Eckhart Tolle and romantic relationships

Eckart Tolle writes about how to become at peace and find joy. I think he has helped many people but I quibble with him on his views on relationships, which are also popular among other New Age thinkers.  Here is a quote from The Power of Now:

"As the egoic mode of consciousness and all the social, political, and economic structures that it created enter the final stage of collapse, the relationships between men and women reflect the deep state of crisis in which humanity now finds itself. As humans have become increasingly identified with their mind, most relationships are not rooted in Being and so turn into a source of pain and become dominated by problems and conflict.

Millions are now living alone or as single parents, unable to establish an intimate relationship or unwilling to repeat the insane drama of past relationships. Others go from one relationship to another, from one pleasure-and-pain cycle to another, in search of the elusive goal of fulfillment through union with the opposite energy polarity. Still others compromise and continue to be together in a dysfunctional relationship in which negativity prevails, for the sake of the children or security, through force of habit, fear of being alone, or some other mutually "beneficial" arrangement, or even through the unconscious addiction to the excitement of emotional drama and pain." 

The irony here is that ET blames this dismal state of relationships on the "egoic mode of consciousness", whereas what is new here is the belief in individualism and the New Age philosophy that extols individualism. It's become a sin to look out and comfort/soothe one's partner. It's lumped under caretaking, loose boundaries and codependence. People used to be able to take care of each other AND themselves. Now it's all about "staying in one's lane", which not surprisingly leads to bad relationships.

On the one hand, mystics throughout the ages have had a goal to get beyond the ego/self/personality/individual (which is seen as an illusion, or sometimes as the devil, the source of all suffering), and find a larger Self/Presence/internal God with which to merge. On the other hand humans have a need which starts at infancy and develops further into adulthood, to be authentic to one's self and establish boundaries, i.e. to know one's particular needs and wants and assert them with other people. The human potential movement that started in the sixties extolled the virtues of the self and authenticity, but it  was more nuanced, it recognized other needs besides authenticity and transcendence, as exemplified by Maslow's pyramid. 

The global economy has capitalized on this need for authenticity in order to create more individual consumers and to eliminate competition from other ways that people can satisfy their needs, like families, tribes, and villages. These human organizations satisfy intermediate needs between these two opposing goals/needs of authenticity and communion with the divine. They satisfy the need for intimacy, for collaboration, for belonging to something larger than oneself.

The New Age movement has seemingly tossed out the intermediate needs and just focused on the two extremes of self and Self (what some have called Spiritual Bypass). It's ironic because mystics abhor the self, and capitalists think the Self is fictional (unless it can make them money). 

A new perspective is emerging in biological and social science (see DS Wilson's Atlas Hugged), and in relationship psychology and neuroscience (see Stan Tatkin's Wired fo Love, and Richard Schwartz's Internal Family Systems). For each level of emergent human organization, different qualities are necessary. An individual human has to integrate all her psychological parts to function well. For romantic relationships, individuals have to care about the relationship, not just about themselves and the other, or themselves and some Presence. Sure it's important for each individual to know themselves well and not to project blame onto their partner or use their partner's trauma as a coverup for dealing with their own trauma, but that's not enough. They also have to study and know their partner. They have to put a boundary around the relationship. There has to be a way to resolve differences through rational conversation and a team attitude, not just each person for themselves and accepting WHAT IS, or being taken over by limbic parts of the brain when things get strained. Accepting WHAT IS (or being in the Now, to use Eckhart Tolle's words) works for hermits, or in a romantic relationship as long as both partners' needs are met with what the other person is saying or doing, but as soon as it's not working for one of them, the other needs to be willing to talk about ways of changing course, even if it's still working for them. Otherwise "accepting WHAT IS" is a double standard: You have to accept WHAT IS even if it is not meeting your needs, but I will get upset or dump you if WHAT IS that you are saying or doing doesn't work for me.

Eckart Tolle and a few others say that one should not need intimate relationships when one is enlightened, because then one is whole. In this view, intimate relationships are only a tool for enlightenment for people who are not yet enlightened. And yet all these same people are not able to exist without some intimate relationship, whether it is to their children, mates or pets. If that's the case, then it's not merely a tool but a necessity. The underlying psychological truth that they are getting at is that neediness is not as attractive as confidence and inner peace. There are ways to achieve more of these without a romantic relationship, yet it would be hypocritical to pretend that the needs for intimacy, sex, and collaboration are cancelled by yoga and meditation.

Eckart Tolle and a few others have made intimate relationships instrumental. A tool for the individual ego to obtain enlightenment (the Self does not need tools). Gone is love of another individual for its own sake--I only love you because you are useful to me. In the romantic view, there is a recognition that what we love about each other is unique, something that has to do with the soul of the other and we love them regardless of what they can do for us. The soul is capable of other lovable qualities besides transcendence and authenticity, such as courage, wisdom, kindness, critical thinking; but ET reduces everything to transcendence, and other simplistic New Agers reduce it all to transcendence and authenticity.There is no concept of soul in Eckhart Tolle's philosophy (in The Power of Now, the word "soul" appears only once in a quote attributed to Jesus). There is only ego/self/personality/individual and Source/Self/Presence/God. The mystical view has been that Source is like an ocean and egos are like waves, or Source is like the Sun, and egos are like windows for the sun's light to shine through, both metaphors are one way causation from Source to ego, with no room for emergence, where the causality goes both ways. A soul is like a window which also has its own source of light, not just a passive instrument for the sun's light. Or like a wave which can influence the state of the lake it is happening in, interacting with the air, the ground, and other waves. With a soul, there is the possibility that I love your soul for its own unique sake, regardless of its usefulness to filling my needs. Neither ego nor Presence offer that possibility. Ego is by definition unlovable, whereas Source is lovable independent of someone's ego/personality. A soul can be nuanced, it can have qualities that are lovable (courage, compassion, humility, humor, curiosity, freedom, etc), as well as qualities that are not lovable (greed, cowardice, hypocrisy, fear, etc), as opposed to ego which is all bad in the mystical view, and all good in the capitalist view. There is also a possibility that two souls recognize a connection to each other even without being aware of the qualities in each other that they love, perhaps from having met previous to this life.

