by Harris, Dan
When I arrived back in the procedure room this time, the doctor explained that the cancer was bigger than she had thought—and she still didn’t know how big. I pressed her for worst-case scenarios and she admitted that there was a danger that it might have spread up into the lower part of my eyelid. If that were true, closing the wound would likely involve a scar that permanently pulled down my right eye.
I could feel my heartbeat accelerate as the following movie instantly played out in my mind:
Scar the size of Omar Little’s from The Wire → Fired from ABC News → Seeks career in radio
But then a funny thing happened. After all my reading about the empty nattering of the ego, I realized: These fearful forecasts were just thoughts skittering through my head. They weren’t irrational, but they weren’t necessarily true. It was a momentary glimpse of the wisdom of Tolle’s thesis. It’s not like I’d never been aware of my thoughts before. I’d had plenty of experience with being scared and knowing I was scared. What made this different was that I was able to see my thoughts for what they were: just thoughts, with no concrete reality. It’s not that my worry suddenly ceased, I just wasn’t as taken in by it. I recognized the truth of this situation: I had no idea what was going to happen to my face, and reflexively believing the worst-case scenarios coughed up by ego certainly wasn’t going to help.
The doctor made her third slice, and then sent me back out into the waiting room. Bianca remarked that I was staying surprisingly calm. I didn’t want to give the credit to Tolle, lest she think I was going crazy. She already thought it was weird that I’d been reading this book for so long.
Ultimately, I had to go back in for four facial slices before the tumor was fully removed. They came within a millimeter, but the lower part of my eyelid was spared. Before they sewed me up, the doctor showed me the wound in a mirror and I nearly fainted. I could see well into the side of my cheek—blood, fat, and all. Bianca took out her phone and snapped a picture.
I had done surprisingly well in the crucible of face surgery, but you can’t carry an Eckhart Tolle book around with you everywhere you go.
A couple of weeks later, I was checking TVNewser, an addictive website that tracks the doings of the broadcast news industry, and I came across a list of the anchors and correspondents who would be covering the inauguration of President Barack Obama. My name was not mentioned. I was, to put it mildly, displeased.
Unlike my experience with the surgery, here I was unable to achieve any distance from the angry thoughts caroming through my head. Instead, I took the bait dangled by my ego, which was yammering on in high dudgeon: You’re getting screwed here, dude. I shoved back my chair and started pacing around my office in tight circles, like a Chihuahua doing dressage. Over the next twenty-four hours, I buttonholed every executive I could find and voiced my complaints. Instead of winning me a role in the coverage, however, the whining earned me a reprimand. One of my bosses took me aside and told me that the decision wasn’t personal, and then advised me to stop “bleeding all over the place.”
This was my major beef with Tolle. Setting aside my qualms about his flowery writing, questionable claims, and bizarre backstory, what I truly could not abide was the lack of practical advice for handling situations like this. He delivered an extraordinary diagnosis of the human condition with basically no action plan for combating the ego (never mind for achieving living-on-a-park-bench superbliss).
How do we do a better job of staying in the Now? Tolle’s answer: “Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment.” How do we achieve liberation from the voice in the head? His advice: simply be aware of it. “To become free of the ego is not really a big job but a very small one.” Yes, right. Easy. But if it were this uncomplicated, wouldn’t there be millions of awakened people walking around?
Then there was an even larger question: Even if I had been able to recognize that my umbrage over not being included in inauguration coverage consisted of mere thoughts, should I have simply ignored them? I could see the value of recognizing thoughts for what they are—fleeting, gossamer, unsubstantial—but aren’t some thoughts connected to concrete realities that need to be addressed?
