What Is Eckhart Tolle's Net Worth?
Eckhart Tolle is a German spiritual leader and author who has a net worth of $70 million. Eckhart Tolle published "The New York Times" bestseller "The Power of Now" in 1997, followed by "Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises from The Power of Now" (2001), "Stillness Speaks: Whispers of Now" (2003), "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose" (2005), and "Oneness With All Life: Inspirational Selections from A New Earth" (2008).
Eckhart has also written a picture book, "Guardians of Being" (2009) as well as the children's book "Milton's Secret: An Adventure of Discovery through Then, When, and The Power of Now" (2008). "Milton's Secret" was adapted into a film in 2016, and Tolle served as an executive producer on the production.
He runs the company Eckhart Teachings, which handles the sale of all of his books and spiritual teaching materials. Eckhart has appeared in the documentaries "The Deepest Truth of Human Existence" (2002), "Living Luminaries: On the Serious Business of Happiness" (2007), "The Power of the Heart" (2014), and "Act Social" (2021), and he teamed up with Oprah Winfrey for "A New Earth" webinars in 2008.
Early Life
Eckhart Tolle was born Ulrich Leonard Tölle on February 16, 1948, in Lünen, Germany. Living in post-war Germany as a child caused Eckhart to feel anxious and afraid, and he has said that pain "was in the energy field of the country." After Tolle's parents split up, he moved to Spain at age 13 to live with his father. Since his father didn't demand that Eckhart attend high school, Tolle studied astronomy, literature, and languages at home. As a teenager, Eckhart received a gift of five spiritual books by Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, a German mystic, and he was "heavily influenced" by them. Tolle moved to England at age 19 and spent three years teaching German and Spanish at a language school in London. In his twenties, he struggled with depression, and when he was 29, he had an "inner transformation." He told "The Age" newspaper, "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." Eckhart had been working toward a doctorate, but he abandoned his studies and spent much of his time over the next two years sitting on Russell Square park benches, blissfully "watching the world go by." Tolle changed his first name to Eckhart, reportedly in honor of German mystic/philosopher Meister Eckhart.
(Photo by Jonathan Leibson/FilmMagic)
Career
After acquaintances and former Cambridge students started asking Eckhart about his beliefs, he began working as a spiritual teacher and counselor. He later moved to Glastonbury, which was a center of "alternative living." Tolle relocated to Vancouver, Canada, in 1995, and two years later, he published "The Power of Now," which became "A New York Times" bestseller in the Hardcover Advice category after Oprah recommended it in a 2000 issue of "O" magazine. According to Eckhart's website, "The Power of Now" and 2005's "A New Earth" have been translated into more than 50 languages. Three years after its release, "A New Earth" had topped "The New York Times" Best Seller list an impressive 46 times, and in January 2008, it was selected for Oprah's Book Club. Tolle and Winfrey's 2008 "A New Earth" webinars were accessed more than 30 million times by October 2009. Eckhart joined the Dalai Lama at the 2009 Vancouver Peace Summit, and in 2011, Tolle was ranked #1 on the "Watkins Review's" list of "The 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People." In 2016, he was featured on Oprah's "SuperSoul 100" list of "innovators and visionaries who are aligned on a mission to move humanity forward." In 2018, a selection of Eckhart's nature photography was published in "Watkins Body Mind Spirit" magazine.
Personal Life
Eckhart is married to Kim Eng, who he met in Vancouver in the '90s. Eng is a spiritual teacher, and she created Presence Through Movement (PTM), a "powerful practice for awakening consciousness through the body and through movement." Kim has led retreats and workshops all over the world in partnership with Eckhart. In 2016, Eckhart launched the Eckhart Tolle Foundation, which is dedicated to "awakening human consciousness, as well as alleviating – and ultimately ending – the suffering created by the dysfunction of the egoic human mind."
