Eckhart Tolle – You Ain’t I Am

Several years ago I was working as an installation technician for a national communications company. Occasionally, I would be assigned an out of town job. Often I found myself with my co-worker(s) in unfamiliar territory looking for a place to stay or eat. One such night, just as the sun was setting my partner, Mike, and I had an address for a local diner, but we couldn’t find the right street. I saw several young men hanging around a gas station and pulled in to ask for directions. One young man pointed down the road and told me to turn left on the second street. I thanked him and as we pulled away one of the other guys yelled something. Mike asked, “What did he say?”

These were young guys, hanging out and drinking beer so I replied, “They were just being smart with us,” and preceded down the road.

I was driving about 40 miles an hour when Mike and I had a rude awakening. The road just ended. It was as if someone got tired of building it and just walked away. No warning signs, no flashing lights, no barricades, nothing. We ended up in the middle of an empty field. When I got the truck stopped and the dust settled I said, “Well, now I think I know what that guy was yelling.”

Eckhart Tolle fancies himself a “sign” giving direction. He sees himself as a finger pointing to the moon. He is pointing and he is giving direction, but what if the directions he gives and the way he points leads down a dead end road? Even worse – what if he is pointing people down a destructive path? Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone try to warn those who are headed off down that road? Wouldn’t it be wise to stop and listen?

One of the most dangerous and destructive assertions Tolle makes in A New Earth is:

The truth is inseparable from who you are. Yes, you are the Truth. If you look for it elsewhere, you will be deceived every time. The very Being that you are is Truth. Jesus tried to convey that when he said, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” These words uttered by Jesus are one of the most powerful and direct pointers to the Truth, if understood correctly. If misinterpreted, however, they become a great obstacle. Jesus speaks of the innermost I Am, the essence identity of every man and woman, every life-form, in fact. He speaks of the life that you are. Some Christian mystics have called it the Christ within… (p.71)

Tolle carries this thought throughout the book. He is stating that when Jesus spoke those words as they are found in the Gospel of John, he was speaking about something that was true of every person, “every life-form, in fact.” Tolle says, “the ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am” (p.57)

He goes on to ask, “Can I sense my essential Beingness, the I Am, in the background of my life at all times? To be more accurate, can I sense the I Am that I Am at this moment? Can I sense my essential identity as consciousness itself?” (p. 79)

Again – “The Presence that you are, the timeless, I Am, recognizes itself in another.”

Tolle uses this words repeatedly throughout the book. He capitalizes the words. He telling us that we are god. He is telling us that when Jesus said, “I Am” He was not saying something unique about himself. He is teaching us a pantheistic world-view. God, according to Tolle, is in everything. Frogs, birds, cats, rocks and you are all god and god is nothing more than consciousness and this consciousness has become unconscious and the purpose of life is to be awakened to this consciousness and evolve to a higher level until the whole thing collapses in on itself and starts its next evolutionary cycle.

But is this what Jesus meant?

Once again, Tolle has to tell us that have misunderstood Jesus and the Bible. Apparently the words of Jesus can only be rightly understood and explained by Eckhart Tolle. And it is perfectly fine for him to say that the historic, orthodox, Christian understanding of Jesus and his teachings is a misinterpretation, but heaven forbid that I should say the same thing about his writings…. Well I am going to anyway. And again, I, unlike Tolle, will read and attempt to explain Jesus’ words in their lingustic, historical context. I won’t cherry pick one sentence, make it fit my world-view and religious beliefs, tell everyone that Jesus has been misunderstood and not give one iota of evidence of such a statement.

So what about it? When Jesus said, “I Am the Truth,” was he telling us something about ourselves? Is Tolle right when he says we need to stop looking for truth outside of ourselves?

The quote Tolle uses is from the Gospel of John. Interestingly, this was not the only time Jesus is quoted in John’s gospel as saying “I Am.” Most biblical scholars agree that John is doing more than simply trying to write an historical account of Jesus life or a short biography. Actually, John himself tells us the point of the book – “this is written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (20:31).

So the book is written with the objective of helping people come to the understanding that Jesus is the Messiah and then placing their trust in Him. It was written with the intention of pointing people to Jesus Christ. Because John had this specific purpose in mind he organizes the book around stories and sayings from the life of Christ that fit his purpose. That doesn’t mean he made things up, or changed things to fit his purpose. It simply means that he made editorial decisions about what to leave in and what to leave out.

