GOOD Magazine 029: The Exploration Issue — The Power of Then: Before Eckhart Tolle’s Bubble Burst
by Claire Hoffman / Illustrations by Jessica De Jesus

I asked him if, despite being present all the time, he ever thought… thoughts. He laughed and thought about it. “Yes, if I start to think I have to say something I do, but I’m very reluctant to because whatever I say about another human being is very limiting. The same human being in time can change. Let’s say five years later you can change completely, and the potential for change may have been there. Every judgment is like tearing a little piece out of a big painting and saying, ‘That’s how it is.’”

Self-help guru Eckhart Tolle became an international sensation in 2008 when Oprah plugged his book The Power of Now as a must-read. Journalist Claire Hoffman looks back to 2008 —pitting an interview with the elusive Tolle and his emphasis on living in “the Now” against the zeitgeist surrounding the 2008 financial crisis, tracking Tolle’s meteoric rise.

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