In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless

“In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.” — Thus spoke Eckhart Tolle, the modern mystic and teacher of awakening, whose words echo the eternal wisdom of saints and sages throughout the ages. In this teaching, he unveils the secret of true presence, the sacred stillness from which all peace, compassion, and love arise. He reminds us that beneath the noise of thought, beneath the masks of identity and difference, there exists one eternal life — formless, timeless, and divine — that flows through every being. To awaken to that truth is to see beyond illusion; it is to see the face of God in all creation.

The origin of this teaching lies in Tolle’s own awakening — a moment of profound inner silence that came after years of suffering and despair. In that silence, he discovered that his true self was not the restless mind that worried and judged, but the consciousness behind it, vast and serene. From that moment, he understood what all the great mystics had proclaimed: that enlightenment is not something to be achieved, but something to be remembered. For the stillness he speaks of is not an escape from life — it is life itself, free from the distortions of fear and desire. When we rest in this stillness, we feel the unmanifested life — the living essence that animates all things.

To feel this presence is to touch eternity. When one sits in silence and allows the world to fall away — the thoughts, the roles, the endless striving — something miraculous happens: a quiet awareness arises, radiant and unchanging. This is what Tolle calls the formless reality. It has no name, no boundary, and yet it is what gives meaning and existence to all that is. It is the same life that beats in your heart and in the heart of the bird that sings outside your window. To feel this connection is to awaken from the dream of separateness. It is to see that there was never “you” and “me,” “this” and “that,” but only one infinite presence taking a thousand forms.

In this awakening, Tolle says, we look beyond the veil of form and separation. The forms of the world — bodies, faces, beliefs, identities — are but garments of the eternal. When we cling to them, we suffer; we divide the world into friend and enemy, success and failure, self and other. But when we see through them, when we glimpse the stillness beneath, love arises naturally — not as sentiment, but as recognition. For love is not something we do; it is what we are when the veil of illusion falls away. To realize oneness is to realize love itself.

This truth can be found reflected in the life of St. Francis of Assisi, the gentle saint who spoke to the birds and called even the wolf his brother. Like Tolle, Francis saw beyond form — he saw the same divine light shining in all creatures. To him, the sun was his brother, the moon his sister, the leper his equal. His heart was vast because he had remembered the oneness that most forget. His love was not limited to those who pleased him; it flowed from the recognition that all life is sacred because all life is one. The stillness of his spirit was his temple, and in that stillness, he found God everywhere.

Tolle’s teaching carries this same ancient flame into the modern world. He asks not that we withdraw from life, but that we awaken within it — that we pause amid our rushing, breathe deeply, and listen for the quiet pulse of being beneath every moment. When we walk in nature and truly see, when we gaze into another’s eyes and recognize the same consciousness gazing back, we begin to live from the heart of unity. The divisions of race, creed, and nation begin to fade like mist under sunlight. In their place grows a love that does not discriminate — a love born from the stillness of the eternal now.

Therefore, dear seeker, take this teaching into your heart: the stillness of presence is the doorway to heaven. You do not need to chase truth, for you are already within it. You need only to stop, to be silent, and to feel. When you dwell in that silence, even for a breath, you will sense the formless life within you — the same life that moves through every creature and every star. Treat all beings, then, as sacred reflections of that one reality. Speak gently, act kindly, live humbly. For every act of compassion is an act of remembrance, and every moment of awareness is a return to the infinite.

This is the essence of Eckhart Tolle’s wisdom: that love is not found in seeking, but in seeing. It is the natural fragrance of awakening. When you rest in the stillness of your presence, you dissolve into the unity that has always been. There, beyond all forms, beyond all divisions, lies the one eternal truth — the realization of oneness. And that, beloved soul, is not just peace. That is love.