This diverse group of individuals is joined by their commonly voiced insight that humanity is now taking a quantum leap forward in its evolutionary development. This change is accompanied by a shift in world view — the basic picture we carry with us of "the way things are. When considered on a larger scale, they define societies. It should be of little surprise that the world view which is emerging calls into question many of the things Western society holds to be true: MYTH 1 Humanity has reached the pinnacle of its development. Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy, drawing upon comparative religious studies, medical science, anthropology, and sports, has made a provocative case that there are more advanced stages of human development. As a person reaches these advanced levels of spiritual maturity, extraordinary capacities begin to blossom - of love, vitality, personhood, bodily awareness, intuition, perception, communication, and volition.

First step: to recognize they exist. Most people do not. Then, methods can be employed with conscious intention. MYTH 2 We are completely separate from each other, nature, and the Kosmos. This myth of "other-than-me" has been responsible for wars, the rape of the planet, and all forms and expressions of human injustice. After all, who in their right mind would harm another if they experienced that person as part of themselves? Yet the preponderance of evidence suggests that indeed it does. MYTH 3 The physical world is all there is.

Materialistically bound, traditional science assumes that anything that cannot be measured, tested in a laboratory, or probed by the five senses or their technological extensions simply doesn't exist. Its "not real. Spiritual, or what I would call nonphysical, dimensions of reality have been run out of town. This clashes with the "perennial philosophy," that philosophical consensus spanning ages, religions, traditions, and cultures, which describes different but continuous dimensions of reality. These run from the most dense and least conscious - what we'd call "matter" - to the least dense and most conscious, which we'd call spiritual. Interestingly enough, this extended, multidimensional model of reality is suggested by quantum theorists such as Jack Scarfetti who describes superluminal travel.

Other dimensions of reality are used to explain travel that occurs faster than the speed of light - the ultimate of speed limits. Or consider the work of the legendary physicist, David Bohm, with his explicate physical and implicate non-physical multidimensional model of reality. This is no mere theory - the Aspect Experiment in France demonstrated, that two once-connected quantum particles separated by vast distances remained somehow connected. If one particle was changed, the other changed - instantly. So contrary to what those who pledge their allegiance to the traditional paradigm might think, the influential, pioneering individuals I spoke with felt that we have not reached the pinnacle of human development, we are connected, rather than separate, from all of life, and that the full spectrum of consciousness encompasses both physical and a multitude of nonphysical dimensions of reality. At core, this new world view involves seeing yourself, others, and all of life, not through the eyes of our small, earthly self that lives in time and is born in time.

But rather through the eyes of the soul, our Being, the True Self. One by one, people are jumping to this higher orbit. With his book, The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle rightfully takes his place among this special group of world-class teachers. Eckhart s message: the problem of humanity is deeply rooted in the mind itself. Or rather, our misidentification with mind. Our drifting awareness, our tendency to take the path of least resistance by being less than fully awake to the present moment, creates a void. And the time-bound mind, which has been designed to be a useful servant, compensates by proclaiming itself master. Like a butterfly flittering from one flower to another, the mind engages past experiences or, projecting its own made-for-television movie, anticipates what is to come.

Seldom do we find ourselves resting in the oceanic depth of the here and now. For it is here - in the Now - where we find our True Self, which lies behind our physical body, shifting emotions, and chattering mind. The crowning glory of human development rests not in our ability to reason and think, though this is what distinguishes us from animals. Intellect, like instinct, is merely a point along the way. Our ultimate destiny is to re-connect with our essential Being and express from our extraordinary, divine reality in the ordinary physical world, moment by moment. Easy to say, yet rare are those who have attained the further reaches of human development.

Fortunately, there are guides and teachers to help us along the way. As a teacher and guide, Eckhart s formidable power lies not in his adept ability to delight us with entertaining stories, make the abstract concrete, or provide useful technique. Rather, his magic is seated in his personal experience, as one who knows. As a result, there is a power behind his words found only in the most celebrated of spiritual teachers. By living from the depths of this Greater Reality, Eckhart clears an energetic pathway for others to join him.

And what if others do? Surely the world as we know it would change for the better. Values would shift in the flotsam of vanishing fears that have been funneled away through the whirlpool of Being itself. A new civilization would be born. I offer only an analogy: A battery of scientists can get together and tell you about all the scientific proof for the fact that bananas are bitter. But all you have to do is taste one, once, to realize that there is this whole other aspect to bananas. Ultimately, proof lies not in intellectual arguments, but in being touched in some way by the sacred within and without. Eckhart Tolle masterfully opens us to that possibility. Russell E. DiCarlo Author, Towards a New World View: Conversations at the Leading Edge Erie, Pennsylvania U. It is a joy to work with her. I extend my gratitude to Corea Ladner and those wonderful people who have contributed to this book by giving me space, that most precious of gifts - space to write and space to be.

