All author quotes comparisons on the homepage slideshow, which juxtaposes Eckhart Tolle’s words with similar statements by earlier writers, are tabled below with citations included. Quotes by Maurice Nicoll and Barry Long are in the left column; similar statements by Eckhart Tolle are on the right.
I’ve found many cases where Tolle’s words resemble those of prior authors. These are just a sample of what I cover on this site, the full extent of which goes beyond what can be shown below.
I have surveyed commonalities in the work of Nicoll and Tolle across a series of articles. The most recent feature comparison tables, like the one below, on various topics. Together they showcases hundreds of similar statements.
All Long-Tolle comparisons are drawn from a more recent article, also with tables, highlighting their commonalities across different areas.
Find all comparative analysis articles here.
| Maurice Nicoll / Barry Long | Eckhart Tolle |
| ‘Self-observation is an act of attention directed inwards—to what is going on in you.’[1]
Maurice Nicoll (1943) |
‘Monitor your mental-emotional state through self-observation. . . . Direct your attention inwards.’[2]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘The power of self-observation is an inner sense, rarely used. . . . We are unaware of what we are doing.’[3]
Maurice Nicoll (1952) |
‘You need to have some power of self-observation, which is another word for awareness.’[4]
Eckhart Tolle (2008) |
| ‘We have the power of choice internally [by observing our state].’[5]
Maurice Nicoll (1945) |
‘With the seeing [of inner dysfunction] comes the power of choice.’[6]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| ‘You become responsible . . . when one begins to apply [this Work] to oneself and to the state one is in at any moment.’[7]
Maurice Nicoll (1945) |
‘To end the misery . . . you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for your inner state at any given moment.’[8]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| ‘By practice you can observe your mood more and more distinctly.’[9]
Maurice Nicoll (1953) |
‘With practice, your power of self-observation, of monitoring your inner state, will become sharpened.’[10]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘Negative emotions . . . are extremely infectious.’[11]
Maurice Nicoll (1953) |
‘The negative mental-emotional force fields of others . . . are highly contagious.’[12]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘A person who is thoroughly negative . . . can infect people in a much more dangerous fashion than bacteria or viruses.’[13]
Maurice Nicoll (1950) |
‘Any negative inner state is contagious: Unhappiness spreads more easily than a physical disease.’[14]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘Your “unhappy body” is composed entirely of . . . painful emotional material’, [so] I will refer to it . . . as your emotional body.’[15]
Barry Long (1994) |
‘Almost everyone carries . . . an accumulation of old emotional pain which I call “the pain body.”’[16]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| ‘By the time your “unhappy body” matures, you are emotionally hooked — addicted to . . . emotional pain or unhappiness.’[17]
Barry Long (1994) |
‘Any emotionally painful experience can be used as food by the pain-body. . . . The pain-body is an addiction to unhappiness.’[18]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| ‘The emotional body is a living thing, living off you like a parasite.’ [19]
Barry Long (1994) |
The pain-body [is] a parasite that can live inside you for years, feed[ing] on your energy.’[20]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| It’s ‘a cunningly intelligent entity.’[21]
Barry Long (1987) |
It’s ‘an entity . . . [with] primitive intelligence, not unlike a cunning animal.’[22]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| It ‘is the living past in you.’[23]
Barry Long (1987) |
‘It is the living past in you.’[24]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘When two people marry they do not only marry their physical bodies but they marry their Time-bodies.’[25]
Maurice Nicoll (1949) |
‘You don’t just marry your wife or husband, you also marry her or his pain-body.’[26]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| ‘By true self-observation we let a ray of light into ourselves. . . . Not . . . physical light but the light of Consciousness.’[27]
Maurice Nicoll (1945) |
‘Just observe the emotion. . . . Attention is like a beam of light – the focused power of your consciousness.’[28]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘By the method of self-observation . . . [we] bring this not yet known side of ourselves into the light of consciousness.’[29]
Maurice Nicoll (1946) |
‘You are the watcher, the observing presence. If you practice this, all that is unconscious in you will be brought into the light of consciousness.’[30]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘Get to work and make it conscious by means of candid self-observation.’[31]
