The Illusory Nature of Creation

When you visit a cinema, what do you see? A white screen. Films come and go, but this screen is there always, night and day. The scenes projected on it come and disappear. They are an illusion. What remains is always the screen alone. The pictures keep changing and vanish.

The whole universe is a film on the screen of the divine Consciousness. God is there always. Creations come and disappear, worlds come and disappear, you come and disappear - everything plays its role and disappears. An illusion!

Illusions come and go. But the lover of the Divine has a strong hold on the screen - God. He remains untouched by all and tries to establish within himself intimate relationships with this screen, with the eternal Divinity, who was, is, and will always be. Knowing that everything else is an illusion, he calls on to the Divine and sinks into the Divine with all his consciousness - inside and outside there is nothing but the screen of the Divine. All happenings are illusory, transient, false. Before you can catch hold of them they have already vanished. The one Reality, God, is his central, passionate goal.

Take another example. A person in deep-sleep-state enjoys timeless, spaceless stillness, calm, peace, joy. Suddenly a dream starts. In his experience a whole new universe takes shape. He sees mountains, oceans, people'. For seventy years he lives in this world. Then suddenly he remembers the timeless peace and joy of deep-sleep. What happened to it? Has it disappeared to make space for this universe? It has not disappeared. It was there all the time. Even now, in the dream-state it is possible for the sleeping person to experience this peace and joy, for it is always there. It does not alter, does not move, does not come and go.

The experience of the dream-creation cannot touch the timeless, spaceless reality of God, peace of God, bliss of God. When the dream disappears, once again the person sinks into this stillness and joy.

Dreams come and go without leaving a trace. If this universe in your dream would leave traces, you should experience it in the timeless stillness of deep-sleep. But this is not the case. As soon as the dream-state disappears, everything is gone, nothing is left. It is only as long as the person identifies himself with the universe created in dream and with his life within this universe, that he is lost and has no idea or relation with the timeless, spaceless state of deep-sleep.

The same is the case with the world we experience in waking-state. When this universe dissolves, it leaves no trace on the face of the timeless, spaceless peace, stillness and bliss of the Divine. And something that leaves no trace is unreal.

When wisdom and reality dawn in our intelligence, in our heart, we realise that the universe in the waking-state and the universe in the dream are both illusory and cannot have any hold on us.

The lover of the Divine finds the same timeless stillness everywhere. In the waking-state he experiences the universe, but this illusory perception does not obstruct his experience of the timeless, spaceless Reality. With the realisation of this divine Reality he acts in this illusory world - free from complaints and tears, without comments and judgements, without prejudices. Such a life is a blessed life. Such a person enjoys eternal life, immortality and perfection here and now.

- Swami Omkarananda