Thank you to Adrienne Bradley in Vancouver, to Margaret Miller in London and Angie Francesco in Glastonbury, England, Richard in Menlo Park and Rennie Frumkin in Sausalito, California. I am also thankful to Shirley Spaxman and Howard Kellough for their early review of the manuscript and helpful feedback as well as to those individuals who were kind enough to review the manuscript at a later stage and provide additional input. Thank you to Rose Dendewich for word-processing the manuscript in her unique cheerful and professional manner. Finally, I would like to express my love and gratitude to my mother and father, without whom this book would not have come into existence, to my spiritual teachers, and to the greatest guru of all: life. Until my thirtieth year, I lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression. It feels now as if I am talking about some past lifetime or somebody else's life. One night not long after my twenty-ninth birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread.

I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than it had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing train - everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it created in me a deep loathing of the world. The most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence. What was the point in contin- uing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live.

Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words "resist nothing," as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.

I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window. I had never heard such a sound before. My eyes were still closed, and I saw the image of a precious diamond. Yes, if a diamond could make a sound, this is what it would be like. I opened my eyes. The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains. Without any thought, I felt, I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize. That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself. Tears came into my eyes. I got up and walked around the room. I recognized the room, and yet I knew that I had never truly seen it before. Everything was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence.

I picked up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and aliveness of it all. That day I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world. For the next five months, I lived in a state of uninterrupted deep peace and bliss. After that, it diminished somewhat in intensity, or perhaps it just seemed to because it became my natural state. I could still function in the world, although I realized that nothing I ever did could possibly add anything to what I already had. I knew, of course, that something profoundly significant had happened to me, but I didn't understand it at all.

It wasn't until several years later, after I had read spiritual texts and spent time with spiritual teachers, that I realized that what everybody was looking for had already happened to me. I understood that the intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind. This withdrawal must have been so complete that this false, suffering self immediately collapsed, just as if a plug had been pulled out of an inflatable toy. Later I also learned to go into that inner timeless and deathless realm that I had originally perceived as a void and remain fully conscious. I dwelt in states of such indescribable bliss and sacredness that even the original experience I just described pales in comparison.

A time came when, for a while, I was left with nothing on the physical plane. I had no relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity. I spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most intense joy. But even the most beautiful experiences come and go. More fundamental, perhaps, than any experience is the undercurrent of peace that has never left me since then. Sometimes it is very strong, almost palpable, and others can feel it too. At other times, it is somewhere in the background, like a distant melody. Later, people would occasionally come up to me and say. Can you give it to me, or show me how to get it? You just can't feel it because your mind is making too much noise. Before I knew it, I had an external identity again. I had become a spiritual teacher. THE TRUTH THAT IS WITHIN YOU This book represents the essence of my work, as far as it can be conveyed in words, with individuals and small groups of spiritual seekers during the past ten years, in Europe and in North America.

In deep love and appreciation, I would like to thank those exceptional people for their courage, their willingness to embrace inner change, their challenging questions, and their readiness to listen. This book would not have come into existence without them. They belong to what is as yet a small but fortunately growing minority of spiritual pioneers: people who are reaching a point where they become capable of breaking out of inherited collective mind-patterns that have kept humans in bondage to suffering for eons. I trust that this book will find its way to those who are ready for such radical inner transformation and so act as a catalyst for it. I also hope that it will reach many others who will find its content worthy of consideration, although they may not be ready to fully live or practice it. It is possible that at a later time, the seed that was sown when reading this book will merge with the seed of enlightenment that each human being carries within, and suddenly that seed will sprout and come alive within them.

The book in its present form originated, often spontaneously, in response to questions asked by individuals in seminars, meditation classes and private counseling sessions, and so I have kept the question-and-answer format. I learned and received as much in those classes and sessions as the questioners. Some of the questions and answers I wrote down almost verbatim. Others are generic, which is to say I combined certain types of questions that were frequently asked into one, and extracted the essence from different answers to form one generic answer. Sometimes, in the process of writing, an entirely new answer came that was more profound or insightful provide further clarification of certain points. You will find that from the first to the last page, the dialogues continuously alternate between two different levels. On one level, I draw your attention to what is false in you. I speak of the nature of human unconsciousness and dysfunction as well as its most common behavioral manifestations, from conflict in relationships to warfare between tribes or nations.

