Eckhart Tolle Quotes

The egoic madness, or dysfunction, becomes enormously amplified by the science and technology we all have developed.

The power of movies lies in the fact that it enables the viewer to enter the reality, to some extent, of the characters.

I don't pray for anything, but I have used affirmations in the past a few times. They are really a bit more like realizations in that on some level they have already happened.

The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That's all there ever is.

For the ego to survive, it must make time - past and future - more important than the present moment.

The fullness of life is only accessible in the present moment.

Not what you do, but how you do what you do determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny. And how you do what you do is determined by your state of consciousness.

The ego doesn't know that the source of all energy is within you, so it seeks it outside.

If the price of peace were a lowering of your consciousness, and the price of stillness a lack of vitality and alertness, then they would not be worth having.

The moment you become aware of the silence, you also have become silent.

To listen to the silence, wherever you are, is an easy and direct way of becoming present.

... inherited collective mind-patterns ... have kept humans in bondage to suffering for eons.

When you accept everything for what it is without labels you are outside of your ego.

The primary purpose of life is in being in the NOW.

Wake up. Get out of your mind. Be present.

You cannot give your full attention to something, and at the same time resist it.

Everything is honoured, but nothing matters.

If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it.

By a monstrous act of reductionism, the infinite depth of who you are is confused with a sound produced by the vocal cords." (p. 28)

We get lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating - lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems. Nature can show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds.

Nations consist of individuals. It is for every individual to bring in a different quality - the quality of awakened consciousness - into their lives.

The energy that flows into what you do, although it may be high energy, is very peaceful energy. It is not out of alignment with life.

When you live as a friend of the now, many changes come into your life.

If I thought it was my identity to be a spiritual teacher, that would be a delusion. It's not an identity. It's simply a function in this world.

Loss is very painful, because any kind of loss leaves a hole in the fabric of one's existence.

Enthusiasm cannot be a continuous state. It comes in waves.

Life always is now. Life is inseparable from now.

As a child, a person builds up an egoic sense - the child has a name, has an "I," has a mind. But then, to awaken, a person needs to completely transcend that sense of ego.

It's harder for me, never having brought up a child, to enter the universe of the child.

Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. This is why we may also call it Presence.

People always form images of who others are, and they can be inflated images.

In fact, the collective energy field of presence can be very helpful when people come together. It can give you an enormous boost.

You are not what happens in your life. You are the space in which it happens, which is consciousness itself.

Of course, most of the people in this world are stressed, and most of those who are not stressed are totally bored!

Whatever you do, whatever you're working with, whether it's manual work or talking to people or buying or selling, every little thing encompasses the power and simplicity of presence.

[Visualisation] works most powerfully when you realize that it is already a reality on the unseen level. It's already there.

The tools of science and technology amplified the effects of the madness of the egoic mind. So the survival of the planet began to be threatened, and with it the survival of humanity.

Stress is extremely harmful to the body.

You are not seeking to attain some future state. That is the fallacy of many spiritual seekers. They have an image of some state - enlightenment, or whatever they call it - they want to achieve.

We would destroy ourselves and the planet if no change happens, because of the amplification of the egoic state through science and technology.

The ego is a false sense based on mental concepts. It is identification with the body and the mind-primarily identification with thought form.

Stress is a form of suffering.

There are many things that are still uncertain and that probably nobody knows, because so many factors determine what form the transformation of consciousness on our planet takes.

If increased meta-knowledge is not counter-balanced by a corresponding growth in consciousness then the likelihood of psycho-spiritual dysfunction is great.

If you walk into a forest - you hear all kinds of subtle sounds - but underneath there is an all pervasive silence.

Focus your attention on the Now and tell me what problem you have at this moment.

You don't need to condemn. Just observe, That is sin. That is insanity. That is unconsciousness. Above all, don't forget to observe your own mind. Seek out the root of the insanity there.

Awareness of the inner body is consciousness remembering its origin and returning to the Source.

The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind.

When Doing becomes infused with the timeless quality of being, that is success