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Maya Mari Na Mun Mara,
Mar Mar Gaye Shareer.
Asha Trishna Na Mari,
Keh Gaye Das Kabir

Kabir says – Man exists as if in sleep. Man is asleep. Whatsoever is known as waking is also a sleep. Initiation means to be intimate contact with one who is awakened. Unless you are in intimate contact with one who is awakened, it is impossible to come out of your sleep, because the mind is capable even to dream that it is out of sleep. The mind can dream that now there is no more sleep, and in any dream you cannot know that it is a dream. You can only know that it was a dream when you are out of it.

You can never know a dream in the present. You always become aware of it when it has gone, when it has passed. No one can ever say, “This is a dream.” No present tense can be used for a dream. You always say that this was a dream, because in a dream, the dream itself appears to be real. If a dream is not appearing as real, it will be broken. Only if there is an appearance of reality can dreams be created.

Man is asleep, this is to be understood. We are dreaming continuously twenty-four hours a day. In the night we are closed to the outward world, dreaming inside. In the day our senses are opened toward the outside world, but the dream continues inside. Close your eyes for a moment, and you can be again in a dream. It is a continuity inside. You are aware of the outside world, but the awareness is not without the dreaming mind. It is over, and imposed on, the dreaming mind, but inside the dream continues. That is why we are not seeing what is real, even when we are so-called awake. We impose our dreams on reality. We never see what is, we always see our projections.

…the dreaming mind creates a world around it which is not real.

The dreaming mind creates a world around it which is not real. That is what is meant by maya, illusion. By illusion it is not meant that the world is not, the noise outside on the street is not. It is but as it is. We can never know it unless the dreaming mind stops inside. For someone the noise may be music, for someone else just disturbance. In some moments you may not be aware of the noise, in another you will become aware. In some moments you will tolerate it, in some moments it will become unbearable, intolerable. The noise is the same, the street is the same, the traffic is the same, but your dreaming mind changes.

With your dreaming mind the whole thing around you takes on new colors. When we say the world is an illusion, maya, it does not mean that the world is not; it is. But as we see it, that seeing is illusion. It is nowhere to be found. So when someone is awakened it is not that this world just disappears, but the world that was known by him before his awakening disappears completely. An altogether new world, an objective world, comes in its place. All the colors that were given by you, all the shapes, all the meanings and interpretations that were given by you according to your dreaming mind, are no more.