I've written about this, too. Slagging off Eckhart Tolle is a good way to make money on Medium. Lots of people love him, and they write long comments, which seems to increase read time and therefore earnings.

Something I've not considered before, and only just thought about: what if his "net worth" is not the net worth of Eckhart Tolle the individual, but Eckhart Tolle the business? Because he is a business. He surely has staff that do all his online stuff for him, and organise his events in his behalf. It's possible that a lot of the money hanging around is intended to be use to push the business forwards.

But if it's his own personal wealth, no, he doesn't need anything close to that much. Apparenty he used to sleep on park benches and had no money, and he was in a perfect state of bliss. So no, he doesn't need any of it. But maybe the business does?