Eckhart Tolle (/ / EK-art TO-l; German pronunciation: [kat tl], born Ulrich Leonard Tolle on February 16, 1948) is a German-born resident of Canada,[1] best known as the author of The Power of Now and A New Earth. In 2011, he was listed by the Watkins Review as the most spiritually influential person in the world.[2] In 2008, a New York Times writer called Tolle "the most popular spiritual author in the United States."[3]

Tolle has said that he was depressed for much of his life until he underwent, at age 29, an "inner transformation". He then spent several years wandering and unemployed "in a state of deep bliss" before becoming a spiritual teacher. Later, he moved to North America where he began writing his first book, The Power of Now, which was published in 1997[4] and reached the New York Times Best Seller lists in 2000.[5] Tolle settled in Vancouver, Canada, where he has lived for more than a decade.

The Power of Now and A New Earth sold an estimated three million and five million copies respectively in North America by 2009.[6] In 2008, approximately 35 million people participated in a series of 10 live webinars with Tolle and television talk show host Oprah Winfrey.[6] Tolle is not identified with any particular religion, but he has been influenced by a wide range of spiritual works.[7]

Born Ulrich Leonard Tolle in Lnen, a small town located north of Dortmund in the Ruhr Valley, Germany in 1948,[3][8][9] Tolle describes his childhood as unhappy, particularly his early childhood in Germany. There, his parents fought and eventually separated, and he felt alienated from a hostile school environment.[10] While playing in buildings destroyed by Allied bombs during World War Two, Tolle felt depressed by his experience of "pain in the energy field of the country".[11] At the age of 13, he moved to Spain to live with his father.[10] Tolle's father did not insist that his son attend high school, and so Tolle elected to study literature, astronomy and language at home.[8][10]

At the age of fifteen Tolle read several books written by the German mystic Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, also known as B Yin R. Tolle has said he responded "very deeply" to those books.[10]

At the age of 19, Tolle moved to England and for three years taught German and Spanish at a London school for language studies.[12] Troubled by "depression, anxiety and fear", he began "searching for answers" in his life.[10] At age 22 or so he decided to pursue this search by studying philosophy, psychology, and literature, and enrolled in the University of London.[10] After graduating[10] he was offered a scholarship to do postgraduate research at Cambridge University which he began in 1977.[7][8]

One night in 1977, at the age of 29, after having suffered from long periods of suicidal depression, Tolle says he experienced an "inner transformation."[7] That night he awakened from his sleep, suffering from feelings of depression that were "almost unbearable," but then experienced a life-changing epiphany.[10] Recounting the experience, Tolle says,

I couldnt live with myself any longer. And in this a question arose without an answer: who is the I that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void! I didnt know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved. The next morning I woke up and everything was so peaceful. The peace was there because there was no self. Just a sense of presence or beingness, just observing and watching.[12]

Tolle recalls going out for a walk in London the next morning, and finding that everything was miraculous, deeply peaceful. Even the traffic."[10] The feeling continued, and he began to feel a strong underlying sense of peace in any situation.[6] Tolle stopped studying for his doctorate, and for a period of about two years after this he spent much of his time sitting, in a state of deep bliss," on park benches in Russell Square, Central London, "watching the world go by. He stayed with friends, in a Buddhist monastery, or otherwise slept rough on Hampstead Heath. His family thought him irresponsible, even insane."[12] Tolle changed his first name from Ulrich to Eckhart; by some reports this was in homage to the German philosopher and mystic, Meister Eckhart,[8][9][13] although according to other reports he was drawn to that name coincidentally.[14]

After this period, former Cambridge students and people he had met by chance began to ask Tolle about his beliefs. He began working as a counselor and spiritual teacher.[7] Students continued to come to him over the next five years. He relocated to Glastonbury, a major centre of alternative living.[12] In 1995, after having visited the West Coast of North America several times, he settled in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he met his wife to be, Kim Eng.[7][10][15][16]

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