Maurice Nicoll (1952) |
‘Make it conscious. Observe the many ways in which unease, discontent, and tension arise within you.’[32]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘Focus your inner attention on the feeling in the area of your navel, and hold it.’[33]
Barry Long (1994) |
‘Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body.’[34]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘You have to be able to feel the presence of your emotional body within you. If you cannot feel it, you can’t begin to deal with it.’[35]
Barry Long (1994) |
‘You need to be present enough to be able to watch the pain-body directly and feel its energy. It then cannot control your thinking.’[36]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘He’ll fight furiously to keep you from putting the spotlight of intelligence, your attention, on him.’[37]
Barry Long (1987) |
‘This means putting the spotlight of your attention on it. . . . Feel the strong energy charge behind it.’[38]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘So it will try to distract you, and it usually succeeds. One way it does this is by affecting other parts of the body with aches and pains. These are not lasting.’[39]
Barry Long (1994) |
‘The pain-body will . . . try to trick you into identifying with it again. . . . At this stage, it may also create physical aches and pains in different parts of the body, but they won’t last.’[40]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘It will try to throw you off, like the momentum of a spinning disc. Stay with it.’[41]
Barry Long (1994) |
‘It has a certain momentum, just like a spinning wheel that will keep turning for a while.’[42]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘Nothing can change in us unless it is brought into the light of self-observation—that is, into the light of consciousness.’[43]
Maurice Nicoll (1943) |
‘If you don’t bring the light of your consciousness into the [emotional] pain, you will be forced to relive it again and again.’[44]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘There is only one thing in your life you can be sure of. That one thing is this moment, now.’[45]
Barry Long (1996) |
‘You discover that there is only ever this moment. . . . Your entire life unfolds in this constant Now.’[46]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| ‘You realise this now and in every succeeding moment, which is the eternal now. . . . The Spirit is now. Life is now.’[47]
Barry Long (1987) |
‘The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life now.’[48]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘What’s the problem, now? There is no problem, is there? Isn’t it extraordinary?’[49]
Barry Long (1995) |
‘Narrow your life down to this moment. . . . Do you have a problem now?’[50]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘The diagram of the Cross . . . represents a single moment in a man’s life. In this single moment the vertical line is cut across by the horizontal line of Time. . . . The point of intersection of the vertical with the horizontal line is now.’[51]
Maurice Nicoll (1942) |
‘There’s the vertical dimension and the horizontal dimension. One could even say that the cross . . . symbolizes that also. . . . Most people only know the horizontal dimension, unaware of the vertical dimension which is . . . the present moment.’[52]
Eckhart Tolle (2017) |
| ‘It is only this feeling of the existence and meaning of the direction represented by the vertical line that gives a man a sense of now.’ [53]
Maurice Nicoll (1942) |
‘And so you enter the vertical dimension by being—becoming present, by bringing your attention into the now.’[54]
Eckhart Tolle (2008) |
| ‘[Real] I dwells in now, and not in passing-time.’[55]
Maurice Nicoll (1952) |
‘It is only now that you are truly yourself.’[56]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘Personality is formed in Time, and belongs to Time.’[57]
Maurice Nicoll (1942) |
‘The “you” that has a past and a future [is] the personality.’[58]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘The Personality . . . is not you . . . but it calls itself I . . . and you say I to it.’[59]
Maurice Nicoll (1946) |
‘What you usually refer to when you say “I” is not who you are.’[60]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| ‘This imaginary oneself. . . . formed by ourselves and by the environmental influences of our upbringing. . . . is . . . called the False Personality, which is formed in the preparatory period of life.’[61]
Maurice Nicoll (1942) |
‘As you grow up, you form a mental image of who you are, based on your personal and cultural conditioning. We may call this phantom self the ego. . . . a false self.’[62]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘This accursed artificial thing “oneself” . . . causes so much trouble and . . . possesses us without our seeing it.’[63]
Maurice Nicoll (1952) |
