"I cannot live with myself any longer."

The words hung in the darkness of Eckhart Tolle's modest London apartment. It was 1977, and at 29, the Cambridge University graduate had reached the end. Depression had become his constant companion, crushing and relentless. That night, a simple question that fractured his reality: Who is the "I" that cannot live with "myself"? If there's an "I" and a "myself," which one am I?

This question opened a chasm in his consciousness. "I felt drawn into a vortex of energy," Tolle later recalled. "My body began to shake. Fear gripped me so intensely I could barely breathe." Inside his chest, three words emerged: "Resist nothing." And then, surrender.