Suppose I borrowed one million from you in your dream last night. When you woke up this morning, would you come to me to recover that one million? You dare not because I did not actually borrow money from you. It was just a dream. Dreams are dreams and we know it. Nothing that happens in a dream actually happened. Therefore, when we wake up from a dream, we just rub our eyes and move on.
We know the difference between dreams and life. Dreams are dreams, but we believe that life is real. If I actually borrowed one million from you in life, there are few chances that you would forego that one million. You would chase me till you recover that money because I had actually borrowed that money from you. Why? Because it was a ‘reality’, not a dream.
We have learned to differentiate between dreams and life. We have learned to forget dreams, in fact, we cannot remember dreams at all. But we have learned not to forget the reality of life. It is etched in our memory and becomes a part of our life. However, what we have not learned is that life too is like a dream. It is an illusion. Everything that is happening in life is not a reality. It is just a show. We come and we go. It appears to be real, but just like a drama, it is a theatre. Because we consider everything that happens in life to be real, we suffer the misery of life, as we get attached to our possessions and our people.
How can we digest that life is an illusion? ‘Life is not an illusion. It is real.’ This is what the world believes, but this is not true. What is the Truth? The Truth is that life is no better than a dream. Life too is an illusion. Isn’t it true that in a dream, when we wake up, everything that appeared in the dream disappears? We think that this is what makes life different. When we wake up in the morning, life seems real. That is why we believe a dream is different from the reality of life. But this is not the Truth.
If we analyze life, I may borrow money from you, or you may buy a car and a villa, and they all belong to you. Legally, they are yours, but are these actually yours? When you wake up at the moment of death, nothing belongs to you. All your wealth, your possessions, your people and relationships, cease to exist in a moment.
-Air Atman In Ravi
