There are certain contradictions involved in marketing a spiritual message like Tolle's, however valuable the message itself may be. For example: you shouldn't make "being more present in the moment" into a goal to achieve, Tolle argues; the whole point is just to be here now, not to lose yourself in the thought of becoming "enlightened" in the future.
And yet it's surely precisely that hope of future attainment that keeps millions of people buying each new Tolle product - not just his books and DVDs, but calendars, and other books consisting entirely of nicely presented quotations from his main two books. He seems only marginally bothered by this. But it must not become self-serving, so that the structure" - the organisation, and its profits - "become more important than the teachings.
He never made a conscious decision to promote himself, he maintains, and it's hard not to believe him: he isn't surrounded by a loyal band of followers, and he seems to live, Vancouver penthouse flat notwithstanding, much as he ever did. But even then, I don't think 'I'm going to give a big talk tonight. I look out of the window, there is just that moment. Tolle's quiet presence has a way of burning up people's cynicism, mine included, and yet I still can't quite believe that life inside his head is as constantly peaceful as he claims.
Doesn't he ever get irritated? I felt a wave of irritation. But what happens is it doesn't stick around, because it's not perpetuated by thought activity. It only lasted moments. He lives in Vancouver with his partner of nine years, a Canadian woman named Kim Eng, who often teaches alongside him.
They have no children. Do they ever have arguments, as in ordinary relationships? But we don't fight. It's like Obama says - you don't need to be disagreeable when you disagree. That sounds lighthearted, but there's a profound truth behind it, because it implies that you don't need to be totally identified with your mental positions.
Tolle grew up in circumstances that were decidedly less zen. He was born Ulrich Tolle, in a town near Dortmund, to a matter-of-fact mother and an eccentric, head-in-the-clouds father; they fought, then divorced, and his father left the country. At 13, he says, he abruptly refused to go to school - "I hated having to study things that were not compatible with my inner being" - and his exasperated mother eventually sent him to live with his father in Spain.
Do what you like. So I didn't get totally conditioned by one culture. If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it. My conditioning got completely broken, so there was an opening to other world views.
Books like Tolle's, neither traditionally religious nor rationalist, are sitting targets for criticism from across the spectrum: when Winfrey began promoting him, Christian viewers of her show accused her of trying to start her own church; to hardcore rationalists, Tolle's ideas are no better than the crystals-and-angels nonsense that clutters the new-age shelves.
Both critiques miss the point. At its most basic, Tolle's message - that we spend our lives largely absent from our lives, identified instead with our thoughts - isn't even particularly mystical: a moment's introspection demonstrates it to be obviously true.
Whether or not Tolle's writing will help jolt you out of your reverie, on the other hand, is largely a matter of your personal taste in prose style. For many, it seems to work, and if they see him in public - despite the baseball cap disguise he wears - they tend to rush over to tell him.
As contemporary humanity seeks to create a global community, some sort of "new earth," the age-old challenge that Joshua issued to Israel is placed before us with added urgency: "Choose this day whom ye will serve": the gods or God, because, in the global community, as Bob Dylan rightly observed, "you're gonna have to serve somebody.
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Escondido, Calif. You've read of free articles. Subscribe to continue. Mark Sappenfield. Our work isn't possible without your support. Digital subscription includes: Unlimited access to CSMonitor. The Monitor Daily email. This means that you must control your mind and deliver yourself from the slavery to past and future. What exactly does this emancipation feel like? And how do you carry it off?
Take an example. Suppose you are planting a garden in your backyard and every time you stick your spade in the earth your resentment of an enemy is tweaked into life, and you, barely consciously, and certainly not freely, are destroying him in argument or slapping her hated face in your imagination.
Or maybe even sticking a spade in his heart! What effect does this have on you? In a word, it makes you miserable. Your pulse is up, your breathing is shallow and quick, and your adrenaline is stampeding.
But there is a way out of it. Get into the habit, Mr. Tolle says, of reminding yourself that the mind is not you.
Rather it is your instrument. A precious instrument when used wisely, but a beast when left to its own devices. Program yourself to quiet the incessant chatter, to enter the silence, to dwell in inner space where, for a brief moment, the mind is absolutely still. Be aware of the stillness that follows the I Am. If you do this, Mr. Tolle equates this Being with what most of us call God. And we are part of that universe. So we, in our depths, are divine consciousness manifesting itself in a material world, individual by individual.
For what purpose? Can Christian thought affirm this sort of theology? Some would say it sounds a lot more like the Hindu Vedanta, or even Zen, than anything Christian.
But then there are the mystics.
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