Dream and Mental Illusion...

Q. I do not understand your reference to dream and mental illusion.



A. Our experience of the world is evoked and dissolved by the mind. When you travel from India to London does your body really move? No! It is the conveyance which moves and your body remains inside-it without itself travelling. It is the ship and the train which travels. Just as these movements are superimposed upon your body, so are visions, dream-states and even re-incarnations superimposed upon your real Self. The latter does not move and is not affected by all these outward changes, remaining still in its own place even as the body remains still in the ship's cabin. You are always the same and hence beyond time and beyond space. In deep sleep you have no sense of time. The concept of time and space arises only when there is the limitation of 'I'. Even now the 'I' thought is both limitless and limited. So long as you think it to be the body, it is limited. At the time of waking up and before one actually becomes fully aware of the external world, that interval, timeless, spaceless, is the state of the true I.




Conscious Immortality
Conversations with Ramana Maharshi
edited by Paul Brunton