Can the unreal spring from the real?

Sri Ramana Maharshi:

See if it has sprung. There is no such thing as the unreal, from another standpoint. The Self alone exists. When you try to trace the ego, which is the basis of perception of the world and everything else, you find the ego does not exist at all and neither does all this creation that you see.

(Visitor: It is cruel of God's leela to have made the Self-Knowledge so hard.)

Knowing the Self is being the Self, and being means existence, one's own existence. No one denies one's existence any more than one denies one's eyes, although one cannot see them. The trouble lies with your desire to objectify the Self, in the same way as you objectify  your eyes when you place a mirror before them. You have been so accustomed to objectivity that you have lost the knowledge of yourself, simply because the Self cannot be objectified. Who is to know the Self? Can the insentient body know it? All the time you speak and think of your 'I', yet when questioned you deny knowledge of it. You are the Self, yet you ask how to know the Self. Where then is God's leela and where is the cruelty? Because of this denial of the Self by people the sastra speak of maya, leela, etc.