One of the organizing thoughts John used in his gospel was this idea of Jesus as the “I Am.” The quote that Tolle used is not the only I Am statement of Jesus in John’s gospel. “I Am” is a uniquely Johannine feature. Ego eimi shows up numerous times:

• Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.” (6:35)
• Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” (8:12)
• Then Jesus said to them again, “most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before me are theives and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved..” (10:7-9)
• “I am the good shepherd…” (10:14)
• “I am the true vine…” (15:1)

I left out 14:6, which is what Tolle quotes. What did Jesus mean by his use of “I Am?” Jesus helps us answer this question by the way he used these two small words as recored in John 8. There we find Jesus in a heated discussion with a group of Jewish religious leaders. The discussion centered around the identity of Jesus. The catalyst for this debate was Jesus’ statement, quoted above, that He is the light of the world. The discussion went down a path in which these Jewish men defended their position by stating they were Abraham’s descendants and therefore were not in need of the freedom that Jesus offered them. In the midst of this discussion Jesus makes the incredible claim that he and Abraham knew each other. The Jews responded with disdain for the idea that Jesus, being less than 50 years old could have known Abraham.

Well, that is when Jesus speaks the most astounding words a human could speak. Words, which if untrue, condemn him as a blasphemer, or at best a crazy man. These were some of the most shocking words that could have been spoken by Jesus. This short sentence was so horrifying to those who heard them, they immediately preceded to try and have him stoned to death.

What did Jesus say that provoked such horror, shock and revulsion? He said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was I AM.”

This statement not only helps us understand the importance of the other “I Am” statements of Jesus, they help us see Jesus own understanding of himself.

So what was it about those two tiny words that provoked such an angry reaction? Those two words were the words which were given to Moses as being the name of God. In the Hebrew the words are akin to the name Jehovah, or Yahweh. When Moses was told by God to return to Egypt and be an instrument of deliverance, Moses asked God what he should say when he was asked who sent him. The Lord’s answer was tell them “I Am” sent you. God said “I Am that I Am.”

This name, unlike some of the other names of God found in the Old Testament, sets God apart as the one and only self-existent Being. He is that which men, nor angels, nor any other created being could be – the self-existent and self-dependent God. This was the name of God any Jew feared to utter or even write.

Yet these were the words that fell from the lips of Jesus. “Before Abraham was, I Am.” Notice what Jesus did not say. He did not say, “before Abraham was, I was.” That would be a better grammatical construction, but it would hide what Jesus was saying about himself. Abraham, a mere mortal man, “was.” He had a beginning and and ending. But Christ says of himself “I Am.” He himself is the eternal, self-existent, self-dependent Yahweh, Jehovah God who spoke to Moses at the burning bush. The Son of God did not begin his existence in the manger of Bethlehem. He has always been. He is eternal God.

Now, we see why these Jewish religious leaders became so angry.

What I find interesting in Tolle’s book is that he points us always back to ourselves. The truth is in us. We need to find the I Am inside. Quit looking for truth outside of yourself. Yet, the New Testament, the gospels and Jesus do something startlingly different. They point us outside of ourselves to Jesus Christ. Go back and read the I Am statements of Jesus again. Where in there can anyone possibly conceive of the idea that Jesus was in any way suggesting that we seek the “I Am” within?

I wish I could say that Tolle was just ignorant and didn’t realize the deep theological waters he was wading into. But as I read through the book I notice that over and over again Tolle capitalizes “I Am.” Why? Surely it is because he understands the biblical significance of those two words. He understands that those two words are the name of God. To dissolve any doubt about it, Tolle even uses the exact phrase the Lord used when speaking to Moses – “I Am that I Am” (p. 79).

When Jesus applied this name to himself the Jews said he blasphemed God. They were right – if it wasn’t true. If Jesus Christ is not God, then he is a blasphemer. The same thing is true of Eckhart Tolle. It is blasphemy to take the name of the self-existent, self-dependent, eternal God and apply it to yourself. But this is exactly what Tolle does. In doing so he tells us clearly what he believes about the nature of God, human nature, who Jesus Christ is, and how salvation should be defined. None of the things he believes on these subjects is what Jesus believed or taught. Jesus calls us to believe in Him – not in ourselves. He says he himself is the truth – not that we are the truth. Eckhart points you to yourself for salvation. God calls us to look away from ourselves and unto Jesus Christ, the risen Lord.