attack.
However, despite a certain amount of misunderstanding and critical
dissent, the response to the book around the globe has been
overwhelmingly positive. I feel confident that in the years to come
millions more will be drawn to it, and that The Power of Now will
continue to make a vital contribution to the arising of a new
consciousness and a more enlightened humanity.
— Eckhart Tolle
Vancouver, B.C.
April 19, 2004
THE POWER OF
NOW
INTRODUCTION