Tripura Rahasya

Sage Dattatreya said,

After hearing the sage's son, Mahasena said:

Master, your illustration is not to the point. Dream or magic is later realized to be illusory, whereas this hard concrete universe is always real and purposeful. This is unassailed and persistent. How can it be compared to the evanescent dream? 

Then the sage's son answered: 

Listen to what I say. Your opinion that the illustration is not to the point is a double delusion, like a dream in a dream. [Note: The Commentary says that the first delusion is the idea of separateness of the universe from oneself and that the second is the idea that dream objects are an illusion in contradistinction to those seen while awake. This is compared to the illusion that a dreamer mistakes the dream-rope for a dream-serpent. (The dream is itself an illusion and the mistake is an illusion in the illusion.)]

Consider the dream as a dreamer would and tell me whether the trees do not afford shade to the pedestrians and bear fruits for the use of others. Is the dream realized to be untrue and evanescent in the dream itself?

Do you mean to say that the dream is rendered false after waking from it? Is not the waking world similarly rendered false in your dream or deep sleep?

Do you contend that the waking state is not so because there is continuity in it after you wake up? Is there no continuity in your dreams from day to day? If you say that it is not evident, tell me whether the continuity in the wakeful world is not broken up every moment of your life. Do you suggest that the hills, the seas and the earth itself are really permanent phenomena, in spite of the fact that their appearance is constantly changing? Is not the dream world also similarly continuous with its earth, mountains, rivers, friends and relatives?

Do you still doubt its abiding nature? Then extend the same reasoning to the nature of the wakeful world and know it to be equally evanescent. The ever-changing objects like the body, trees, rivers and islands are easily found to be transitory. Even mountains are not immutable, for their contours change owing to the erosion of waterfalls and mountain torrents, ravages by men, boars and wild animals, insects, thunder, lightning, storms and so on. You will observe similar change in the seas and on earth.