‘Just as dream and magic…’ (19) - (Un)reality of the world.
[From: “Mountain Path”, July 1981, Pg 154; from “Conversations with Bhagavan” by Swami Madhavatirtha, extracts from the text - on persistent questioning of Shri Bhagavan on the (un)reality of the world; Also in “Surpassing Love & Grace”, Pg 142]
Bhagavan: It is not necessary to think of the view of other seers. Those others are only in your imagination. Know the one seer and all will be well. In a dream, many are seen, but they are all in the imagination of the one seer. When you wake up from the dream, the dream and those seen in the dream will take care of their own prarabdha.
Q: Is it a fact that dreams arise because of impressions received during the waking state?
B: No, it is not true. In your dream, you see many new things and many new people whom you have never seen before in your waking state. You may even see a second dream within the dream. After waking up from the second dream, you feel that you have woken up, but that is the waking state of the first dream. In the same way, man wakes up daily, but it is not to a real waking state.
Q: Why does the waking state look so real?
B: We see so much on the cinema screen, but it is not real; nothing is real there except the screen. In the same way, in the waking state, there is nothing but Adhisthana. Jagrat-prama (knowledge of the world) is the prama of jagrat-pramata (knowledge of the knower of the world). Both go away in sleep.
Q: Why do we see such permanency and constancy in the world?
B: It is seen on account of wrong ideas. When someone says that he took a bath in the same river twice, he is wrong because when he bathed for the second time the river was not the same as it was when he bathed for the first time. On seeing the brightness of a flame, a man says that he sees the same flame, but this flame is changing every moment. The waking state is like this. The stationary appearance is an error of perception.
Q: How did the knower come?
B: On account of the error of perception. In fact, the knower and his misperceptions appear simultaneously, and when knowledge of the Self is obtained, they disappear simultaneously. Just as in a dream, a false knower, knowledge and known rise up, in the waking state, the same process operates. In both states, on knowing this ‘I’, you know everything, and nothing remains to be known. In deep sleep knower, knowledge and known are absent; in the same way, at the time of experiencing the true ‘I’, they will not exist. Whatever you see happening in the waking state happens only to the knower, and since the knower is unreal, nothing in fact ever happens.
Q: After waking from sleep, why does the world of the previous day appear the same?
B: The world seen on the previous day was not real. It was the knowledge of an unreal knower; similarly, the world of the next day is also the knowledge of an unreal knower. Truly there is no real world. What appears separate from us is called by us “the world”. It appears separate to us due to ego-consciousness (ahamkara). When ahamkara goes there is nothing separate and then there is no world. Time also arises from pramata (the knower). Because pramata is not real, time also is not real.
— Source: Blog “You have been told; why have you not realized?” - http://bhagavan-sri-ramana-maharshi.blogspot.pt/2013/02/just-as-dream-and-magic.html
[1] Prarabdha: That portion of the sanchita karma, a collection of past karmas, which influences human life in the present incarnation
