"In the presence of presence the accumulated suffering from the past begins to dissolve, and that's the true teaching. That's why presence is so beautiful and why people want to be close to a teacher. It's not the form of the teacher; the attraction is to be in the presence of the presence. It's a very powerful thing to sit with someone who looks like somebody but is not somebody. When there's somebody there who is transparent enough so that the stillness comes through unhindered, there's a reciprocal movement in you because the presence of stillness suddenly recognizes itself. There's an almost magnetic pull of being. It gets pulled out of you, forward, and it meets all of the other being's being. Words are not really necessary for that to happen. They can be floating on the surface. Being recognizes itself. People come together, being in response to being.
That's the beauty of it."
Ekhart Tolle in an interview "Stillness & Presence" in Inquiring Mind 18:1, Fall 2001 free subscriptions PO Box 9999 Berkeley, CA 94709)