Revisiting Eckhart Tolle — 25 Years After 'The Power of Now'

Living from presence rather than living from the ego

I remember Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, before he became a spiritual superstar.

Before Oprah promoted him.

Before most of his best-selling books.

Before the lecture tours, the expensive retreats, and his online marketing machine.

Lately I’ve been wondering: What remains after all this commotion? Twenty-five years after The Power of Now appeared, what — if anything — does Tolle say to me?

Plenty, as it turns out.

The perils of spiritual stardom

Tolle was a relatively new phenomenon when a client of mine recommended The Power of Now to me in 2000. I browsed through a copy of it at a bookstore and scratched my head.

The book was structured like a big FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) web page. It seemed haphazard to me. I put the book down and forgot about it.

But for Tolle everything exploded. The Power of Now sold like crazy and became impossible to ignore. Tolle became a spiritual star — a career path that’s loaded with land mines.

For one thing, there are followers. If they tell you over and over again that you’re enlightened or (God forbid) divine, you just might start to believe them.

Thankfully, Tolle has not suffered this fate. But he did descend into another occupational hazard — spiritual jargon. People who are new to Tolle can struggle with terms that he uses — Being, formless, Source, Unmanifested, and more.

The other potential frustration for me is that he doesn’t offer many spiritual practices. That is, he doesn’t really give me much to do, like meditation instructions or yoga postures.

Perhaps truly enlightened beings rise above the need for practices. But the rest of us down here on the ground need some concrete suggestions.

An authentic awakening

Even so, I cannot dismiss Tolle. For one thing, I still resonate with the account of his awakening as described in The Power of Now.

Until he turned 30, Tolle recalls, he “lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression.”

One night he woke up in the early hours of the morning with a “feeling of absolute dread” that nearly drained him of the desire to continue living.

What happened to Tolle next was an experience of non-duality:

“I cannot live with myself any longer.” This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. “Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with.” “Maybe”, I thought, “only one of them is real.” I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy…. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void.

Tolle awoke from this altered state of consciousness to the sight of the bedroom furniture in his London apartment. Everything was bathed in the morning sunlight. He remembers that it all seemed “fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence.”

Tolle got out of bed, dressed, and walked the streets of London, “marvelling at the beauty and aliveness” of everything he saw. This was followed by living “in a state of uninterrupted deep peace and bliss” for the next five months.

Eventually these feelings faded. But Tolle found that “he could still function in the world, although I realized that nothing I ever did could possibly add anything to what I already had.”

Tolle’s teachings explore the implications of his awakening experience. They boil down to one big distinction — living from ego versus living from presence.

Living from ego

Ego is our typical way of experiencing life — with constant commentary from our stream of thinking. This voice inside our head is irrational and judgmental, says Tolle. It rehashes the past and predicts worst-case scenarios for the future. It’s mostly mental noise that creates suffering.

Being human is like living with someone who is constantly complains and never shuts up — only that “someone” is the voice inside our head.

This voice is self-centered. It chatters ceaselessly about me and my problems. These, we believe, are largely caused by other people and events that violate our expectations.

Ironically, the concepts of I, me, and mine are not present at the level of pure sensation — what we see, hear, touch, taste, and feel. The ego arises only with language: We use personal pronouns to imply that someone “owns” the sensations, which arise spontaneously without our conscious control.

This is how we experience ourselves as a separate self — that is, an ego. We see ourselves as a mind housed inside a body. This physical form is limited in space, isolated from every other physical form, and fated to die.

In the state of ego, we maneuver through the world as fearful, isolated entities, constantly trying to arrange the circumstances of our lives for maximum pleasure and minimal pain. This involves constant effort because those circumstances are forever in flux.

To live from the ego, says Tolle, is to enter the world of time. When functioning from the ego, we define ourselves by what happened in the past. We also delay satisfaction until we achieve some goal in the future: I’ll finally be satisfied when I get married, when I get a job, when I get promoted, when I have children, when I retire, or when [fill in the blank with your favorite attachment].