In his books, Tolle repeatedly denigrated the habit of worrying, which he characterized as a useless process of projecting fearfully into an imaginary future. “There is no way that you can cope with such a situation, because it doesn’t exist. It’s a mental phantom,” he wrote. But, while I understood the benefit of being in the Now, the future was coming. Didn’t I have to prepare? If I didn’t think through every permutation of every potential problem, how the hell would I survive in a competitive industry? Furthermore, wasn’t the restless ego the source of mankind’s proudest achievements? Sure, it was probably responsible for ills such as war, child abuse, and Pauly Shore movies, but hadn’t human striving also given us the polio vaccine, Caravaggio’s paintings, and the iPhone?
And yet, and yet . . . I was aware, of course, that my chattering mind was not entirely working in my favor. I was pretty sure that staring at my hairline or brooding on my couch was not time well spent. I used to think pressing the bruise kept me on my toes. Now I realized those moments mostly just made me unhappy.
Tolle was forcing me to confront the fact that the thing I’d always thought was my greatest asset—my internal cattle prod—was also perhaps my greatest liability. I was now genuinely questioning my own personal orthodoxy, my “price of security” mantra, which had been my operating thesis since, like, age eight. All of a sudden, I didn’t know: Was it propulsive—or corrosive?
I wanted to excel, yes—but I also wanted to be less stressed in the process. This strange little German man seemed to raise the tantalizing possibility of doing both, but the books were not at all explicit about how to do so—at least not in a way that I understood.
So I decided: I needed to meet this guy.
I ran into Felicia in the hallway at work. “Let’s book Eckhart Tolle for an interview,” I said. “We could do it as a ‘Sunday Profile,’ ” a weekly feature we’d recently decided to launch.
It was as if I’d told her that she’d hit the Powerball, or been chosen for beatification. She was beaming. Unlike me, she did not harbor suspicions that Tolle might be a fruitcake. She was all in.
A couple of days later, she reported back that Tolle, who apparently rarely granted interviews, had said yes. He’d be in Toronto in a few weeks hence, giving a sold-out speech, and we’d been granted a one-hour audience. “They’re being really strict about the time limit,” she said, but she was still giddy.
I flew in from New York on the morning of the interview. When I arrived at the hotel room where we’d be shooting, Felicia was there with the camera crew and a clean-cut young Australian guy named Anthony who appeared to be Tolle’s right-hand man. I’d expected a larger staff, but it was just this one guy.
As we awaited the arrival of the Great Man, Anthony told me his story. He’d read some of Tolle’s books, called him up, and asked for a job. When Tolle said yes, Anthony packed all his stuff and moved from Australia to Vancouver, where Tolle lived. Anthony struck me as reasonably normal, with his neatly gelled blond hair and pressed shirt. He discussed his boss with genuine admiration but not adulation; nothing in his bearing screamed “cult” to me.
Shortly thereafter, there was a knock on the door, and Tolle entered. The first thing I noticed was that he was small. Smaller than me, and I’m about five-foot-nine on days when I’ve used Bianca’s volumizing shampoo. No entourage, just him. He had none of the swagger of a man who’d sold tens of millions of books and had a one-man industry of speaking gigs, CDs, and “inspiration cards.” He walked up and introduced himself with a handshake. He was unassuming, but not shy. Not unfriendly, but not especially warm. Just as he had on Oprah’s webinar, he seemed pleased to be there, but not particularly eager. He was wearing an astoundingly bland, brown blazer over a tan sweater and a pale blue dress shirt. He had a scraggly beard that covered just his chin and neck.
After the exchange of pleasantries, we took our seats for the interview. There were two cameras: one trained on Tolle, the other on me. I was mildly self-conscious about my mottled cheek, but mostly I was just excited. Here I was, finally face-to-face with the man who had come out of nowhere and so thoroughly intrigued and confused me. This was the first interview since I’d started covering spirituality where I actually felt like I had some skin in the game.
“How on earth do you stop thinking?” I began. “How do you stop the voice in your head?”
I had a momentary surge of optimism as he shifted in his chair in clear preparation to give the practical advice I’d been yearning for.
“You create little spaces in your daily life where you are aware but not thinking,” he said. “For example, you take one conscious breath.”
