Perhaps arguing with Mr Tolle might be more accurate, great teacher though he is!
When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.
Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I AM that is deeper than name and form. Stillness Speaks p.3
IMHO
1) It makes sense to distinguish between self and Self.
Self is Source/Wholenesss/Ultimate Reality/God etc, but unless you admit the usefulness of self as well no communication or pleasure or learning or anything is possible. So its not yourself its your (true) Self – that gives meaning, purpose and en-formed identity. If there is only Self talking to Self ad infinitum it is just God having perpetual inner dialogue.
2) The World is anything, at any moment, that stops us being in touch with Self.
4) I am as well as I AM – and that was God’s will. The duality is the key dynamic in His ‘Great Big Teaching Machine’ – i.e. embodied reality – in this world – with others. The ultimate extended metaphor of physical reality is another way to refer to His ‘Great Big Teaching Machine’.
5) ‘Name’ and ‘form’ is the means by which we come to discover namelessness and formlessness.
Soul Needs - One Garden 