Understanding Reality and the Dream, with Eckhart Tolle

The one thing that is beyond doubt about you and me is that you are conscious. All the rest could be an illusion or a dream that you are having right now, that we are actually in this room. Somebody's talking and saying, maybe you're dreaming. That could be a dream. You could be dreaming your whole life. And there's a way one could even say that you are being dreamt by the universal consciousness, that the entire universe that we experience is a dream that happens within universal consciousness, the vastness of universal consciousness. As it grows, it's dreaming. It's dreaming of a person called Eckhart, briefly. And then that dream evaporates. I'm just going there. It is possible you can question the reality of everything. Maybe it's all illusion, but you cannot question it, that the dream is being, there's an awareness in which the dream appears. If there were no consciousness, if the dream needs the light of consciousness to be, to appear, to manifest, so that's beyond doubt. You might be dreaming, but even if you're dreaming, there's a consciousness needed for the dream to happen in. And so that's the very foundation for who you are is consciousness. Your essence identity is timeless, and you cannot analyze it. You cannot know it in the same way that you know an object. Jesus used the word kingdom of heaven, or kingdom of God, to refer to it. What that is, is consciousness. Kingdom of heaven. As you know, my modern translation of that, I use the different words to make it more accessible to modern humans. For kingdom, I substitute dimension. Dimension. Heaven, heaven is sky, and sky is an analogy for vast spaciousness. That's what the sky is, vastness. It doesn't actually exist as such. It's just an image of vastness. The sky has no physical existence, because if it had a physical existence, you could go there and see it and touch it. You can go through a cloud, but you can never reach the sky, because it doesn't actually have a physical existence. So it's a wonderfully adequate and suitable analogy for spaciousness, formless consciousness itself. So that's why Jesus used sky. The dimension, the kingdom of heaven is the dimension of spaciousness, formless consciousness, timeless consciousness. And where is it? It's within you, and it's without you. It's with the kingdom of heaven is within you. In the midst of you, there are various translations. And then he added, that's very important. You cannot say, oh, there it is, or, oh, it's over there, because it is within you. Now, what does that mean when he says, you cannot say, oh, there it is, or, oh, it's over there? It means the kingdom of heaven cannot become an object to your consciousness. You can't say, there it is, because it's like, if you're looking for the kingdom of heaven, as people have projected mentally what kingdom of heaven is, although he said, don't look for it, and said, oh, it's going to come when we die, or it's up there somewhere, because he used the analogy of sky. So traditionally, people who have misunderstood, they're like, it's kingdom of heaven must be up there somewhere, that's for sure. And since it's not here now, probably when we die, we go there and up there. And then the first, the Russian cosmonaut went up, and after coming back, orbiting the earth, came back and said, I didn't see God there. So what does it mean if you say, you can't say it's here, or it's there? It means it cannot be an object to your consciousness, because it's the eternal subject. If you're looking for the kingdom of heaven, or you're looking for God, it's like you're shining a light, and you say, where is it? I'm looking for myself, I'm looking for God, I'm looking for the kingdom of heaven. It's not here, okay, let's look somewhere else. No, and you can look in time, maybe it's in the future, it's in the past. No, it's not there, it seems to be nowhere. But where you haven't looked is, that beam of light with which you are looking, emanates from the kingdom of heaven. It emanates from the source, it is an emanation of the source, and you were looking for the source, and you were using the emanation of the source to looking for the source, to look for the source, out there, but what you have to do is then, stop looking, and place your attention back in, go back where the emanation comes from. Oh, oh, that's it, there it is, I am it. I was looking for it, and now I realize that I am it. I was looking for myself, but in all the wrong places. So truly, people who are looking for God, they're really looking for themselves, and they're looking for themselves in the wrong places. And of course, the Buddha said the same, sunyata is the word, emptiness is a translation, not the best translation, the essence behind all phenomena is emptiness, which sounds a little bit uninspiring. Emptiness is not, it seems a bit negative, oh dear, that's the essence of the universe, but if we say formlessness, a little better, still not too inspiring, if we say kingdom of heaven, now, on the one hand, that sounds a bit more inspiring, wow, kingdom of heaven, on the other hand, it's very easy for you to project and completely misunderstand what that means. So it's so inspiring that it creates a mental concept or mental image, whereas kingdom of heaven is totally beyond any mental concept or mental image. So the very thing that was meant to point you beyond any mental images, that's why you used heaven, spaciousness, formlessness, the very thing that was meant to point beyond it is then misused by your mind in its attempt to form mental concepts and images. So you use the signpost that says there and say, oh, I have it, so on the signpost it says kingdom of heaven that way, well, that way, kingdom of heaven that way, and then you pick up the signpost and says, I got it. I got it, I completely believe in this signpost. But this is just the light to be aware of this, the light of consciousness in you, that's the foundation for sanity in this world and for bringing about another different world here. And only then can you be free of the egoic mind. And instead of being used by your mind and mistaking it for who you are, your mind can be in the service of that greater consciousness that can flow through you. And that's called inspiration. You can be inspired, you can speak in an inspired way, you can produce something in an inspired way, you come up with an inspiring, you're inspired to come up with a new idea for, new creativity, it inspires, it is also an emanation that comes through you that affects people around you, even if you don't say anything, consciousness.