The Meaning of Life, with Gay Byrne: Eckhart Tolle
Sunday November 1, 2015
RTÉ ONE 10.25
GUIDE BILLINGS
Gay Byrne’s guest this week is Mindfulness Guru, Eckhart Tolle, author of ‘The Power of Now’, star of Oprah Winfrey shows and webinars and deemed the ‘most influential spiritual author in the USA’
Press Release
Eckhart Tolle first came to international fame when his book ‘The Power of Now’ was chosen for the Oprah Winfrey Show’s Book Club. Sales quickly reached 6 million copies and Eckhart Tolle became a house hold name.
In a deeply confessional interview, Eckhart Tolle shares with Gay Byrne his problem childhood, unhappy youth, and the ‘dark night of the soul’ that changed his life. He shares insight into how to identify and to silence the negative thoughts that dominate many people’s mindset and spoil their lives. He describes the simple mindfulness techniques he uses to achieve an inner calm and talks about how meditation techniques can become part of your lifestyle when taking a walk or making a cup of tea.
A modest man, originally from Germany, Eckhart Tolle wrote ‘The Power of Now ’as a distillation of a philosophy honed from readings of Christianity and Buddhism and based on how he found inner peace and the ability to live a fulfilled and positive life. His own early life was very troubled, starting with an unhappy childhood caused by being the only child of a dysfunctional marriage. He was bullied in school so badly that he dropped out at age 14 years and he developed such a strong sense of alienation and depression in his early 20s that he ended up without a home, a job or a significant relationship. At only 29 years old, he was contemplating suicide.
It was the dark night of the soul that saved him. Faced with wanting to kill himself to stop his angry and depressive inner voice, he chose to live in the now and in this interview he tells us how.