Oprah's New Earth Webcast

The following transcripts are courtesy of John H.These links will be alive for just a few more days. You may view Oprah answering questions from her viewers.For research articles on Oprah and Eckhart Tolle, click here.
2008.03.03 Oprah-New Earth - God Is Jealous of Me
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Transcript Clip 1: God Is Jealous of Me
KELLY (ILLINOIS): I had a Catholic upbringing, I married a Catholic, and we're raising our children this way. In reading books such as Tolle's, I've really, it's really opened my eyes up to a new way of thinking; a new form of spirituality that doesn't always align with the teachings of Christianity. So my question is to you, Oprah, how have you reconciled these spiritual teachings with your Christian beliefs?
OPRAH WINFREY: Oh, the question's to me. I was resting knowing it was going to about - I've reconciled it because I was able to open my mind about the absolute indescribable hugeness of that which we call "God." I took God out of the box because I grew up in the Baptist church and there were, you know, rules and, you know, belief systems and doctrine. And I happened to be sitting in church in my late 20's and I was going to this church where you had to get there at 8:00 in the morning or you couldn't get a seat. And a very charismatic minister, and everybody was just, you know, into the sermon. And this great minister was preaching about how great God was and how omniscient and omnipresent, and God is everything. And then he said, and the lord thy god is a jealous god. And I was, you know, caught up in the rapture of that moment until he said "jealous." And something struck me. And I was like, I think about 27 or 28. I was thinking God is all, God is omnipresent, God is - and God's also jealous? God is jealous of me? And something about that didn't feel right in my spirit because I believe that god is love and that god is in all things. And so that's when the search for something more than doctrine started to stir within me. And I love this quote that Eckhart has, this is one of my favorite quotes in chapter one where he says, "Man made god in his own image, the eternal, the infinite, and unnamable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as my god or our god." Now I think that's very eloquently put by Eckhart Tolle in chapter one. But that is exactly what I was feeling when I was, you know, sitting in church that Sunday listening to the preacher. And you know, it's been a journey to get to the place where I understand, as I said on the pre-show here, that what I believe is that Jesus came to show us Christ consciousness. That Jesus came to show us the way of the heart and that what Jesus was saying that to show us the higher consciousness that we're all talking about here. Jesus came to say, "Look I'm going to live in the body, in the human body and I'm going to show you how it's done." These are some principles and some laws that you can use to live by to know that way. And when I started to recognize that, that Jesus didn't come in my belief, even as a Christian, I don't believe that Jesus came to start Christianity. So that was also very helpful to me. And as I said earlier in the preshow here, there is a wonderful book called, "Discover the Power Within You" by Eric Butterworth, which helped me reconcile the two. So that might be really good for those of you who are Christian and trying to balance the two.
2008.03.03 Oprah-New Earth - Not the Only Way
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Transcript Clip 2: Jesus Is Not the Only Way
ECKHART TOLLE: Well, religion can be an open doorway into spirituality and religion can be a closed door. It prevents you from going deeper. So that I love reading the New Testament and I also read the old Testament. Sometimes there's some incredible jewels in there. And when I went through this inner transformation and for the first time accidentally I picked up a copy of the New Testament at my mother's place. And I started reading and I immediately recognized the deep truths that is there and I realized the truth that is deeper, that is expressed in what Jesus said is much deeper than what you, how the church interprets it. There's a depth to it. And it reflects your own depth when you read it. So there's no conflict between this teaching, which is purely spiritual, and any religion. Because if you go deep enough in your religion, then you all get to the same place. It's a question of going deeper so there's no conflict here. The important thing is that religion doesn't become an ideology, so I believe this. And the moment you say "only my belief" or "our belief" is true, and you deny other people's beliefs, then you've adopted an ideology. And then religion becomes a closed door. But potentially religion can also be an open door.
OPRAH WINFREY: Well, let me share this with you too, Kelly. There's another book by a woman named Elizabeth Lesser, it's called, "The Seeker's Guide," where she talks about the new spirituality versus the old. So I just wanted to -- this is on page 51 and 52 of Elizabeth Lesser's book called "The Seeker's Guide." And she talks about old spirituality versus the new spirituality and she says the old was - the old way is the hierarchy has the authority. Church authorities tell you how to worship in church and how to behave outside of church. The new spirituality is that you are your own best authority as you work to know and love yourself, you discover how to live a more spiritual life. The old is God and the path to worship him have already been defined and all you need to do is follow the directions. The new is being able to listen within
for your own definition of spirituality, your deeper longings are under search. And the old says exact here what Eckhart was saying. That there's only one path it's the right way and all other ways are wrong. And the spirituality says that many paths lead to spiritual freedom and peace. You have a rich array of gems from which to draw illumination. The world's religious traditional, mythology, psychology, healing methods, scientific wisdom, your own experience and that you can begin to string a necklace all your own. Then she lists, you know, other old and new. And so it's really a question of what you were saying to us earlier that this material strikes a chord within you. Something in you opens up and wants, you know, feels alive and is awakened to that. And yet there is the ideology that says what to you? What is the conflict for you?
