Oliver - Peace of mind (German Edition)

This guy is definitely not learning German. It is to give some of us a chance to learn German.

We are guessing he never got his C2 certificate from the Goethe Institute, or not in this life at any rate. These words were attributed to Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, who would often have to speak many different languages in his courts.

He supposedly also said that if he wants to talk with God, he speaks Spanish, if he wants to speak with friends, he speaks Italian, and if he wants to flirt, he speaks French. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Italian writer Umberto Eco was very clear about what he saw as the lack of clarity in the German language in his novel The Prague Cemetery.

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But he is willing, it would appear, to indulge me. At the time of his spiritual transformation, Tolle had just completed a degree in languages and history at the University of London, graduating with a first, yet he was anything but happy.

With no plans for his future, he grew more depressed until, as he puts it, "I couldn't live with myself any longer. Maybe, I thought, only one of them is real. I was so stunned by this realisation that my mind stopped. I was conscious, but there were no more thoughts. When thinking later resumed, as Tolle tells it, things were different: Instead, he could observe his thoughts, as if from a distance. He could see that they somehow weren't real: But a peace that was joyful, and alive, and very alert.

The intention of The Power of Now and A New Earth isn't necessarily to trigger a similar sudden transformation in the reader, but to convey a view of human psychology that has deep roots in Buddhism, Hinduism and Sufi Islam. Most of us, Tolle argues, spend most of our lives with a constant "voice in our heads", that judges and interprets reality, and determines our emotional reactions; if you doubt this, it's probably because you're so fully identified with the voice that you can't see the wood for the trees.

There are occasional pauses in the brain-chatter - when gasping in awe at beautiful scenery, doing intense physical exercise, or making love, say - but mostly, we're lost in thought. We're especially lost in thoughts of the past and the future. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now," Tolle says, chuckling. Tolle's transformative experience, which happened in , didn't lead to instant global stardom: Instead, he embarked on a doctorate in Latin American literature at Cambridge.

But it felt meaningless; he dropped out after a year. He spent the next two years in London, sleeping on friends' sofas, and spending the days on park benches in Russell Square, or sheltering in the British Library. When money ran out, he took a temp job doing office admin for the Kennel Club. And from a logical point of view, that looked quite correct. But there were many more years to come of what looked, from the outside, like drifting - including a long spell on the west coast of the United States, where he started to write The Power of Now.

It was first published in , with a print run of 3, copies. It would be 10 years and one Oprah endorsement later before Paris Hilton would be spotted carrying a copy on her way to jail. There are certain contradictions involved in marketing a spiritual message like Tolle's, however valuable the message itself may be. 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: 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.

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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.