With the 1999 release of The Power of Now, a The New York Times No. 1 bestselling book about the spiritual power of living in the moment, Eckhart Tolle became one of the most popular and influential authors in the mind/body/spirit marketplace, and that popularity has only grown. The Power of Now has been translated into…
It has been a great year in the blogosphere, easily setting a record for highest amount of traffic since RayHemachandra.com replaced the prominently indexed former static site Hemachandra.com, which closed at the end of 2011. (You can still take a limited peek at that site via the cool time travel mechanism the Wayback Machine.) I…
I already respected and had personally benefited from Eckart Tolle’s teachings when my friend Jess and I sat down with Eckhart at his publisher’s home in Vancouver, British Columbia. I have interviewed a pretty fair number of impressive spiritual teachers over many years. Nonetheless, I remember being truly affected by Eckhart’s very presence. Because that’s…
Ray Hemachandra: Eckhart, the practice of being in the moment by definition is not goal-oriented, correct? Eckhart Tolle: Correct. 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.…
Ray: What can help people better understand the now — what the present moment really is, and what they really are? Eckhart: Most people equate the now, the present moment, with what happens in the now. They think there are many different moments, thousands of moments every day, because different things are happening every…
Ray Hemachandra: How practical is the practice of alignment with the present moment? For example, is making money at odds with an enlightened mode of being? Eckhart Tolle: If the main purpose of what you do is making money, then of course, yes. You are using what you do as a means to an end,…
Ray: Learning to deal with the small things in the now trains you to deal with the larger ones, doesn’t it, Eckhart? Eckhart: Exactly right. When you observe yourself reacting to what are minor things in your life, you will find that the mechanism is the same as when major things seem to go wrong…
Ray: Why is stress so common, and what are the consequences of people living stress-based lives? Eckhart: The whole world accepts that being stressed is the normal way to live. In fact, people think you have to be stressed to be successful. They think if you are not stressed, something is wrong with you. But…
Ray: In modern times, people often are given medications to calm and quiet their racing minds. The medications almost force people into the present moment, albeit a dulled present moment. I wonder what the impact of such medicine is on the spiritual dimension of people’s lives. Is it positive or negative, do you think? Eckhart:…
Ray: You’ve written that human beings had to develop a state of madness as a collective to then be able to transform and awaken evolutionarily. That parallels what seems to happen on the individual level, doesn’t it? As a child, a person builds up an egoic sense — the child has a name, has an…
