20 Facts About Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle's books include The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose and the picture book Guardians of Being.

Eckhart Tolle came to prominence as a self-help author beginning in the 2000s, aided through promotion by Oprah Winfrey.

Eckhart Tolle's teachings draw from traditions such as Zen Buddhism, Christianity, Sufism, and Hinduism, although he remains unaffiliated with any religion.

Eckhart Tolle has been called the Middleton of the spiritual movement.

Ulrich Leonard Eckhart Tolle was born in Lunen, a small town north of Dortmund in the Ruhr region of Germany in 1948.

When he was 19, Eckhart Tolle moved to England and taught German and Spanish for three years at a London language school.

One night in 1977, at the age of 29, after having suffered from long periods of depression, Eckhart Tolle says he experienced an "inner transformation".

Eckhart Tolle started working as a counselor and spiritual teacher.

Eckhart Tolle moved to Glastonbury, a center of alternative living.

Eckhart Tolle believed one "could develop organically" and said "one needs to be careful that the organization doesn't become self-serving".

In 2008, Eckhart Tolle partnered with Winfrey to produce a series of webinars, each one focusing on a chapter from his books, with discussions, silent meditations, and questions from viewers via Skype.

In 2008 The New York Times stated that Eckhart Tolle was "the most popular spiritual author" in the United States.

In 2000, Carter Phipps wrote that "Eckhart Tolle's clear writing and the obvious depth of his experience and insight set it apart".

In 2003, Andrea Sachs characterized The Power of Now as "awash in spiritual mumbo-jumbo", while in 2008, an article in The New York Times stated that Eckhart Tolle is "not identified with any religion, but uses teachings from Zen Buddhism, Sufism, Hinduism, and the Bible".

New Age writer William Bloom wrote that "Eckhart Tolle is offering a very contemporary synthesis of Eastern spiritual teaching, which is normally so clothed in arcane language that it is incomprehensible", thereby providing "a valuable perspective on Western culture".

Publisher Judith Kendra says, "The ideas [that Eckhart Tolle is] talking about have been in existence for thousands of years in both Eastern texts and with the great Western mystics, but he's able to make them understandable".

Sara Nelson, the editor-in-chief of Publishers Weekly, said Eckhart Tolle's writings had been successful due to surging public interest in self-help books.

Conversely, James Beverley, professor of Christian Thought and Ethics at the evangelical Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, says that Eckhart Tolle's worldview "is at odds with central Christian convictions" and that "Eckhart Tolle denies the core of Christianity by claiming there is no ultimate distinction between humans and God and Jesus".

John Stackhouse, former professor of theology and culture at evangelical Regent College in Vancouver, says that Eckhart Tolle "gives a certain segment of the population exactly what they want: a sort of supreme religion that purports to draw from all sorts of lesser, that is, established religions".

In 1995, after visiting the West Coast of North America several times, Eckhart Tolle settled in Vancouver, British Columbia.