Even though this book was first published three years ago, Oprah Winfrey recently endorsed “A New Earth” by placing it on her bookclub list and sales have soared, so I thought it should be reviewed as if it were newly published — all the more since it is a book about spirituality.

When it first came out I received a copy as a gift and upon reading it I thought that it sounded like Saint John of the Cross could have written it. Now, upon re-reading “A New Earth,” I have not changed my mind at all. This is a somewhat peculiar conclusion since the author, Eckhart Tolle, has not written it as a work of Christian spirituality, but rather as a book of general (New Age?) spirituality. Usually I am not fond of books on general or New Age spirituality because they are often rather bizarre — often talking about cosmic shifts, or fate-driven jumps in consciousness, or Aztec calendars or the like. Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth,” though, seems to have a lot to offer, and any Carmelite should recognize strong parallels between this book and John of the Cross. Let me explain.

In “The Ascent of Mount Carmel,” which is his first commentary on his poem, “The Dark Night,” John of the Cross begins by describing the processes of the “Dark Night of the Senses” (i.e., the first part of the spiritual journey). First off, the physical senses feed the appetites (i.e., desires) which are initially quite disordered. These appetites need to be examined, one by one, in order to be quieted. “The Dark Night of the Senses” is a systematic examination of the many manifestation of the appetites and the subsequent quieting of these manifestations. John says, “The appetites are leeches, constantly calling, Give more! Give more!” (Ascent 1.10.2) John then contrasts the ill-effects of living out of one’s unexamined and unquieted appetites compared to living free of the ill-effects after they are quieted. And this seems to be exactly the process Eckhart Tolle follows in “A New Earth.”

At first, this parallel may not be so obvious because Eckhart Tolle, living 500 years after John of the Cross, uses different language. For example, instead of using the word ‘appetites,’ Eckhart Tolle uses the word ‘ego’ (coined in this usage by Sigmund Freud) but he describes ‘ego’ exactly as John describes ‘appetites;’ namely, ‘ego’ is an irrational, incessant and demanding part of your life that appears to be serving you but instead merely serves itself. Then just as John spends quite a few chapters telling us how to recognize the various manifestation of the appetites, Eckhart Tolle bizarre, internal and somewhat independent-acting internal ‘entity’ called ‘the Pain Body,’ these chapters would read much easier, if he would simply say that we have internal, self-destructive elements to our personality. Despite the strange term, though, these chapters still have a lot to offer about growth in self-awareness.

Secondly, like all New Age folks, Eckhart Tolle cannot resist the urge to talk about collective and cosmic shifts in consciousness. Admittedly, there are collective aspects to consciousness but these are rooted in language and culture, and not in super-cosmic shifts. He spends little time, though, on this so perhaps he is merely pandering here to the New Age folks.

And lastly, I think that Eckhart Tolle does not go far enough. If we follow his program, we will grow in self-understanding and awareness; we will reassess priorities; we will discover inner purpose; we will diminish stress, and live with undue attachments — in a word, awaken. All those things are good things and John of the Cross in “The Ascent of Mount Carmel” mentions all of them, too. John, though, goes one further step and it is a conclusive step. And I am rather surprised that Eckhart Tolle never mentions this most important step at all in “A New Earth” and that step is simply ‘to Love’.

Still, as the movie reviewers do on television, I give this book a strong ‘thumbs up’ — whether you a fan of Oprah or not — because “A New Earth” is very readable and is quite similar to the centuries-old spiritual process (but in modern language) found in John of the Cross. Besides, after Oprah’s endorsement, everybody is talking about it.

To conclude this book review, I recommend as a companion to “A New Earth” what I consider the best contemporary interpretation of John of the Cross, a book initially published in 2005; namely, “The Dark Night of the Soul” by Dr. Gerald May, M.D. If you were to read both these books, I think the parallels between the now-famous Eckhart Tolle and forever-famous Saint John of the Cross would be clearer than what I can say in the limited space here — and Gerald May’s excellent commentary makes that all-important and ultimate last step.