Eckhart Tolle Interview
Dan Clurman interviewed Eckhart Tolle for the article “Stillness and Presence” from the Fall 2001 issue of Inquiring Mind.
Eckhart Tolle: You don’t have prepared questions. That’s very good. [Laughter]
Dan Clurman: Being aware that silence says it all, to begin speaking does feel somewhat silly. On the other hand, sometimes words carry the perfume of the silence, or point back to the silence. In reading your book and listening to you speak, it seems that what you are saying points back to stillness—and that is how you live your life.
ET: Yes. I’m aware that a sense of stillness comes through in the book. Somehow, there’s a certain power that goes beyond the words, and that’s the place where art originates. A work of art comes out of a state of deep stillness. Somehow, and nobody knows how, the essence of the unmanifested, of the stillness, flows into the work.
DC: The work becomes a carrier of the stillness. A person can also become a work of art, in that sense.
ET: When someone becomes transparent, then something shines through that person that has nothing to do with the person or any of his or her personal history. What is required is becoming so transparent that the self or ego dissolves.