2 Problems with Eckhart Tolle That No-one Ever Seems to Talk About

Problem #1: He didn’t become enlightened using the methods he teaches. Problem #2: He makes extreme, unproven claims.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay. Filtered using Canva.

There is a big problem with Eckhart Tolle, and it’s staring us all right in the face. But before you Tolle fans rip me a new one, let me just backtrack a bit.

Eckhart Tolle has said some helpful things. The essence of his teachings is valid. If you are focused more on the present moment rather than thinking about the past or future, you will get more out of life. You will actually be there as life is happening to you.

But we should be careful not to accept everything he says as 100% truth, because there are some problems.

Problem #1: He didn’t become enlightened using the methods he teaches

The biggest problem with Tolle is hiding right in plain sight. In the introduction of his book The Power of Now he describes his enlightenment process. Basically, he had an extreme mental breakdown which blew apart his mind.

I highly recommend Todd Murphy’s 2011 presentation Enlightenment, The Self, and the Brain. How the brain changes with final liberation. At 1 hour 26 minutes he talks about Eckhart Tolle:

This explains how the intense psychological distress Tolle experienced caused sudden changes in his brain. The unbearable suffering forced him into an enlightened state.

Yet Tolle never says, “if you want to be enlightened like me, become so distressed you literally can’t live with yourself anymore.” Instead, he does a form of bait-and-switch. He says: here, try doing these things instead.

Would Tolle have become enlightened if he’d not experienced that intense psychological distress but somebody gave him a book like The Power of Now?

Problem #2: He makes extreme, unproven claims