Can Spiritual Practice Liberate Us?

For a long time, I was under the impression that a technique like meditation will bestow Self realisation. This view of mine was completely shattered, when I read the works of Eckhart Tolle, Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi, and Sri Lakshmanaswamy who had realised the Self in the Presence of Bhagavan.

Bhagavan and Sri Laksmanaswamy emphatically say that any form of spiritual practice can be helpful upto a point, but will not in itself bestow the final liberation. The state of Self-realisation happens when after much self-enquiry , and the Grace of the Jnani or the Self pulls back the mind and completely destroys the "I" thought.

Eckhart Tolle, when questioned by Andrew Cohen in the interview "Ripples on the Surface of Being", had this answer to the age old question on whether a spiritual practice can truly liberate us?

ET: I wouldn't say that the practice itself has the power to liberate. It's only when there is complete surrender to the now, to what is, that liberation is possible. I do not believe that a practice will take you into complete surrender. Complete surrender usually happens through living. Your very life is the ground where that happens. There may be a partial surrender and then there may be an opening, and then you may engage in spiritual practice. But whether the spiritual practice is taken up after a certain degree of insight or the spiritual practice is just done in and of itself, the practice alone won't do it.