Eckhart Tolle: Essential Teachings
Arts & Culture Podcasts
Oprah Winfrey is delighted to introduce a new weekly podcast series from one of the great spiritual thinkers of our time: Eckhart Tolle. Eckhart’s wisdom will help you learn to quiet your mind, separate your ego from your true self and live a fully present life. Essential Teachings by Eckhart will provide a path to discover an enlightened state of consciousness. Oprah says Eckhart transformed her life and hopes these Essential Teachings will inspire you to seek your own higher purpose.
Location:
United States
Genres:
Arts & Culture Podcasts
Description:
Oprah Winfrey is delighted to introduce a new weekly podcast series from one of the great spiritual thinkers of our time: Eckhart Tolle. Eckhart’s wisdom will help you learn to quiet your mind, separate your ego from your true self and live a fully present life. Essential Teachings by Eckhart will provide a path to discover an enlightened state of consciousness. Oprah says Eckhart transformed her life and hopes these Essential Teachings will inspire you to seek your own higher purpose.
Language:
English
Episodes
Essential Teachings Special: Forgiveness and Awakening
10/23/2025
Eckhart discusses forgiveness. He says most of us carry resentments or grievances. Eckhart calls them internal dark spots that block consciousness from emerging and strengthen the ego. True forgiveness he says, is not something we make happen. It arises naturally when we’re connected to the deeper essence of who we are.
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Duration:00:23:48
Essential Teachings Special: Accessing the Dimension Beyond Thought
10/16/2025
Eckhart explains why our goal is to learn to access the transcendent part of ourselves which is beyond thinking. Most people have no connection to this state until some crisis pushes them to dig deeper. Eckhart says we must find spaces of awareness between thoughts which will eventually lead us to a state of being that is connected to the soul of the universe.
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Duration:00:34:58
Essential Teachings Special: Real Change Begins with Our State of Consciousness
10/9/2025
Eckhart says the most important things we can do is transform our state of consciousness, realize our connection to the source and let go of our self-imposed limitations. He compares the transcendent realm to the sun. We are like a ray from that source, shining into this world. Eckhart believes everyone on the planet is a brief flicker of consciousness… here for a short time; but connected to the eternal.
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Duration:00:31:10
Essential Teachings Special: Know Thyself: Remembering Who We Are
10/2/2025
Eckhart quotes ancient Greek philosopher, Pythagorus who said, “Know thyself.” Eckhart says unfortunately our educational system is geared toward only one kind of knowledge: the intellectual. He explains how there is another knowledge based on wisdom and intuition. It’s that kind of inner-knowing he says we must embrace, not as a replacement for intellectual knowledge but as a much-needed addition.
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Duration:00:35:59
Essential Teachings Special: Rising Above Life’s Challenges
9/25/2025
Eckhart asks, “When life’s challenges strike, how do we respond?” He questions do we rise above worn-out patterns with new awareness or do we spiral into the old unconsciousness. He says we shouldn’t blame ourselves when we relapse. Suffering and setbacks are a necessary and vital part of awakening.
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Duration:00:40:07
Essential Teachings Special: Growing Up and Waking Up
9/18/2025
Eckhart discusses the path to awakening. He says there are two stages to a person’s life: waking up and growing up. Many start to awaken, only to later discover large parts of their personality lag behind; they haven’t really grown up. To reach maturity Eckhart says spiritual practice must encompass all of who we are and become an integral part of our daily lives.
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Duration:00:35:23
Essential Teachings Special: Liberation from the Mind
9/11/2025
Eckhart says the beginning of liberation is when you realize you are not the thinker. He says many people derive their identity from what the mind tells them. For those who have not yet awakened that is where they find their sense of self. We free ourselves when we begin to realize there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought and that the things which truly matter like joy, love and inner peace arise beyond the mind.
Duration:00:33:54
Essential Teachings Special: The Joy of Being
9/4/2025
Eckhart discusses discovering the joy of being. He says in any given moment we have the chance to remain open to life, align with what is and experience a natural sense of peace and aliveness. Eckhart helps us release past conditioning to experience ourselves and our lives with a fresh perspective and sense of delight.
Duration:00:34:34
Essential Teachings Special: The Deep I
8/28/2025
Eckhart takes listeners through a live meditation inspired by a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The wick of individual life runs deep into the oil of pure being." Eckhart says we have great depth within. He encourages listeners to reach beyond the limitations of their personality to find what he calls the Deep I. He describes it as that aspect of ourselves which transcends the ego and is connected to the ultimate source of universal consciousness.
