Tolle describes an unbidden awakening at age 29 — a sudden cessation of identification with the thinking mind — that he spent years integrating before he began to teach. His language is deliberately non-denominational, drawing from Christian Mysticism, Zen, Advaita Vedanta, and phenomenology without making any of them central.
The Power of Now (1997) and A New Earth (2005) have sold tens of millions of copies. Critics find him reductive; the sheer reach of his work made the core insight — that the present moment is the only place life happens — available to readers who would never have found it in any traditional container.