Eckhart Tolle on Inner Space and the Unchanging Nature of Consciousness

My question is about confirming consciousness. If you look at the world, a world of form, as all illusory and impermanent, and yet we can confirm that by witnessing its constant change or its constant impermanence, or the cycles that it goes through. And yet true reality is consciousness the background or the substratum of all of the true existence that is out there. How do we confirm that consciousness is there and that it is unchanging and that it is choiceless? Thank you.

Thank you. I have a strange feeling that somehow you know the answer deep down. Are you conscious at this moment? Yes. Perception is happening. Now, if I ask you, how do you know that you are conscious? I don't think you would be able to answer that question. Because how you just know that you are conscious. There is no how. It's direct knowing, but it's a very different kind of knowing from how you would know something in the external world, subject, object, knowledge. Do you know that you are alive? Deep down, there is an aliveness. There is something there. Even if the entire world is a dream, which you can either say it is a dream or you can say it's not a dream, what is beyond doubt that the sense perceived world has a lot in common with the dreamlike state. In the sense that it evaporates fairly quickly. Its forms come and go. Even yesterday's dinner, was that a dream or did you actually have it? It's not that different from dreaming that you had a dinner and that you actually having a dinner. It is dissolved into what we call the past. It is no longer there. This is why many philosophers have compared ordinary existence with a dream. Because of the fact of impermanence. Everything dissolving so fast, everything being in flux. We don't need to come to some kind of conclusion as to whether this reality is actually real or unreal. Because that's only a mental position. It's only a conceptual thing to say, well, to me it's unreal. Or you read some Indian philosophers and who speak from a very deep slice of connectedness with something vitally alive. And then they say this world is unreal. And then somebody reads what they said and they take it as a belief and say, okay. And then next time you talk to your friends and you tell them, well, you know, the news, this is all unreal. And then your friend says, you must be joking. And then you start arguing, I am telling you it's unreal. It's so unreal that you're getting angry. So when people have said the world is unreal, it came from a deep realization of a place that is found to be far more vitally alive than the phenomena of this world. And out of that the words came unreal. They could have used different words. They could have said, it's dreamlike. They could have said, all forms are passing. And some did say that. So if it's a dream, or whether it's a dream or whether it is unreal, the fact is that there is something there to whom or to which this dream happens. Otherwise the dream could not exist. Its existence depends on the being. Existence is the form. Being is the formless. So for anything to exist, let's say it is a dream. Okay, who is dreaming? I am. There must be a consciousness in which the dream appears. Otherwise there would be no dream. Everything may be unreal except the thing that is having the dream. And it's not a thing. The dream appears in that space that you are. And that space could be equated with a now. And that's why no matter, you can look back on your life. It was always whatever. Anything that ever happened in your life, anything that you ever experienced in your life happened in the space of now. It was always now. It is always now. Even to say it was now is somehow a paradox. There is no was. Life is always now. For anything to be experienced, to be thought, to be felt, can only occur in the now. The space of now and the space of now doesn't change. Why not? Because there's no content in is spaciousness itself. It cannot change. Because if there's nothing in it, there's no change. Like the space in this room. Because outer space is an externalization of inner space, of consciousness. We perceive it as space on the outside. And the space in this room cannot change. You can't do anything to it, no matter what you do. You can shout and punch it with nothing to punch, but it allows you to go like that. So space is unchangeable, external space. And of course, space doesn't even exist in itself outside. It's a projection of something else inside us. It's a weird thing, space and movement. Imagine that you are traveling as a point of awareness through the vast space of the universe at the speed of, let's say, if it were possible. Einstein said it isn't possible. Let's say you're traveling at 10 times the speed of light through the universe. And you see all planets and suns like you see in the movie Star Trek Next Generation. You see the flashes of planets go past. And so you know there's enormous speed and at that moment, let's say, everything from the universe disappears. All planets, miraculously, all suns and planets and galaxies miraculously dissolve. What's your speed now? And how vast is the universe? There's just nothingness, and suddenly there's no speed anymore. There never was any speed. You never went anywhere. It was just an illusion. So nobody ever goes anywhere. I believe it was the Greek philosopher Parmenides who had that insight already. So ultimately, nothing ever moves. All these things are delusions, but it's fine. But you are the space, in essence, for all that. So that's all you need to know. And one possible approach to that is to say you are the now. In which it's one way you can approach it. Because the now is the space. The now is not what happens. The now is usually confused by people with what happens in the now. But the now is always the space in which everything happens. Otherwise, there would be many nows. But only if you equate the present moment with what happens in the present moment. Then there are many moments every day and every hour. But if you know that your life is always the now, and whatever appears in it appears in that unchanging space, then you're getting closer to who you are, because you are the now. That insight hadn't come to me yet when I was writing the Power of Now. I never actually wrote that you are the now. A couple of years later, I was giving a talk, and suddenly I said, you are the now. Yes, of course, that's an even better approach than anything else to. To realize you are that. Sometimes it takes a while before the inner realization reaches the outer levels and becomes verbalized as a teaching. So that's also the very fact that you're able to see. The impermanent nature of all forms implies that there's something from where the impermanent nature of all forms can be recognized. Because it's only through that you can recognize. If the entire world were painted green or blue, there would be no green or blue. You wouldn't be able to recognize it. So there is something from where the changing, continuously changing nature of things is seen. And that is not changing. And that is who you are. And it's the present moment. And it's space, inner space, and it's consciousness. Any more pointers? Thank you.

Thank you.