Echart Tolle, Byron Katie: Born of Desperation?

I suppose most readers of this blog have also read something of Echart Tolle and Byron Katie and probably also noticed how very Zen-like their books, The Power of Now and Loving What Is are. I know quite a few individuals whose lives have been radically changed by reading these two books.

Well, what is also interesting is the similarity in the biographical prefaces to these two books. Both authors, according to testimony, were almost incapacitated by depression when they experienced their epiphanies: Byron Katie:
In the midst of an ordinary life -- two marriages, three children, a successful career -- Katie had entered a ten-year-long downward spiral into rage, paranoia, and despair. For two years she was so depressed that she could seldom manage to leave her house; she stayed in bed for weeks at a time, doing business by telephone from her bedroom, unable even to bathe or brush her teeth. Her children would tiptoe past her door to avoid her outbursts of rage. Finally, she checked in to a halfway house for women with eating disorders, the only facility that her insurance company would pay for. The other residents were so frightened of her that she was placed alone in an attic room.
Echart Tolle:
One night, not long after my 29th birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absoute dread. I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than it had ever been before. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing train -- everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless, that it created a deep loathing in me: a deep loathing of the world. The most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence. What was the point in continuing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for non-existence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live. 'I cannot live with myself any longer.' This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind.

Were these authors' breakthroughs born of desperation? Certainly their testimonies are moments of sudden illumination, akin to Zen teaching that enlightenment can arrive suddenly, in an instant, not through long periods of study or even discipline. What appears to be important --as always-- is the burning desire to change, and the willingness to let everything go, to risk everything on that desire to change. Haaa! Enlightenment is not for the timid! [?] :)