Duration:00:42:05
Essential Teachings Special: The Stillness Within
8/21/2025
Eckhart takes listeners through two live meditations about the stillness within. He says finding the transcendent dimension is the only thing that will satisfy us. He believes it’s not something we can achieve, it’s something we discover in the here and now. Eckhart explains why becoming aware of ourselves in stillness is the essence of all identity.
Duration:00:43:32
Essential Teachings Special: Addiction to Thinking
8/14/2025
Eckhart answers questions on several topics, including one about addiction. He says people are addicted to many substances. But the greatest addiction of all is thinking. It’s like a drug…and people can’t stop. They resist letting go because it shields them from the painful parts of their lives. Eckhart says the solution is presence. Becoming aware slows down an overactive mind. Our confusion dissipates…and thinking loses its ability to wreak havoc in our lives.
Duration:00:44:06
Essential Teachings Special: Surrendering the Ego
8/7/2025
Eckhart addresses topics like surrendering the ego, what to do with anger and how to confront our fears. Eckhart says fear arises when we become drawn into negative thinking and project it into the future. He goes on to say that most of the time, fear has no basis in reality because when the future finally arrives, it’s actually the present moment again. And in the present there is usually nothing to fear.
Duration:00:34:06
Essential Teachings Special: Liberation Through Stillness
7/31/2025
Eckhart leads a meditation and then answers questions from a live audience. He says the most important thing to achieve in our lifetime is stillness because without it we feel frustrated, angry and discontent. He says stillness is the answer that brings the sense of aliveness we feel when we’re free of thought.
Duration:00:49:37
Essential Teachings Special: You are the Light of Consciousness
7/24/2025
Eckhart talks with a live audience about the new consciousness he sees emerging around the world. He says one of life’s great mysteries is that the universe is conscious. While scientists struggle to define it and we can’t see it under a microscope, consciousness exists. Eckhart says we are living proof of that and we have a role to play. He quotes an ancient aphorism: “You are the light of the world.” He says what that means is we are the light of consciousness manifesting in the world.
Duration:00:51:17
Essential Teachings Special: Beyond the Conceptual Self
7/17/2025
Eckhart talks with a live audience about letting go of our false sense of self. He says when we base our identity on externals: our looks, what we do and where we live - that’s the ego. In that state, we’re either inferior or superior; never equal. True relationships become impossible. But when we’re grounded in essential being, the need to compare disappears and we discover we are infinitely precious.
Duration:00:45:18
Essential Teachings Special: Presence: The Natural Path that Leads to Life
7/10/2025
Eckhart talks with a live audience about freeing oneself from the mind to find presence. He says, we must become aware of the harmful thoughts that hold us hostage. Life’s crises need not drag us into unconsciousness. We can stay alert, and let the rough times take us to a deeper state of awareness. Eckhart says while the path to presence is narrow, it ultimately leads to life.
Duration:00:51:36
Essential Teachings Special: Accept Each Moment as if You Had Chosen It
7/3/2025
Eckhart talks with a live audience about the process of becoming aware. When challenges arise, he says go with it. Learn to accept each moment as if we had chosen it. He explains that if you do this, what at first looks like an obstacle then becomes an opening into transcendence.
Duration:00:49:36
Essential Teachings Special: Bringing Consciousness to This World
6/26/2025
Eckhart talks with a live audience about his belief that we are meant to bring consciousness to this world. To do that, we must keep the pathways clear. We rise above thought, not fall below it, which is what happens when we use substances like alcohol and drugs. Once we become free of that, Eckhart says we realize the essence behind the personality… which is pure presence.
Duration:01:00:40
Essential Teachings Special: The Next Stage of Human Evolution
6/12/2025
Original Air Date: September 30, 2021. Eckhart talks to a live audience. He says most of us are going through a transition in consciousness which he calls awakening. He sees that as the next stage of human evolution. There have been rare periods in history when collective awareness made great leaps forward. Eckhart sees a similar shift happening now. He says we must continue with our practice, release our inner turmoil and align ourselves with the inevitable now.
Duration:00:44:24
Essential Teachings Special: Awakening Right Where You Are
6/5/2025
Original Air Date: September 23, 2021. Eckhart talks with a live audience and urges participants to wake up from the delusion that the things we think will make us happy… won’t. Even if we get everything on our wish-list: wealth, fame, a life of ease, we feel unsatisfied. But Eckhart says the world is not here to make us happy. It’s here to help us evolve. He says whatever our situation is, we can surrender to life’s challenges and awaken right where we are.
Duration:00:57:48