“Many seekers, when they begin to understand, on an intellectual level, that all of this is as a dream, quickly come up with the question, "Well then, how do I get out of the dream?", as if that is the next logical step…. as if the mind thinking is the one realizing that this is a dream, is not itself illusory, part of the dream. Anything that can arise here in the dream, including thoughts like these and characters like the one you call ‘yourself’ are necessarily themselves dream thoughts and dream characters.
Nisargadatta Maharaj stated:
"The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of the dream and not another. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs to be done." But just because ‘these minds,' here in the dream, are conditioned to think in terms of dualism does not mean they are not capable of thinking otherwise. Just that it is a very unusual and sometimes awkward transition requiring much stretching of boundaries.
It is interesting that most Advaitic teachers do not talk of 'the one’. The word Advaita means 'not two’ and that is the phrase that is used. To say 'God' and creation, or un-manifested source and the manifestation, or what-Is and the dream, are 'not two' seems at first a little awkward, but it is used this way to address a certain maddening confusion that can arise, in which 'oneness' can be taken to represent the dualistic opposite of separation. In phenomenon, the manifestation, one half of a dualistic pair cannot exist without the other; so in that sense, one can think there has to be separation in order for there to be oneness. But beyond dualism, in unitive consciousness, unity and separation are 'not two’ consciousness and the manifestation are 'not two’ there is only unity; *separation has never existed.”*
David Carse
