Eckhart Tolle Audiobooks

Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Leonard Tölle in Germany in 1948, is a spiritual teacher and self-help author who found an enormous audience in the 2000s, helped considerably by the advocacy of Oprah Winfrey. The origin story is striking: while working towards a doctorate at the University of Cambridge in 1977, he abandoned his studies after what he has described as a spiritual awakening, and later began teaching.

His thinking borrows from Zen Buddhism, Christian mysticism, Sufism and Hinduism without belonging to any of them – he remains unaffiliated with any particular religion – and is distilled in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) and A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005). Readers tend to divide on him, guru or genuine guide, but his reach is beyond dispute.

Audio is arguably Tolle’s natural medium: this is teaching designed to be absorbed slowly, and a calm voice in the ear suits material about quieting the one inside your head. The Power of Now remains the cornerstone, with Practicing the Power of Now serving as the companion piece for listeners who want the ideas in usable, day-to-day form, and A New Earth broadening the argument from the personal to the collective. Our advice is characteristically unmystical: approach with an open mind and a critical one, and both will find something to work with.