KELLY (ILLINOIS): Just thoughts on the afterlife, things like that. You know, you - in a lot of books such as Tolle's, we get teachings from Buddhism or Hinduism, and those thoughts don't go along with, you know, what I was raised to believe as a Christian. So that's been the biggest thing that I've struggled with, I think, so...
OPRAH WINFREY: Well, I am a Christian who believes that there are certainly many more paths to God other than Christianity.
KELLY (ILLINOIS): All right.
OPRAH WINFREY: I'm a free-thinking Christian who believes that, who believes in my way, but I don't believe that it's the only way, with six billion people here on the planet.
2008.03.03 Oprah-New Earth - Christ Consciousness and Crisis
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Transcript Clip 3: Christ Consciousness
RYAN: I do, I have a question for, actually, either of you, and it relates to the spiritual awakening that you speak of in chapter one. It seems to me that if you look at human
history in the past 100 years and very poignantly in the past ten years, that there has been this intensity and speed at which people are becoming more aware of the Christ
consciousness. Why do you think that's happening now? Why is this happening now?
ECKHART TOLLE: It's happening now because we're reaching a crises point. Very essential things don't happen until there's an absolute need for them to happen. So you can say in the past this awakening has been a luxury and only a few individuals here and there through all the ages were able to be awakened. And they tried to each others, but to a large extent their teachings became misinterpreted. So we are awakening now.
OPRAH WINFREY: That Jesus was a revolutionary who got misinterpreted a lot. Yes. Yes. Yes. We are awakening now because we have to awaken of you humanity is to make it to the evolutionary level, we need to awaken because the egoiic consciousness will become so, it's already been, it already become very distractive. It's become and become destructive. We will destroy ourselves and the planet if we do not step out of the egoiic consciousness; the collective ego.
ECKHART TOLLE If you look at the history of the 20th century that gives you a taste of what it will be if there is no major shift. I wrote in the "Power of Now" that 100 million human beings were killed by other humans during the 20th century through warfare and so on. And I recently read in the history book by a Harvard professor that my figure was much too low. It's as much as 160 to 180 million human beings were murdered through warfare and concentration camps and prison camps, and starvation, manufactured starvation because --China, Russia, and so on. It's unbelievable insanity when you look at that history. And so if there's no shift in consciousness, we will go downhill very quickly because we're already in the process of destroying the planet. But there will also be continuous conflict, collective conflict, and eventually then humanity would collapse.
OPRAH WINFREY: So you think we're at a crisis point now.
ECKHART TOLLE: Crises point, yes.
OPRAH WINFREY: Well Ryan, don't you think so too? I mean when you're with your friends, you know, obviously you're gathered here at Border's tonight because you are interested in this kind of, this way of thinking. But we all talk about it in some form or another of how bad things are. How, you know, the media, everybody complains about the media and the movies. I mean if you just look at the Academy Awards this year and the kinds of movies that were made this year, and it's all the reflection of who we are. And you say in the book how we're the species that will go and watch other people on film be maimed and killed and murdered for our entertainment. Look at the surge that we've had in our technological abilities. Look at you right now. We're Skyping each other. The advancement in our abilities to create new bombs, no ways of killing each other so that in the 21st century, if there isn't a shift, if you had 100, over 100 million people killed in the 20th century, God only knows. And I do mean god only knows
what will happen to us unless we start to change this.
ECKHART TOLLE: Yes. Yes, because technology amplifies the egoiic dysfunction in human beings. So before the dysfunction was the same 2000 years ago but we couldn't do much harm because the technology wasn't there. The very same dysfunction still operates and becomes magnified through science and technology.
OPRAH WINFREY: Does that answer your question, Ryan?
RYAN: It does and I just, it just makes me think of what could we do if we just focused that same energy on the positive and helping other people. And I feel that that's where we're going.
More information:
Oprah Winfrey's Spirituality by Ray Yungen
http://www.lighthousetrails.com/
As in the days of Noah....