A New Earth

Eckhart Tolle is twenty-five and a university student in London. He is a serious, rational young man, used to thinking a great deal. He is not at peace: Tolle is tormented, depressed, utterly unable to enjoy life. One day he has a rather peculiar experience that will help open his eyes to many things. On his way to the library, on the underground, a woman in her thirties sits down opposite him, somewhat beside herself. She looks a little strange and talks to herself. For this reason everyone gives her a wide berth and looks at her askance. The woman, who carries on talking to herself without pause, gets off at the same stop as Tolle. Not only that, she sets off in the same direction. Intrigued, he carries on watching her — until the final surprise: the two are heading for the same building, a multi-storey construction that houses the library and the university’s administrative offices.

How could he and some poor madwoman be going to the same place? No sooner has he begun to wonder than he loses sight of her; she has apparently stepped into one of the many lifts and vanished. Still shaken by the whole scene, the young man goes to the toilet, and as he washes his hands, thinking about the woman, he says out loud, “I hope I don’t end up like that!” In effect Tolle has ended up behaving just like the woman — talking to himself. And sure enough, a man beside him gives him a slightly bewildered look.

That episode teaches the author something important: none of us is really so different from the people we consider mad, like the young woman on the underground. Just like her, even those who think of themselves as normal are constantly caught up in their own thoughts. The difference is that she voices them aloud, while the rest of us do not. We are all a little mad, because we all identify with everything that passes through our heads. Indeed, you could say that for much of our time we live inside our own heads. And in the long run this ends up taking us away from peace, from life in its purest essence, and above all from ourselves.