On this level, I also show you how not to make that which is false in you into a self and into a personal problem, for that is how the false perpetuates itself. On another level, I speak of a profound transformation of human consciousness - not as a distant future possibility, but available now - no matter who or where you are. You are shown how to free yourself from enslavement to the mind, enter into this enlightened state of consciousness and sustain it in everyday life. On this level of the book, the words are not always concerned with information, but often designed to draw you into this new consciousness as you read. Again and again, I endeavor to take you with me into that timeless state of intense conscious presence in the Now, so as to give you a taste of enlightenment. Until you are able to experience what I speak of, you may find those passages somewhat repetitive.

As soon as you do, however, I believe you will realize that they contain a great deal of spiritual power, and they may become for you the most rewarding parts of the book. Moreover, since every person carries the seed of enlightenment within, I often address myself to the knower in you who dwells behind the thinker, the deeper self that immediately recognizes spiritual truth, resonates with it, and gains strength from it. The pause symbol § after certain passages is a suggestion that you may want to stop reading for a moment, become still, and feel and experience the truth of what has just been said. There may be other places in the text where you will do this naturally and spontaneously. As you begin reading the book, the meaning of certain words, such as "Being" or "presence," may not be entirely clear to you at first.

Just read on. Questions or objections may occasionally come into your mind as you read. They will probably be answered later in the book, or they may turn out to be irrelevant as you go more deeply into the teaching - and into yourself. Don't read with the mind only. Watch out for any "feeling-response" as you read and a sense of recognition from deep within. I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within you don't know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten. Living knowledge, ancient and yet ever new, is then activated and released from within every cell of your body. The mind always wants to categorize and compare, but this book will work better for you if you do not attempt to compare its terminology with that of other teachings; otherwise, you will probably become confused.

I use words such as "mind," "happiness," and "consciousness" in ways that do not necessarily correlate with other teachings. Don't get attached to any words. They are only stepping stones, to be left behind as quickly as possible. When I occasionally quote the words of Jesus or the Buddha, from A Course in Miracles or from other teachings, I do so not in order to compare, but to draw your attention to the fact that in essence there is and always has been only one spiritual teaching, although it comes in many forms. Some of these forms, such as the ancient religions, have become so overlaid with extraneous matter that their spiritual essence has become almost completely obscured by it.

To a large extent, therefore, their deeper meaning is no longer recognized and their transformative power lost. When I quote from the ancient religions or other teachings, it is to reveal their deeper meaning and thereby restore their transformative power - particularly for those readers who are followers of these religions or teachings. I say to them: there is no need to go elsewhere for the truth. Mostly, however, I have endeavored to use terminology that is as neutral as possible in order to reach a wide range of people. This book can be seen as a restatement for our time of that one timeless spiritual teaching, the essence of all religions.

It is not derived from external sources, but from the one true Source within, so it contains no theory or speculation. I speak from inner experience, and if at times I speak forcefully, it is to cut through heavy layers of mental resistance and to reach that place within you where you already know, just as I know, and where the truth is recognized when it is heard. There is then a feeling of exaltation and heightened aliveness, as something within you says: "Yes. I know this is true. A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. Then he asked: "What's that you are sitting on? I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember. There's nothing in there. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold. I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer inside yourself.

Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth. They are looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love, while they have a treasure within that not only includes all those things but is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer. The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form. The inability to feel this connectedness gives rise to the illusion of separation, from yourself and from the world around you.

You then perceive yourself, consciously or unconsciously, as an isolated fragment. Fear arises, and conflict within and without becomes the norm. I love the Buddha's simple definition of enlightenment as "the end of suffering. Of course, as a definition, it is incomplete. It only tells you what enlightenment is not: no suffering. But what's left when there is no more suffering? The Buddha is silent on that, and his silence implies that you'll have to find out for yourself. He uses a negative definition so that the mind cannot make it into something to believe in or into a superhuman accomplishment, a goal that is impossible for you to attain. You used the word Being.

Can you explain what you mean by that? Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be under- stood mentally. To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of "feeling- realization" is enlightenment. If you are, then why don't you say it? The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly. By misuse, I mean that people who have never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great con- viction, as if they knew what they are talking about.

Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as "My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false," or Nietzsche's famous statement "God is dead. The moment the word is uttered, a mental image is created, no longer, perhaps, of an old man with a white beard, but still a mental representation of someone or something outside you, and, yes, almost inevitably a male someone or something. Neither God nor Being nor any other word can define or explain the ineffable reality behind the word, so the only important question is whether the word is a help or a hindrance in enabling you to experience That toward which it points.

Does it point beyond itself to that transcendental reality, or does it lend itself too easily to becoming no more than an idea in your head that you believe in, a mental idol? The word Being explains nothing, but nor does God. Being, however, has the advantage that it is an open concept. It does not reduce the infinite invisible to a finite entity. It is impossible to form a mental image of it. Nobody can claim exclusive possession of Being. It is your very essence, and it is immediately accessible to you as the feeling of your own presence, the realization I am that is prior to I am this or I am that.

So it is only a small step from the word Being to the experience of Being. Identification with your mind, which causes thought to become compulsive. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. It also creates a false mind-made self that casts a shadow of fear and suffering. We will look at all that in more detail later. The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever- increasing fragmentation of the mind.

Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being "at one" and therefore at peace. At one with life in its manifested aspect, the world, as well as with your deepest self and life unmanifested - at one with Being. Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incredible liberation this is! Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate "other. By "forget," I mean that you can no longer feel this oneness as self-evident reality.

You may believe it to be true, but you no longer know it to be true. A belief may be comforting. Only through your own experience, however, does it become liberating. Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance. For example, there is nothing wrong with cells dividing and multiplying in the body, but when this process continues in disregard of the total organism, cells proliferate and we have disease. The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly - you usually don't use it at all.

It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over. I don't quite agree. It is true that I do a lot of aimless thinking, like most people, but I can still choose to use my mind to get and accomplish things, and I do that all the time. Just because you can solve a crossword puzzle or build an atom bomb doesn't mean that you use your mind. Just as dogs love to chew bones, the mind loves to get its teeth into problems. That's why it does crossword puzzles and builds atom bombs. You have, no inter- est in either. Let me ask you this: can you be free of your mind whenever you want to? Have you found the "off" button? You mean stop thinking altogether? No, I can't, except maybe for a moment or two. Then the mind is using you. You are unconsciously identified with it, so you don't even know that you are its slave.

The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity - the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace - arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken. When someone goes to the doctor and says, "I hear a voice in my head," he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don't realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues.

You have probably come across "mad" people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that's not much different from what you and all other "normal" people do, except that you don't do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn't necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or "mental movies.

This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person's own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease. The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by "watching the thinker," which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.

When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You'll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence - your deeper self - behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking. When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream - a gap of "no-mind. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being, which is usually obscured by the mind.

With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being. It is not a trancelike state. Not at all. There is no loss of consciousness here. The opposite is the case. If the price of peace were a lowering of your consciousness, and the price of stillness a lack of vitality and alertness, then they would not be worth having. In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the mind-identified state. You are fully present. It also raises the vibrational frequency of the energy field that gives life to the physical body. As you go more deeply into this realm of no-mind, as it is sometimes called in the East, you realize the state of pure consciousness.

In that state, you feel your own presence with such intensity and such joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body, as well as the whole external world become relatively insignificant in comparison to it. And yet this is not a selfish but a selfless state. It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as "your self. What I am trying to convey here may sound paradoxical or even contradictory, but there is no other way that I can express it. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking.

This is the essence of meditation. In your everyday life, you can practice this by taking any routine activity that normally is only a means to an end and giving it your fullest attention, so that it becomes an end in itself. For example, every time you walk up and down the stairs in your house or place of work, pay close attention to every step, every movement, even your breathing. Be totally present. Or when you wash your hands, pay attention to all the sense perceptions associated with the activity the sound and feel of the water, the movement of your hands, the scent of the soap, and so on. Or when you get into your car, after you close the door, pause for a few seconds and observe the flow of your breath.

Become aware of a silent but powerful sense of presence. There is one certain criterion by which you can measure your success in this practice: the degree of peace that you feel within. Every time you create a gap in the -stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it. Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 8o to go percent of most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy. This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction.

What characterizes an addiction? Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain. Why should we be addicted to thinking? Because you are identified with it, which means that you derive your sense of self from the content and activity of your mind. Because you believe that you would cease to be if you stopped thinking. As you grow up, you form a mental image of who you are, based on your personal and cultural conditioning. We may call this phantom self the ego. It consists of mind activity and can only be kept going through constant thinking.