Unfortunately, that magical moment of satisfaction never arrives. Or, it arises for a short time and then fades away.

Living from presence

What happens when we detach from the voice inside our head? Then, says Tolle, we enter the state of presence.

In presence, we simply notice our thoughts. We don’t judge them or identify with them. Instead of saying things like I feel angry or I feel sad, we simply notice moods such as anger and sadness. These moods are impermanent and impersonal. Like passing weather conditions, they appear and disappear.

Using another metaphor, Tolle talks about entering a gap — the space between thoughts. This happens when your mind becomes so still that the internal chatter stops:

When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream — a gap of “no mind.” At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you…. With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen.

In no mind is pure awareness with no ego, says Tolle. It is outside of time, not located in space, and not subject to birth and death.

By dwelling in this still point — this space between thoughts — we stop defining ourselves by what happened in the past. And, we experience a sense of fulfillment that does not depend on achieving any goal in the future.

Yes, these are grand claims. Fortunately, they are testable. Through practices such as yoga and meditation, you see for yourself what happens as the voice inside your head gradually winds down.

You might not experience cosmic thunderbolts of enlightenment, but who cares? You get to release the Internal Critic — if only for a moment — and taste the peace that results.

Three benefits of presence

When I remember to live from presence, it makes a difference in my daily life. I experience benefits that continue to surprise and delight me:

Releasing reactivity. When the internal voice is active, I tend to act impulsively. If someone makes a cutting remark, I am likely to react in kind. If a driver cuts me off in traffic, I am tempted to honk or flash a stiff middle finger.

This is not inevitable, however. Instead, I can enter the gap of no mind. I can sink into the space between thoughts by taking a deep breath, checking in with my body, and simply noticing what physical sensations are present. (Tolle is right: Time is a byproduct of thinking; the body exists only in the present moment.)

The power of this simple practice is that it delays an immediate reaction to the cutting comment or rude driver. That reaction is likely to be equally toxic.

By pausing to enter the present moment, I can let little irritations go. They are simply passing moments. They don’t really matter.

This practice has helped me to defuse tension and prevent conflicts. I am convinced that it could save my life someday.

Releasing the need to be right. I can easily become attached to a narrow range of opinions. People are “right” when they agree with me. They are “wrong” when they disagree. And if they say the “wrong” things, I feel personally attacked and compelled to defend myself.

How refreshing it is to enter the gap of no mind instead. This allows me to notice the need to be right as it unfolds in real time — and to simply drop it.

Tolle says it well:

Once you have disidentified from your mind, whether you are right or wrong makes no difference to your sense of self at all, so the forcefully compulsive and deeply unconscious need to be right, which is a form of violence, will no longer be there. You can state clearly and firmly how you feel or what you think, but there will be no defensiveness or aggressiveness about it.

Releasing problems. It is also possible to release all my problems — right now, in the present moment.

Again, I’ll quote Tolle:

Focus your attention on the now and tell me what problem you have in this moment.

I am not getting any answer because it is impossible to have a problem when your attention is fully in the Now. A situation needs to be either dealt with or accepted. Why make it into a problem?

I find this quite useful.

If I’m troubled by a situation in my life, then in the present moment I have two sane options: 1) do something to change it or 2) simply accept it until I can do something about it.

When I forget about those options, I tend to dwell on the situation mentally without taking action or practicing acceptance. And it is this mental focus — not the situation itself — that creates suffering.

As Tolle notes:

The mind unconsciously loves problems because they give you an identity of sorts. This is normal, and it is insane. “Problem” means that you are dwelling on a situation mentally without there being a true intention or possibility of taking action now and that you are unconsciously making it part of your sense of self.…

All it takes is a simple choice, a simple decision: No matter what happens, I will create no more pain for myself. I will create no more problems.

In other words, do something about the situation now. Or not. But in either case, don’t dwell on it.

Simple, right?

Easy? No.

But it is something to practice. And it lightens the load considerably.