Eckhart TolleNYT Bestselling author of the Power of Now

Eckhart Tolle: What "I Am" Really Means

20 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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1:17

In this brief teaching, Eckhart Tolle explains that the biblical phrase "I am"—first spoken by God to the prophet and later claimed by Jesus—signifies a timeless, eternal state of pure being that underlies all manifestation. He emphasizes that this is not merely a belief but an experience that can be accessed instantly by temporarily quieting the stream of thought. When thinking stops, a non‑thing, which is actually the source of everything before manifestation, becomes apparent. Tolle describes this pure beingness as something that can be sensed at any moment and allowed to serve as the background for the rest of one's life.

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I am is perhaps the greatest sentence in the Bible, is God's definition of him, her, itself. When the prophet asks— meets God on the top of the mountain and asks, what's your name? And God says, I am. And Jesus said in the Gospel of John, before Abraham was, I am. It is a timeless, eternal, Beingness of you. The wonderful thing is it's not just— it's not a belief. It's something that can be realized immediately, here and now. All that is required is a temporary cessation of the stream of thinking, and something else opens up, which at first looks like nothing. But it's only nothing in the sense that it is not a thing. No thing. Ultimately, one could say it is everything prior to manifestation. That's the I Am. This pure beingness can be easily sensed at any moment, and it can become the backdrop or the background to, to the rest of your life.