Below is Eckhart Toll's description of his moment of awakening from his book, "The Power of Now". From what I've read in three of his books he did not practice any form of meditation, or any discipline such as the Eightfold Path prior to what he calls his awakening. He simply spontaneously awoke into a state of peaceful equanimity which was brought about by a state of deep suicidal depression. Is this credible?
I do not believe that it is reasonable to believe that one who does not lead a disciplined, rigorous, self-ware contemplative life becomes enlightened. Therefore I do not accept claims of: being born enlightened, or experiencing instant enlightenment, nor receiving enlightenment through the touch or blessing of a saint or mystic. Just remember that we know a tree by its fruit. That fruit is the, the Fruit of the Contemplative Life.
Until my thirtieth year, I lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression. It feels now as if I am talking about some past lifetime or somebody else's life.
While I can see how a life of anxiety would lead to a spiritual crisis, which could propel one into the contemplative life; however, I fail to see how a life filled with anxiety would lead directly to enlightenment.
One night not long after my twenty-ninth birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread.
This actually reminds me of Ramana Maharshi's story. I wonder if he borrowed it?
I had woken up with such a feeling many times before but this time it was more intense than it had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing train - everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it created in me a deep loathing of the world. The most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence. What was the point in continuing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live. "I cannot live with myself any longer." This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. "Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with." "Maybe," I thought, "only one of them is real."
This is classic non-dual inquiry. I would bet that he had been reading Ramana Maharshi.
I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts.
So, here we can give him credit for an experience of the second stage of the religious experience (2nd jhana).
Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words "resist nothing," as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.
Energy is virtue, virya, kundalini, Shakti, and the experience of energy typically begins to occur at the 3rd stage of the religious experience. So, here we can give him credit for an experience of the 3rd stage of the religious experience (3rd jhana).
I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window. I had never heard such sound before. My eyes were still closed, and I saw the image of a precious diamond. Yes, if a diamond could make a sound, this is what it would be like. I opened my eyes. The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains. Without any thought, I felt, I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize. That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself. Tears came into my eyes. I got up and walked around the room. I recognized the room, and yet I knew that I had never truly seen it before. Everything was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence. I picked up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and aliveness of it all. That day I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world.
For the next five months, I lived in a state of uninterrupted deep peace and bliss. After that, it diminished somewhat in intensity, or perhaps it just seemed to because it became my natural state. I could still function in the world, although I realized that nothing I ever did could possibly add anything to what I already had.
I knew, of course, that something profoundly significant had happened to me, but I didn't understand it at all. It wasn't until several years later, after I had read spiritual texts and spent time with spiritual teachers, that I realized that what everybody was looking for had already happened to me. I understood that the intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind. This withdrawal must have been so complete that this false, suffering self immediately collapsed, just as if a plug had been pulled out of an inflatable toy. What was left then was my true nature as the ever-present I am: consciousness in its pure state prior to identification with form.
A single religious experience can be so profound as to transform our point of view on life, and it seems to have done so for Mr. Tolle.
Later I also learned to go into that inner timeless and deathless realm that I had originally perceived as a void and remain fully conscious. I dwelt in states of such indescribable bliss and sacredness that even the original experience I just described pales in comparison. A time came when, for a while, I was left with nothing on the physical plane. I had no relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity. I spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most intense joy.
But even the most beautiful experiences come and go. More fundamental, perhaps, than any experience is the undercurrent of peace that has never left me since then. Sometimes it is very strong, almost palpable, and others can feel it too. At other times, it is somewhere in the background, like a distant melody.
Here we see that Mr. Tolle finally took up a contemplative life and was getting more out of it than the average person who claims to practice meditation. We can call "intense joy" 'sukha' and "indescribable bliss and sacredness" 'piiti', which are the components of the first stage of the religious experience (1st jhana). If we want to be generous, then we can also call his "peace" the tranquility of the 2nd religious experience (2nd jhana).
