When he was 19, he emigrated to London, England and obtained a job teaching German and Spanish in a language school for businessmen.

In his early twenties, his depression, anxiety and fear compelled him to start “searching for answers to life". He began studying philosophy, psychology, and literature, believing the answers to his questions could be found there. He attended the University of London and, after graduation, went to Cambridge as a postgrad. He matriculated in in 1977.
Tolle had experienced feelings of suicidal depression for many years, until he experienced an epiphany when he was 29. He wrote, “I couldn’t live with myself any longer. And in this a question arose without an answer: who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void. I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved. The next morning I woke up and everything was so peaceful. The peace was there because there was no self. Just a sense of presence or “beingness”, just observing and watching.”

Tolle then became a vagrant for about two years – sitting on park benches for hours on end watching the world go by, and usually sleeping out of doors on Hampstead Heath. Eventually he returned to the world and began working as a counselor and spiritual teacher.

Eventually, in 1995, at the age of 47, he relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia. There, he published his first book, The Power of Now, in 2000, and it became a bestseller. It is still in print and has been translated into several languages.

His third book, A New Earth, was published in 2005, and also became a best-seller. This was aided by a partnership he formed with Oprah Winfrey, for a series of webinar sessions which were very successful.

He founded a company, Eckhart Teachings, to sell his books, CDs and DVDs. In 2009, his website, Eckhart Tolle TV, was founded, consisting of streaming video of weekly group meditations. He continues to write –his most recent book, Guardians of Being, is a picture book, illustrated by Patrick McDonnell, creator of the comic strip Mutts.

At the core of Tolle's teachings lies “the transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that he sees as the next step in human evolution. An essential aspect of this awakening consists in transcending our ego-based state of consciousness. This is a prerequisite not only for personal happiness but also for the ending of violent conflict endemic on our planet".