When you see how religions get sermonized as spirituality and used by self-righteous fanatics of all stripes, one might wish that someone could speak beyond the framework of a worldview that brought us so much strife and sufferings.
After muddling through Rand and the Objectivists, I think I have found such a teacher; Eckhart Tolle. ‘He thinks many of our religions are poor copies of their original messages. The 'enlightenment' is lost in 'translation.' As Tolle observes, not everyone has to be “dragged, kicking and screaming” into “the Kingdom of heaven” (i.e., mindful presence in day to day life).
Those who commit themselves to cultivating greater presence and mindfulness very often see dividends in terms of greater peace, equanimity, and effectiveness in coping with the stresses of day-to-day life.
Tolle has much to teach. At the same time, there is a new-age-guru feeling to the reception he has gotten in the United States, which can be a turn-off, especially to hard-headed realists. Yet the Rand admirers whom I personally know to be the most committed to their own spiritual growth—by which I mean, are constantly striving to understand their relationship to the rest of the universe, and their role in it, and how to improve it—have been moved deeply upon listening to the first CD of The Power of Now. Tolle’s latest offering: A NEW EARTH: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose is IMHO a life-altering book/CD.’ It sure put it all together for me.
I proposed a while back the theorem that the veracity of a spiritual truth is inversely proportional to the number of paragraphs needed to relate it. Tolle can express such truths in a single clear sentence, as opposed to the 5,000 word Calvinist rants about various "heresies" we see posted here all the time. The difference is telling.