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The world is much wealthier, healthier, and safer. There are two superpowers China and the USA , but they are not nearly as antagonistic to each other as the USSR and the USA. Your education and knowledge make you wonder about things your predecessors never did. After outlining the ideas of the Enlightenment in the first part and demonstrating that they actually work in the second, Pinker wraps up his defense of the Enlightenment in the short, concluding third part of his book. Here he tries to defend science against the attacks of all those Luddites who blame everything from eugenics through racism to Nazism on the ideals of the Enlightenment. However, Pinker confidently shows that the idea of the Aryan race was devised by a fiction writer damn you, Arthur de Gobineau, damn you to hell!

And he thinks that you are an outlier, a statistical mistake. And just as they will never vote for autocratic, religious, tyrannical governments which oppress human freedom and believe in things eighth-graders know to be wrong nowadays. The Enlightenment Believed in Reason, Science, and Humanism 2. The World Is Getting Better 3. Counter-Enlighteners Are Outliers. Before the second half of the 18 th century, the world was much bleaker than the world of today. There were no facts, and people in positions of power could use their influence to fabricate reality. However, then a group of scientific-minded philosophers decided that we must restructure our world; and so, they did, rebuilding it upon the foundations of reason, science, and humanism.

The same holds true with regard to safety and democracy, to equal rights and education, and even with regard to happiness. Speaking of moaning, there are quite a few important people nowadays who believe in unscientific things anti-vaxxers, racists, hardcore environmentalists, alt-rightists, far leftists, religious people, etc. And even though it may seem that nationalism and racism are on the rise, they are not; in a few years, Trump, Erdogan, Putin, Orban, Le Pen — they shall all pass, and the world will go on marching forward. Like this summary? Learn more and more, in the speed that the world demands. Start learning at the speed of today's world. Wishlist Categories Book lists Affiliates Program Help About Terms of Use Join 12min Team. Website language:. What if you could read 3 books per day?

Start growing! Boost your life and career with the best book summaries. Home » Enlightenment Now PDF Summary. Enlightenment Now. The book all believers in reason and readers tired of all this negativity around need to read, Enlightenment Now is a thoroughly researched vision of human progress, and, in case you need an injection of optimism, the very next book on your reading list. Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American award-winning linguist, cognitive psychologist and a renowned popularizer of science. He is widely considered one of the most influential intellectuals in the world today. Pinker earned his reputation as the author of eight language-related Chomsky-inspired books, the most well-known among these being The Language Instinct , first published in During the last decade, however, he has reached a much wider audience through three popular science books The Blank Slate , The Better Angels of Our Nature , and this one, Enlightenment Now in which he argues that our future is not that bleak and that, far from being a failed species, humans are actually awesome.

A worthy follow-up to The Better Angels of Our Nature , Enlightenment Now is a research-based, graph-filled, quotes-adorned apology of Enlightenment values i. And there are so many reasons to live. As a sentient being, you have the potential to flourish. You can refine your faculty of reason itself by learning and debating. You can seek explanations of the natural world through science, and insight into the human condition through the arts and humanities. You can make the most of your capacity for pleasure and satisfaction, which allowed your ancestors to thrive and thereby allowed you to exist. You can appreciate the beauty and richness of the natural and cultural world. As the heir to billions of years of life perpetuating itself, you can perpetuate life in turn. You have been endowed with a sense of sympathy—the ability to like, love, respect, help, and show kindness—and you can enjoy the gift of mutual benevolence with friends, family, and colleagues.

History shows that when we sympathize with others and apply our ingenuity to improving the human condition, we can make progress in doing so, and you can help to continue that progress. When properly appreciated… the ideals of the Enlightenment are in fact stirring, inspiring, noble—a reason to live. Because, you see, though they have prehistory, reason, science, and humanism are actually pretty new additions to the wide-ranging spectrum of human achievements. Well, first of all, because, whether we wanted or not, we are all necessary victims of entropy — the Second Law of Thermodynamic. According to its most famous formulation, the entropy of an isolated system never decreases, i. Well, many people nowadays aka, the Counter-Enlightenments believe that humanity is not an exception. Things go from bad to worse day in day out, and one day we too should experience the inevitable end and become a monotonous grey equilibrium of failures.

Well, for one, because we are not an isolated, closed system: ever since the Enlightenment, we are an outrageously huge, smart, and interconnected organism justly called Humanity. Of course, many people say that Pinker and people who are optimistic about this stuff are just plain wrong. After all, stats are correct only until subverted by the outliers or the black swans , i. Pinker acknowledges that the impact of the highly unpredictable should not be waved away, but, still, he demonstrates that, these spikes of bad things aside colonialism, World Wars, Chernobyl, etc. And all those right-wing nationalists or leftist rebels-without-causes would do much better for their own wellbeing and the wellbeing of everybody if they just listen to what reason and the data has to say.

