Eckhart Tolle on Inner Space and the Unchanging Nature of Consciousness

um my question is about confirming Consciousness if um 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 the 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 it it 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're actually having a dinner it's 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 say 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 say it 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's is felt 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 has happens otherwise the dream could not exist its existence depends on the 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 real except the thing that is having the dream and is 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 if you look you can look back on your life it's 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 never 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 it it 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 it doesn't 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 um let's say if it were possible Einstein said it isn't possible let's say you you're traveling 10 times the speed of light through the universe and you see all planets and Suns like you see in the in the movie star TR Next Generation you see the flashes of planets go past and so you know there 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 fast is the universe it has not you're just there just a a nothingness and suddenly there's no speed anymore there never was any speed you never went anywhere it was just a delusion so nobody ever goes anywhere I believe it was the Greek philosopher pides 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 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 and but if you know that the 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 inside didn't 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 than anything else to realize you are that sometimes it takes a while before the the inner realization reaches the outer levels and becomes verbalized as a a teaching so that's also the very fact that you're able to see the empowerment 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 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 there is something from where the unchange the the changin