Eckhart Tolle, the New Age guru, who numbers amongst his disciples the wildly influential talk show host, Oprah Winfrey, who, in turn, is herself Barack Obama's most enthusiastic supporter, proclaims that history is at a moment of crisis. According to his theory, if humanity does not collectively achieve a state of "higher consciousness," then the race will soon violently destroy itself and the planet in a final conflagration of "egoic consciousness". It is a little eerie to hear a man who falls so firmly on the left echoing the apocalyptic theories of the religious right, and proposing much the...