Un-break my heart, Eckhart. That’s all you’ve got?
“But,” I said, “I can hear the cynics in the audience saying, ‘This guy’s saying I can awaken by taking a deep breath. What is he talking about?’ ”
“Yes—that’s the mind talking. Of course, many people will have their mind commenting on what I’m saying—and saying, ‘That is useless.’ ”
In fact, that was exactly what my mind was saying: That is useless.
My mind started saying things that were even less charitable as he rolled out his second, allegedly practical suggestion. “Another very powerful thing is to become aware of the inner energy field of your being.”
Aware that I had a camera aimed at me, I hammed it up, again using that old journalistic trick of channeling a third-party “cynic,” who could really be no one other than me.
“ ‘Energy field.’ Those are two words that, when put together, will fire off cynics’ antennae very, very quickly.”
“Yes, now those are people who are very much in their mind. So they are not even willing to try out something new.”
I mentioned that my efforts to stay in the Now had been frustrating, adding another layer of guilt on top of the normal churn of my mind. “Because I’m thinking all the time,” I said, “I can’t be in touch with the Now, so now I’m feeling guilty about not being in touch with the Now.”
“Yes, as you rightly put it, that’s another layer of thinking—and that layer of thinking says, ‘You see, it doesn’t work. I can’t be free of thinking.’ Which is more thinking,” he said, laughing gently.
“So how do you break out of that?”
“You simply observe that it’s another thought. And by knowing that it’s another thought, you’re not totally identified with the thought.”
This made my head hurt. Clearly this line of questioning was going nowhere. Keenly aware that Tolle’s assistant, Anthony, had his eye on the clock, I decided to move on—which is when we came to the part of the interview where Tolle made what I considered to be his most ludicrous claim yet.
“Don’t you ever get pissed off, annoyed, irritated, sad—anything negative?”
“No, I accept what is. And that’s why life has become so simple.”
“Well, what if somebody cuts you off in your car?”
“It’s fine. It’s like a sudden gust of wind. I don’t personalize a gust of wind, and so it’s simply what is.”
“And you’re able to enjoy every moment, even if I start asking you a ton of annoying questions?”
“Yes. That would be fine.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
Here he let out a real laugh—from the diaphragm, leaning forward in his chair, eyes almost closed. He recovered and picked right up: “It’s becoming friendly just with the is-ness of this moment.”
The is-ness of this moment? Who was this guy kidding? Was he really saying that he was never in a bad mood? That nothing ever bothered him? How could he sit there on camera and claim that? It sounded great, of course. But so did learning how to fly.
“I don’t fully understand that, because I sometimes think about change—either innovation or social activism—like that little bit of sand in an oyster that creates the pearl.”
“Yes, well . . .”
“Is it a clam or an oyster? I can’t remember. Anyway, you know what I’m talking about.”
Laughing again, he continued. “The most powerful change comes actually out of that different state of consciousness. This is why people so admire what Gandhi did, because he was bringing about change from a state of consciousness that was already at peace. And people sometimes believe that if you’re already at peace you’re never going to do anything. But that’s not the case. Very powerful actions come out of that.”
“So, you’re not saying sit around, let everything wash over you, let people cut you off in your car. You’re saying understand that it is what it is right now—”
“And then do what you need to do,” he said, interrupting me this time, and speaking with uncharacteristic brio. “Make the present moment your friend rather than your enemy. Because many people live habitually as if the present moment were an obstacle that they need to overcome in order to get to the next moment. And imagine living your whole life like that, where always this moment is never quite right, not good enough because you need to get to the next one. That is continuous stress.”
Okay, now this made a ton of sense to me. For example, in the case of inauguration coverage, I could have accepted that my exclusion was already a reality, and then simply had a series of calm conversations with my bosses about whether it was possible to change things—instead of firing off a spray of footbullets.
Sitting with Tolle was like watching the movie version of his books. Both in person and on the page, he moved with total ease between tremendously useful insights, and head-scratching, grandiose claims about perfect imperturbability.