‘It’s almost as if you were possessed without knowing it, and so you take the possessing entity to be yourself.’[64]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘In adulthood the possessing psychic entity is well and truly entrenched — as the unhappy, contradictory personality itself.’[65]
Barry Long (1994) |
‘Most people are so completely identified . . . that we may describe them as being possessed. . . . You take the thinker to be who you are. This is the egoic mind.’[66]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| ‘You have to die to the old man in you. You must die to the past. You must die to this thinker every moment.’[67]
Barry Long (1995) |
Die to the past every moment, and let the light of your presence shine away the heavy, time-bound self you thought of as “you.”’[68]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘You cannot tell yet what you are save by seeing what you are not and getting gradually . . . away from this great fiction.’[69]
Maurice Nicoll (1945) |
‘In the seeing of who you are not [the illusory self], the reality of who you are emerges by itself.’[70]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| ‘As you dismantle the personality . . . you will start to feel some disintegration of yourself. . . . Know that it’s your personality you’re losing, not your [true] identity. Nothing you [truly] are or have will disappear.’[71]
Barry Long (1994) |
‘Your radiant true nature remains [in death], but not the personality. In any case, whatever is real or of true value in your personality is your true nature shining through. This is never lost. Nothing that is of value, nothing that is real, is ever lost.’[72]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘I die now — not in agony, not in pain, but in conscious life, dying to everything except what is. And in dying daily to my unhappiness, dying for life, I finally realise the incredible truth: There is no death. All that dies is my fear of dying. Only fear dies.’[73]
Barry Long (1994) |
‘The acceptance of suffering is a journey into death. Facing deep pain, allowing it to be, taking your attention into it, is to enter death consciously. When you have died this death, you realize that there is no death – and there is nothing to fear. Only the ego dies.’[74]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘Essence is the indestructible part of us.’ [75]
Maurice Nicoll (1944) |
‘I know that the essence of who I am . . . is indestructible.’ [76]
Eckhart Tolle (2008) |
| ‘Real inner change is a development of essence . . . the most real and the deepest part of you.’[77]
Maurice Nicoll (1943) |
‘Discover and live from your true essence—what I sometimes refer to as the “Deep I.”’ [78] |
| ‘Now I’m going to introduce you to some finer energies. These energies are of your true body behind the flesh and blood.’[79]
Barry Long (1995) |
‘What I call the “inner body” isn’t really the body anymore but life energy, the bridge between form and formlessness.’[80]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| ‘We’re going to go around the body with our attention so we can bring more consciousness into it.’[81]
Barry Long (1995) |
‘The more consciousness you direct into the inner body, the higher its vibrational frequency becomes.’[82]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| ‘Can you feel your body as a whole? The whole thing is tingling. The whole body. I’m asking you all if you can feel this. Hold the feeling of the whole body from within. It can be done.’[83]
Barry Long (1995) |
‘Can you feel your body from within, so to speak? Sense briefly specific parts of your body. Feel your hands, then your arms feet, and legs. . . . Then become aware again of the inner body as a whole.’[84]
Eckhart Tolle (1997) |
| ‘“Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”. . . This is a pretty good example of what the Work says about observing yourself instead of finding fault with everyone else.’[85]
Maurice Nicoll (1950) |
‘The egoic compulsive habit of faultfinding and complaining about others. Jesus referred to it when he said, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?’[86]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| ‘The faults we dislike most in others are usually those that we display ourselves without being conscious of them.’[87]
Maurice Nicoll (1951) |
‘The particular egoic patterns that you react to most strongly in others . . . tend to be the same . . . that are also in you, but that you are unable or unwilling to detect.’[88]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| ‘Everything that you are so critical of in others is expressing itself in you.’[89]
Maurice Nicoll (1946) |
‘Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.’[90]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |
| ‘Anyone able to read this book right through will have developed to a certain stage of consciousness. To a less developed person it would seem meaningless.’[91]
Barry Long (1994) |
‘This book . . . will change your state of consciousness or it will be meaningless. It can only awaken those who are ready.’ [92]
Eckhart Tolle (2005) |