Of course — and this goes to all the anti-vaxxers out there! John Snow was the first epidemiologist, the man who started it all; Karl Landsteiner discovered blood groups; Ignaz Semmelweis and Joseph Lister first introduced equipment- and hand-sterilization into medical practice; and Jonas Salk — well, he discovered the vaccine against polio. A century and a half ago, Swedish children were starving to death during the winters; nowadays, it is basically impossible for someone living in Sweden to die. Just two centuries ago, about nine-tenths of the world were living in extreme poverty, and nowadays, countries such as Vietnam, Rwanda and El Salvador to say nothing of the G8 or economic miracles such as South Korea or Singapore are doubling their income ever two decades!

The rich are indeed getting richer; but and this should be shouted out loud as well so are the poor. However, according to some of our most renowned economists, inequality should level itself out in the long run. The first name that Pinker throws in the discussion is that of Simon Kuznets, whose hypothetic U-shaped curve argued that as money multiply, inequality rises, but, in time, market forces decrease it. Speaking of a domain where humanity can fail its host, the Earth — here is how things stand with regard to our relation to the environment:. It seems plainly wrong, at a day and age when we hear about violent deaths on a daily basis, to argue that the Earth is now safer and more peaceful than ever. More people are nowadays committing suicide than dying in a terrorist attack , and there are far fewer wars and homicides the United States being, unfortunately, the only highly developed country where the latter are a problem.

Also, the world is a far safer place to live in today than fifty and hundred years ago — in just about any category: work-related deaths, plane crashes, vehicle accidents, drownings, fires — and even falls! Some may say that democracy is overrated, but it is not: it is the best idea the enlightened minds of the 18 th century devised as a way to fight against autocracy and leadership breakdowns. Think of it this way — as bad as it is, democratic nations almost never experience bloody revolutions because you can always vote for another Party four years later. And as history has proven, knowledge and education evolve far better in democratic countries, and, during the past century or so, this has all but annihilated sexism and racism. True, they are still there, but bear this in mind: with the exception of Vatican, women can vote everywhere nowadays, something which was unimaginable just a hundred years ago even in the most developed societies!

The days when nuclear wars seemed possible are long gone. The world is much wealthier, healthier, and safer. There are two superpowers China and the USA , but they are not nearly as antagonistic to each other as the USSR and the USA. Your education and knowledge make you wonder about things your predecessors never did. After outlining the ideas of the Enlightenment in the first part and demonstrating that they actually work in the second, Pinker wraps up his defense of the Enlightenment in the short, concluding third part of his book.

Here he tries to defend science against the attacks of all those Luddites who blame everything from eugenics through racism to Nazism on the ideals of the Enlightenment. However, Pinker confidently shows that the idea of the Aryan race was devised by a fiction writer damn you, Arthur de Gobineau, damn you to hell! And he thinks that you are an outlier, a statistical mistake. And just as they will never vote for autocratic, religious, tyrannical governments which oppress human freedom and believe in things eighth-graders know to be wrong nowadays. The Enlightenment Believed in Reason, Science, and Humanism 2. The World Is Getting Better 3. Counter-Enlighteners Are Outliers. Before the second half of the 18 th century, the world was much bleaker than the world of today. There were no facts, and people in positions of power could use their influence to fabricate reality. However, then a group of scientific-minded philosophers decided that we must restructure our world; and so, they did, rebuilding it upon the foundations of reason, science, and humanism.

The same holds true with regard to safety and democracy, to equal rights and education, and even with regard to happiness. Speaking of moaning, there are quite a few important people nowadays who believe in unscientific things anti-vaxxers, racists, hardcore environmentalists, alt-rightists, far leftists, religious people, etc. And even though it may seem that nationalism and racism are on the rise, they are not; in a few years, Trump, Erdogan, Putin, Orban, Le Pen — they shall all pass, and the world will go on marching forward. Like this summary? Learn more and more, in the speed that the world demands. Start learning at the speed of today's world. Wishlist Categories Book lists Affiliates Program Help About Terms of Use Join 12min Team.

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Observe the compulsion to talk or think about it. Released on It is designed to take your attention deeply into the Now. Instead of quoting the Buddha, be the Buddha, be "the awakened one," which is what the word buddha means. Listen to the sounds; don't judge them.

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