The Creation of Now has been revamped with a new design and layout. This is more than just a facelift; I’ve also sharpened the site’s messaging.
All my research and writing is now clearly arranged and accessible on the homepage. Gone is the simple blogroll. I’ve re-written the about page—it now explains the site’s overall purpose and contents much better. And there’s a new article presenting an overview of my years of work here and key findings. Read it here.
Now, it’s much clearer what this website is about, what you can find on it, and what my research reveals. And the crux of it is this: I think spiritual teacher and bestselling author Eckhart Tolle owes an unacknowledged debt to earlier modern writers. I present numerous textual comparisons showcasing his uncanny similarities to other authors, which strongly suggests he drew upon their work without properly acknowledging it. This is significant because Tolle is the world’s most popular independent spiritual teacher. He is a spiritual touchstone for millions, including celebrities like Oprah Winfrey—to whom he owes a good deal of his fame.
Yet I believe a little-known Fourth Way teacher of the 20th century, Maurice Nicoll, had a major unrecognised influence on Tolle’s work. And I think the same is true with Barry Long, an independent spiritual teacher whose London talks Tolle attended in the 1980s. Tolle’s commonalities with Long are so blatant, that in a recent post I felt obliged to call it plagiarism.
When I started this site in mid-2021, I did not have such a definite message. I had some idea the direction it would go, but never expected it to reach this point, where I’d gathered so many examples of Tolle’s words showing an uncanny resemblance to those of earlier writers. To get an idea of what I mean, see the slideshow below which I put on the new homepage; it showcases a sample of just some of the strikingly similar quotes I compare in my articles. I think it speaks for itself.
From the site’s beginning, I had planned to compare Tolle to Maurice Nicoll. I’d noticed similarities in their work that seemed beyond coincidental. I believed then—as I do even more so now— that Nicoll was an important unseen influence on Tolle. No one seemed to be aware of this though. I felt I’d stumbled upon a very interesting backstory to our contemporary spiritual scene that deserved more critical attention.
So I began an in-depth comparative analysis of their work, highlighting commonalities between Nicoll and Tolle across a series of articles, as well as some of their differences. But as I continued, I found much more than expected; their similarities turned out to be more pronounced and extensive than I’d anticipated.
This was not, I determined, simply a case of two authors in the same field covering some common ground, which is bound to occur on some level. Nor was Nicoll just a peripheral influence on Tolle, I concluded. I already knew they covered similar topics, and taught some similar things; however it became clear their writing shared too many strange similarities, both in the distinctive ideas covered, and how they expressed themselves as well. And there were too many instances of this, I came to believe, for all of it to be coincidental.
For example, I noticed characteristic “Nicollian” phrases cropping up in Tolle’s work, like “power of self-observation,” “power of choice,” “the light of consciousness,” and “gramophone records.” And Tolle uses these rather unusual and sometimes esoteric phrases in much the same way—to make much the same points and describe the same practices. I also found cases where the same example, such as the same interpretation of a Gospel phrase, is cited in a similar passage expressing the same idea. Even the structure and flow of Tolle’s sentences seemed to correspond at times.
I focused on highlighting these correspondences more clearly as my work progressed. I set about organising their similar statements—initially discussed in lengthy essays—into more compact side-by-side comparison tables. These show much more clearly how alike their writing could be at times—not just in what they mean, but in the descriptive language used.
Yet although my work sheds new light on Nicoll’s unrecognised impact—a figure who author Gary Lachman, for his recent Nicoll biography, dubbed “the forgotten teacher of the fourth Way”—I have not limited my attention to Nicoll.
Very early on I discussed the hidden history of Eckhart Tolle’s signature “pain-body”, comparing Tolle’s work to both Nicoll and Barry Long on this idea. It became abundantly clear to me that Tolle’s pain-body concept—a hallmark of his teachings—was largely derived from Long’s work (with some influence from Nicoll too), and that Tolle had not acknowledged this in his books. I am not the first to notice Tolle’s debt to Long here, but I believe I was the first to publicly document it in depth.
