03 Apr 2022
[Ms. Laxmi Thrylokya asked:- This is regarding Your explanation to my recent question (click here) asked in reference to the question asked by Ms. Bhanu Samaikya. You told recently that Shankara said that even unreal can give a real effect, just like on seeing the dream tiger in a dream, one is getting up with real shaking and weeping for some time that continues in the awaken state also. My question is that how a totally unreal tiger, which is not present in the bed room caused this real effect?]
Swami Replied:- In the question of Bhanu Samaikya, the advisor told that thoughts are unreal. Here lies the fundamental mistake. The tiger in the bed room is certainly unreal. But, when this unreal tiger entered the dream, it gets amalgamated with the awareness to become the thought of a tiger in the dream. The tiger by itself is unreal, but it is associated with the real awareness to become the thought of a tiger, which is real. Awareness is a special form of inert energy and since inert energy, the fundamental component of the creation is absolutely real, the awareness is also absolute reality. The absolute reality belongs to the unimaginable God, which is gifted to the creation and hence, the creation became absolutely real. The creation by itself is unreal like the tiger in the bed room. When this unreal creation is associated with God, the creation also became absolute reality just like the unreal tiger which when associated with awareness, also became absolute reality.
God is the creator of this creation and you are the creator of the dream. Just like the unreal creation became absolutely real for God also, the unreal tiger became absolutely real for your awareness as well. In this way, both the unreal creation and unreal tiger are felt absolutely real by both God and your awareness respectively. In such a case, why does your awareness feel that the dream tiger is unreal and why does God feel the absolutely real creation as unreal? The reason is that your awareness feels the thought as unreal because the thought is subtle like air and not gross like earth. The subtle thought is neglected and is felt as unreal, but, actually, the subtle thought is absolutely real like any other gross item. Such subtle thought, which becomes absolutely real, generates a real effect like madness. Anything that is unreal by itself and becomes real due to the reality gifted by its associated item, is called as ‘relative-reality’ (mithyā).
The tiger in the bedroom and this creation even before God thought it are unreal by themselves, but, due to the association with awareness and with God respectively, both have become absolutely real and hence, both the dream tiger and this creation (after entering the unimaginable awareness of God and subsequently created) are relatively real items. This creation also contains both gross and subtle items and the dream also contains both gross and subtle items. When the soul is with ignorance in the dream, the soul distinguishes both gross and subtle items. When the soul comes to awaken state, it recognizes both gross and subtle items as totally subtle items only. In the awaken state, in a day-dream (imagining an imaginary world for entertainment), the soul can do any miracle with all these totally subtle items and such state is called ‘day-dream’, which means dreaming in the awaken state. Similarly, when God also wants to do a miracle, He reaches the full awaken state in which all the creation becomes subtle.
As long as God wants real entertainment with the creation, God will cover Himself with ignorance by which God differentiates gross and subtle items in the creation to have continuous real entertainment. The difference between God and soul is:- God covers Himself with the ignorance maintaining awaken state in depth whereas the soul is really covered with ignorance in the dream state. Hence, God will never get the real dream state and is always in the awaken state only. Hence, God is always in the state of day-dream only (which means that God covers Himself with ignorance maintaining awaken state in depth) whereas the soul has both awaken state and dream state separately. The soul feels the creation as equal reality because the entire creation along with the souls has become absolutely real by the wish of God. This means that the soul is part and parcel of the creation. The soul also gets day-dream by entering into entertainment with the imaginary world in awaken state by covering itself with ignorance. Hence, taking the understandable example of the day-dream of the soul, we can understand clearly the day-dream of God. The soul enjoys fully in the day-dream also, even though, it covers itself with ignorance (without being controlled by ignorance as in a dream), God also is entertained fully in the day-dream. In the day-dream of God or soul, God or soul controls the ignorance whereas in the real dream (while sleeping) the soul is controlled by ignorance. Hence, real dream never occurs for God and it occurs only for the soul.
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