By this point, the interview had run long. Felicia was visibly anxious. She apologetically explained to Tolle and Anthony that we really needed a “walking shot”—a picture of me and Tolle walking down the street or something. Everyone agreed this request could be accommodated.
We took the elevator down to the lobby, where I chatted with Tolle while Felicia and the crew went outside to find a suitable spot for the shot. Sometimes, after an interview, people are warmer; they’re relieved it’s over and they feel they’ve gotten to know their interviewer a bit. Tolle’s affect, however, was utterly unchanged. He exuded the same pleasant unflappability. Making small talk, I asked him his age, and he told me he was sixty-two. When I remarked that he looked much younger than that, he told me matter-of-factly that he basically hadn’t aged since he’d had his spiritual awakening, which happened when he was twenty-nine. Yet another sharp left turn into crazy town.
The story aired a few weeks later on both Sunday World News and Nightline. The reactions from my colleagues were interesting. A few of them wrote Tolle off as a whack-job. Several others said they found him oddly compelling. My friend Jeanmarie, for example, described him as being like a Yule log—initially boring, but ultimately mesmerizing.
Personally, the encounter had left me in a funny spot. I definitely didn’t think Tolle was a fraud. I’d interviewed hucksters—prosperity preachers, child slave dealers, Saddam Hussein flunkies who vowed to turn back the U.S.-led invasion—but this guy didn’t give off the I’m-full-of-shit-and-I-know-it vibe at all. Maybe he was simply deluded? Impossible for me to tell.
Essentially, I was right back where I was the first time I peered into the pages of his strange little book: fascinated yet frustrated. Tolle had opened something up for me—a window into the enfeebling clamor of the ego. But he had not answered my most pressing questions. How do you tame the voice in your head? How do you stay in the Now? Was it really possible to defeat the gray Stalinism of self-absorption without ending up on a park bench? I was not about to let this drop. It was as if I’d met a man who’d told me my hair was on fire, and then refused to offer me a fire extinguisher.
Chapter 4
Happiness, Inc.
The first thing you notice is the rhinestone gla
sses. Then the fragrance—like he’s just stepped out of a two-hour massage.
I met Deepak Chopra six weeks after my interview with Eckhart Tolle. While I had thought of little else other than the ego and its discontents during those weeks, my encounter with Chopra, another self-help superstar, was entirely unplanned. I called it serendipity; Chopra almost certainly would have called it karma.
I had been asked to fly to Seattle to moderate a Nightline debate (or “Face-Off,” in the preferred rebranding of the show’s executive producer) with the extremely subtle title “Does Satan Exist?” Chopra—who was always, as we say in the business, “TV-friendly”—had been booked to argue the “no” case, alongside a Pentecostal bishop who’d lost most of his congregation after publicly reconsidering the existence of the Devil. The “yes” side was made up of a hip, young local pastor as well as a former prostitute who ran an evangelical group called Hookers for Jesus.
I was only vaguely familiar with Chopra. I knew, of course, that he was probably the most famous guru on earth and that he’d written truckloads of bestselling books. I had seen his cameo in the movie The Love Guru. He struck me as the Golden Arches or Nike Swoosh of spirituality—a globally recognized icon next to whom celebrities could pose when they wanted to signal “depth.”
I was also aware that while he preached good vibes and serenity, Chopra enjoyed wading into controversies over politics, science, and faith—sometimes even going on Fox News to mix it up with conservative hosts like Sean Hannity.
It was that combination of spiritual star power and zeal for rhetorical combat that had motivated my producers to book Chopra for this Face-Off, which we were filming in a church in downtown Seattle. The house was packed with a thousand people, all invited by the four debaters. The plan was to have the participants go at it for two hours, while we recorded with a battery of cameras strategically located throughout the room. We would then cut it down to the juiciest moments, and air it as a full half-hour broadcast of Nightline several weeks later.
