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Introduction of the Book:
The Power of Now
Eckhart Tolle
I have little use for the past and rarely think about it; however,
I would briefly like to tell you how I came to be a spiritual
teacher and how The Power of Now came into existence.
Until my thirtieth year, I lived in a state of almost continuous
anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression. It feels
now as if I am talking about some past lifetime or somebody else's
life.
Awakening
One night not long after my twenty-ninth birthday, I woke up in the
early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. I had woken up with
such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense
than it had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines
of the furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing
train everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly
meaningless that it created in me a deep loathing of the world. The
most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence. What
was the point in continuing to live with this burden of misery? Why
carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep
longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much
stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live.
I cannot live with myself any longer. This was the thought that
kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of
what a peculiar thought it was.. Am I one or two? If I cannot live
with myself, there must be two of me: the I and the self that
I cannot live with. Maybe, I thought, only one of them is
real.
I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped.
I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt
drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow
movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense
fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words resist
nothing, as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being
sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather
than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself
fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after
that.
I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window. I had
never heard such a sound before. My eyes were still closed, and I
saw the image of a precious diamond. Yes, if a diamond could make a
sound, this is what it would be like. I opened my eyes. The first
light of dawn was filtering through the curtains. Without any
thought, I felt, I knew, that there is infinitely more to light
than we realize. That soft luminosity filtering through the
curtains was love itself. Tears came into my eyes. I got up and
walked around the room. I recognized the room, and yet I knew that
I had never truly seen it before. Everything was fresh and
pristine, as if it had just come into existence. I picked up
things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marvelling at the beauty and
aliveness of it all. That day I walked around the city in utter
amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been
born into this world.
Bliss
For the next five months, I lived in a state of uninterrupted deep
peace and bliss. After that, it diminished somewhat in intensity,
or perhaps it just seemed to because it became my natural state. I
could still function in the world, although I realized that nothing
I ever did could possibly add anything to what I already had.
Understanding
I knew, of course, that something profoundly significant had
happened to me, but I didn't understand it at all. It wasn't until
several years later, after I had read spiritual texts and spent
time with spiritual teachers, that I realized that what everybody
was looking for had already happened to me. I understood that the
intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my
consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy
and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind.
This withdrawal must have been so complete that this false,
suffering self immediately collapsed, just as if a plug had been
pulled out of an inflatable toy. What was left then was my true
nature as the ever-present I am: consciousness in its pure state
prior to identification with form. Later I also learned to go into
that inner timeless and deathless realm that I had originally
perceived as a void and remain fully conscious. I dwelt in states
of such indescribable bliss and sacredness that even the original
experience I just described pales in comparison. A time came when,
for a while, I was left with nothing on the physical plane. I had
no relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity. I
spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the
most intense joy.
But even the most beautiful experiences come and go. More
fundamental, perhaps, than any experience is the undercurrent of
peace that has never left me since then. Sometimes it is very
strong, almost palpable, and others can feel it too. At other
times, it is somewhere in the background, like a distant
melody.
Sharing
Later, people would occasionally come up to me and say: I want
what you have. Can you give it to me, or show me how to get it?
And I would say: You have it already. You just cant feel it
because your mind is making too much noise. That answer later grew
into my book, The Power of Now.
From The Power of Now, copyright
1999 by Eckhart Tolle, published in the UK in 2001 by Hodder and
Stoughton.
Photographs © Cygnus Books 21-Feb-2001
