This is a wonderful and very helpful book. Coming from a ACIM vantage point, it takes a little bit to adjust to his terminology, because Tolle uses words in a different way. His Consciousness is ACIM's Spirit and Mind, and ACIM's consciousness (and the thoughts you think you think) is Tolle's "thoughts." Likewise ACIM's "guilt" equates to Tolle's pain body, so in a way it's simply the "wrong mind." His biblical " New Earth" is the Course's " Real World." On and on. So, once you adjust for those variations of terminology, his message is very helpful, though it's different. The way Tolle addresses the "why" is more in line with Advaita Vedanta, and therefore he does not have a clear cause for the dynamics of guilt, as the Course offers in the notion that the world was made as an attack on God, and is a projection from the mind, not a creation of God. But he does a lot to clarify the guilt mechanism in ways that nicely complement the picture, and can help you see things you might not have noticed before.

On the whole the book seems very helpful to me, and certainly has a very insightful way of helping us understand our inner workings better, and moreover point the way out of the labyrinth, not deeper into it, which is more than can be said for a lot of materials that are paraded around as spirituality.

To watch his presentations on Oprah's show is delightful, and documents that there is a huge pent up demand for this type of information. It seems curious that on one hand, because of his Vedanta-alike way of looking at the origin of creation, that he gets caught up in this evolutionary thinking, which can easily be an ego cop out, for then we're waiting for everybody else to change their mind. However, he is also crystal clear that the whole idea of a spiritual journey is a perfect ego stalling tactic, when the only question always is, what choice am I making right now, in this moment?

Within the context of Oprah's network it seems funny that Tolle's presentations are happening at the same time as Marianne Williamson, who gives the Course her own spin and seems focused in a more New Age style on fixing up the world, and not the way out of the labyrinth. So in that context Tolle is more closely in-line with the Course in spirit than her presentations, which purport to represent or explain the Course.