Week 16 · modern

Eckhart Tolle

At age 29, Eckhart Tolle was a research student at Cambridge, deeply depressed, and thinking about ending his life. One night, he had a thought: "I cannot live with myself any longer." Then another thought arrived: "Wait, who is the 'I' that can't live with the 'self'? Are there two of me?" That question cracked something open. He woke up the next morning and spent two years sitting on park benches in a state of peace he couldn't explain. Then he started writing.

“"Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have." He didn't say this from a monastery. He said it as a man who spent years in suicidal depression before discovering that the present moment was the one place his suffering couldn't follow him.”