Gita 2.16

Sadhak: "This distinction between real and unreal troubles me. Everything I experience seems real—this body, these emotions, the battlefield before me. Are you saying they are all unreal, mere illusions?"

Guru: "Not illusions in the sense of being nothing at all, but unreal in the sense of being impermanent and dependent. Does a dream feel real while you are in it? Yet upon waking, you recognize its reality was borrowed, contingent. The waking world has more consistency than dreams, but it shares the same essential character: it arises, persists for a time, and passes. What you seek is that which does not pass—the awareness in which all experiences appear and disappear."

Sadhak: "But if the world is unreal, why should I act at all? Why not withdraw from everything?"

Guru: "This is a common misunderstanding. The teaching is not that the world is worthless or that action is pointless. It is that action and world have relative reality, not absolute reality. Within the dream, dream-actions have dream-consequences. Within samsāra, your karma matters enormously. But the wise act without the desperate clinging that comes from mistaking the temporary for the eternal. They engage fully while knowing that their true nature is beyond engagement."

Sadhak: "How can I verify this distinction myself? I want to see what the seers have seen."

Guru: "Begin by observing what changes and what does not. Your body has changed continuously since childhood—is there anything that has remained the same? Your thoughts and emotions shift moment to moment—yet something witnesses these shifts and remains aware of them all. That witnessing awareness is always present, in joy and sorrow, in waking and dreaming. It does not age, does not suffer, does not die. This is the sat that Krishna points to. The ancient seers did not discover something hidden; they simply looked carefully at what was always already present."

Sadhak: "But even my awareness seems to fluctuate. Sometimes I am more aware, sometimes less. Is awareness not also changing?"

Guru: "What you notice fluctuating is the clarity of the mind, not awareness itself. Awareness is the light in which you notice that clarity sometimes dims. Think of it: to know that you were less aware, something must have been continuously aware enough to register the difference. That unbroken awareness is like the screen on which movies play—the scenes change, but the screen remains constant. You are that screen, not the movie."

Sadhak: "So when Krishna says the unreal has no being—he means the movie has no existence apart from the screen?"

Guru: "Exactly. The movie borrows its apparent reality from the screen. Without the screen, there is no movie. But the screen exists whether a movie plays or not. Similarly, all experiences borrow their reality from the Self, but the Self exists whether experiences arise or not. In deep sleep, no experiences appear, yet you exist—and you know upon waking that you existed throughout. That existence is sat, independent of any content."

Sadhak: "If only the Real exists and the unreal does not truly exist, is there any relationship between them?"

Guru: "This is one of philosophy's deepest questions. The relationship is something like the rope and the snake in the classic example. In dim light, a rope appears as a snake. The snake has no real existence—only rope exists. Yet the snake-appearance causes real fear, real reactions. When light comes, you see there was only ever rope. The unreality of the snake does not mean your fear was not experienced—only that its object was misperceived. The world is not separate from Brahman; it is Brahman misperceived through ignorance."

Sadhak: "So understanding this verse should remove my fear of death?"

Guru: "It should remove the metaphysical basis for that fear. Death is the dissolution of a temporary form. But you are not that form; you are the awareness witnessing that form. When the form dissolves, what happens to awareness? Nothing—it was never dependent on the form. The fear of death assumes that when the body ends, 'I' end. But the 'I' that you truly are has no beginning and no end. It is sat. The body is asat. How can the ending of asat affect sat?"

Sadhak: "This teaching feels like freedom. But I notice I still feel fear when I imagine death."

Guru: "Of course—intellectual understanding and embodied realization are different. The body-mind has its instincts, conditioned over millions of years. These do not disappear instantly upon hearing a teaching. But the teaching plants a seed. Each time you return to this truth, each time you investigate and verify it in your own experience, the fear loses its grip a little more. Eventually, the sages say, one abides in this knowledge so completely that even at the moment of death, there is only peace—the peace of knowing you are what cannot die."