Are dreams real? While dreaming, the experience is real to us. We walk, speak, love, fear and wonder. On waking, we say, “It was only a dream.” Yet the dream was experienced. What changes is our understanding of what appeared.
Spiritual awakening invites a similar inquiry into waking consciousness. In recognizing your true nature, you may see that the waking world, together with the person you take yourself to be, is also a kind of dream. This does not mean that nothing exists or that life can be dismissed. It invites a closer look at the relationship between appearance and Source.
“It Was Only a Dream”
In a dream, you may be running from danger. The landscape seems solid. The person running seems to be you. Until you wake, there is little reason to question either.
On waking, you recognize that the dream landscape and the dream person appeared together. The dream did not contain a separate, independently existing world. Neither did it contain a separate dreamer standing apart from that world. Both were appearances within the dreaming experience.
Was the dream unreal? If “unreal” means that it was never experienced, no. Was it real in the way it seemed while dreaming? Again, no. “Only a dream” can conceal this subtlety: something was experienced, yet its apparent independence did not survive waking.
Mithya: Neither Real nor Unreal
The word mithya gives us a way to speak about this. In this nondual inquiry, appearances are neither independently real nor wholly unreal. They are experienced, yet they do not exist by themselves.
Think of a wave. You can see it, feel it and describe its movement. The wave is not nothing. Yet where is the wave apart from water? “Wave” names a form and movement of water. The naming is useful; it does not create a second substance.
Likewise, to call an appearance mithya is not to deny the experience. It is to question the separate existence we attribute to it. For a fuller exploration, read Mithya in Advaita Vedanta: Beyond Real and Fake.
Is Waking Consciousness Also a Dream?
Waking and dreaming have practical differences. Waking life has a shared continuity: other people participate in it, actions have consequences, and responsibilities remain. The comparison is an invitation to inquiry, not a claim that these differences disappear.
The likeness lies in how we take appearances to be independently real. In waking consciousness, sensations, thoughts, feelings, objects and the sense of being a separate person appear. We ordinarily accept the person at the center of this experience as our complete identity.
On awakening to your true nature, this assumption is seen differently. The person is experienced, but is no longer understood as a separate source of existence. The waking world continues to appear. The belief that appearances exist apart from Source gives way to recognition that Source and its appearances are not two.
Brahman and Its Appearances Are Not Two
Brahman is Source, by whatever name. It is not another object hidden behind the world, waiting to be found. Nor are appearances a second reality placed outside it.
Brahman and how it appears are not two things. As water and wave are not two substances, Source and its expressions are not separate. The analogy points toward recognition; it is not a complete explanation of Brahman.
Atman names your true nature. Atman is Brahman. These names allow us to speak about what is recognized from the intimacy of your own experience and about Source without limitation. The naming does not divide what is undivided.
A Simple Inquiry into Appearance
Sit comfortably for a few moments. Let breathing happen naturally. Notice a sound, a sensation, then a thought. Each is experienced. Each changes.
Now notice the sense of “me” that claims these experiences. Does it appear as a thought, an image, a feeling or a location in the body? Allow that, too, to be noticed. There is no need to make it disappear.
Ask gently: Does what appears exist independently of the knowing of it? Do not hurry toward a philosophical answer. The question is an invitation to look. You can continue with self-inquiry meditation.
Awakening Does Not Dismiss Life
Calling waking consciousness dreamlike is not permission to disregard another person’s pain, your own feelings or ordinary responsibilities. Appearances are experienced. Care is expressed here, in living.
A dream is experienced without being what it seems. Waking appearances can be understood in the same light: neither independently real nor nonexistent, but mithya. Spiritual awakening is the recognition that your true nature is not confined to the separate person who appears in the experience.
Life continues. The understanding of what you are changes.
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