Eckhart Tolle might be OK with instrumentality (aka transactional relationship), but not with a responsibility to fill needs for one's romantic partner. In order to fill a partner's needs one must not only be open to requests from ones's partner, but one must study them so one can even anticipate their needs. For all this we need to use all of our faculties including our minds. He feels like partners should fill their own needs by communing with Presence directly, and have no needs except to commune with Presence. The repulsion that some in the New Age movement feel about meeting a partner's needs might be a flash back to patriarchal wifely duty to satisfy the husbands sexual needs. There is a difference between being able to have sex on demand, regardless of one's state of arousal, vs being able to have intimate conversations and make eye contact, or hug one's partner. The former is largely out of conscious control (it is happening in the limbic part of the brain), whereas the latter involves conscious parts of the brain.

"If you stop investing it with "selfness," the mind loses its compulsive quality, which basically is the compulsion to judge, and so to resist what is, which creates conflict, drama, and new pain. In fact, the moment that judgment stops through acceptance of what is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace. First you stop judging yourself; then you stop judging your partner. The greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner as he or she is, without needing to judge or change them in any way. That immediately takes you beyond ego. All mind games and all addictive clinging are then over. There are no victims and no perpetrators anymore, no accuser and accused. This is also the end of all codependency, of being drawn into somebody else's unconscious pattern and thereby enabling it to continue. You will then either separate - in love - or move ever more deeply into the Now together - into Being. Can it be that simple? Yes, it is that simple."

No it isn't. While this expresses a beautiful idea when taken with moderation, it is not a useful thing never to judge. One can judge with love and thereby help one's partner meet their needs better or improve their soul. One needs to be able to disagree with one's partner at times in order to figure things out together better than could be figured out alone. Rejecting judgment is rejecting the mind. Better to combine the mind with the heart, judgement with love. ET is correct that judgement without love or self knowledge is harmful to a relationship.

"As you may have noticed, they (relationships) are not here to make you happy or fulfilled. If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world"

Yes, a relationship is not just about happiness, but if we are wired for love after evolving in couple relationships and families and tribes for millions of years, then happiness is surely a part of it if it is done with love AND consciousness. It is not just about our happiness, but our partner's as well. 

"You cannot love your partner one moment and attack him or her the next." Actually you can as Stan Tatkin shows in Wired for Love. There are parts of the brain that have to do with survival and others that have to do with generosity, nurturing, respect, etc. Sexual love is however in the same part of the brain mostly as the survival parts (the amygdala). Other kinds of love can be expressed in other parts of the brain or even in the heart or vagus nerve.

"Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain." Partially, but not only. Addiction can also result from an inability to fill a basic need and a substitution of something that mimics the way to satisfy the need, with the same production of dopamine and other pleasure hormones, but only works for a short time and has a negative long term effect. It is also good to face pain and not try to distract oneself from it because it can help us improve our souls, to be more compassionate, more patient, more insightful. 

"Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the "love" of ego."

Not if we can love souls instead of egos or vessels for Presence. Romantic love is selective, though for some people it does not have to be exclusive.

In the New Agey philosophy the causation goes: I love you because you can help me be in touch with Presence.

In the older spiritual philosophies, the causation goes like: I love your soul because of its qualities or because I knew it before this life. I want to meet your intimacy and collaboration needs as a result, and you might want to meet mine. Together we can create a relationship which will be a source of joy and safety for others, such as our children, our tribe and our village. The life  of an organism is about lack seeking wholeness outside of itself (see Incomplete Nature, by Simon Deacon). The New Agers have inverted this for seeking wholeness within. And yet they are only able to exist due to other people and nature supporting them from without both materially and emotionally.

"True salvation is a state of freedom - from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and insufficiency and therefore from all wanting, needing, grasping, and clinging."

In other words, death, or dementia. Because life can sometimes be free from fear and suffering, but not always. And life is based on lack and insufficiency as well as fullness and abundance. Our basic needs can be filled by the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, but eventually we need a refill and sometimes it takes doing stuff we don't like in order to obtain food and water (so not total freedom). With air it is pretty quick. With water we can last longer before a refill, and with food even longer. Yet none of these things are cause for shame or condemnation, and neither are our basic need for intimate relationships, and of belonging to a tribe and land.

Love, courage and wisdom, not just peace and bliss. Ramana Maharshi's "who are you?" meditation is great as an exercise, not as a lifestyle. Neither RM, nor ET are qualified to teach us about how to be human. They have not birthed or raised children, had lifelong romantic relationships, been traumatized in war, famine, or child abuse and overcome these, composed inspiring music, poetry or literature, discovered mathematical structures or scientific mysteries, planted and harvested food.