As mentioned earlier, I’ve since written a new article on Eckhart Tolle’s similarities with Barry Long; it features side-by-side comparisons which make their many correspondences even clearer—and they go well beyond distinctive concepts like the “pain-body.” Putting it together has been eye-opening to say the least. Did you know, for example, that almost every direction Tolle gives for his “inner body awareness” practice, featured in his bestsellers, finds an equivalent somewhere in Long’s teachings?
I knew that Long was a major influence on Tolle, but this is something more than just influence. Tolle appears to have lifted passages from Long’s work and reworked them somewhat. Yet I believe the resemblances in their writing are still obvious in these cases, as the same or equivalent keywords are, often enough, still present in the comparable passages.
The extensive comparisons I’ve compiled have convinced me that Eckhart Tolle has plagiarised Barry Long, and I feel it would be dishonest not to state this plainly. It is at least arguable that the same is true with Nicoll’s work too; it’s just that Tolle’s commonalities with Long are so blatant that I think it’s undeniable.
While I’ve examined Nicoll’s and Long’s influence on Tolle in depth, they are not the only authors I’ve looked at. I’ve also examined Tolle’s similarities with other writers on the spiritual importance of the present moment or “Now”—another of Tolle’s keystone themes—and these comparisons suggest he may have drawn from others too.
I want to reiterate that I’m not advocating for or against any of the authors I’ve written about: that’s not what my site is about. I simply feel it is important to bring these matters to light. I believe my findings are important whatever one may feel about any of these figures.
Ultimately, I think the most important contribution my website serves, is to provide a new perspective and insight into the most popular independent spiritual teacher and author of our time, and, in so doing, into our culture too.
For Eckhart Tolle is a cultural phenomenon. Or at least, he became one after Oprah Winfrey endorsed him in the early 2000s and continued actively promoting him—even calling him “a prophet for our time.”
There has never been an independent spiritual teacher as popular as Tolle in history, as far as I know. He is someone who offers spiritual guidance to millions via his bestselling books and growing social media presence, and apparently wields spiritual influence on par with the Pope and Dalai Lama—yet teaches completely outside any tradition or lineage, modern or old.
He has also, it must be said, monetised his teachings and grown very rich in the process; he charges large sums for the privilege of hearing him teach in person.
Yet despite his prominence and unparalleled popularity as an independent spiritual teacher, Tolle remains something of an enigma. He’s attracted very little critical attention and study, which I find somewhat baffling. I think it’s important we understand the Tolle phenomenon. Like him or not, he’s been elevated to a rare spiritual status in our culture. But who is this man, what is he actually teaching, and where does this teaching come from? And what does his prominent spiritual status in our culture say about us?
As a person who values self-knowledge and spiritual teachings, I think these are very important questions. They are surely important from a sociological perspective too.
I hope my website helps in some way to fill the cultural void around these questions and answer at least some of them. I cannot answer all of them, but perhaps I can start a wider conversation.
In any case, if I am right in my core assertion—that Tolle owes an unacknowledged debt to contemporary spiritual writers—then don’t people, at the very least, have a right to know about it? If his stated “one true source within” was not, perhaps, his biggest or only source of inspiration, as he seems to profess, and his teachings do, perhaps, have tangible, external sources—despite apparent claims to the contrary—then surely people have a right to know about this. [1] Or, to put it another way, people should have the opportunity to consider the comparisons I have assembled and make up their own minds about this. Given Tolle’s popularity and elevated spiritual position in our culture, I believe this is an important public interest matter.
If I am right in my conclusions, then I also think Tolle really ought to acknowledge his sources properly, as that is simply the right and ethical thing to do.
I do not want anyone to just accept my conclusions uncritically though. I have reordered this website so that it is much clearer what is presented here, what the various articles are about, what is being compared and discussed, and what I think my overall research tells us about Tolle’s hidden influences.
Now, it is much easier to browse through my work and form one’s own conclusions.
I hope you take the opportunity to do so, and find it rewarding.