I purchased an interesting book titled "Eckhart Tolle & Sri Aurobindo- Perspectives on Enlightenment by A.S.Dalal printed in 2008. This book is a comparitive study of the teachings of these two teachers. There is an interview of Eckhart Tolle by AS Dalal & Dr.Mistry in 2002 during Eckhart Tolle's visit to India.
The last question in the interview by Dr.Mistry was that the being in the present form of Eckhart Tolle must have been growing in previous incarnations until it flowered in the present incarnation and that it was unlikely that the totality suddenly put forth ET in this present life? In fact Dr. Mistry hinted that ET might be "Meister Eckhart" reborn. Meister Eckhart was a 13th century German mystic and philosopher. ET seemed to have laughed at this suggestion and did not agree or disagree with Dr.Mistry and answered the question of rebirth in a very impersonal way. However, there is a footnote to this interview which caught my attention:
However subsequent to this interview, in an article on "Living in the Now" (published in the July / August 2002 issue of Body & Soul magazine), Peter Occhiogrosso writes about Eckhart Tolle: In a dream several years after his transformation, he (ET) says, 'Somebody called me "Eckhart" I saw books written by [Meister] Eckhart and I knew I had written them. I realized it was a sign, and that it was my name.' " Soon after, he discarded his given names of Ullrich Leonard and adopted the name he now uses.
