Śrīla Prabhupāda Says

Hanumān: In your books you say that the world is like a dream.

Prabhupāda: Yes, it is dream.

Hanumān: How is it a dream?

Prabhupāda: Dream, just like last night you had some dream.

Hanumān: Yes.

Prabhupāda: Well, it has no value. It is gone. And again, this night, when you’ll sleep, you’ll forget all these things. You’ll dream. You don’t remember during night, when you are dreaming, that “I have got my house, I have got my wife I have...” You all forget. So it is dream.

Hanumān: It is true or is not true?

Prabhupāda: No, no. Where is true? You forget at night. Do you remember when you sleep that you have got your wife and you are sleeping on bed? You have gone some three thousand miles away and seeing something else. Do you remember that you have got a place to reside?

Hanumān: No.

Prabhupāda: So this is dream at night. And night dream, what you saw at night, that is now dream. So both of them dream. You are simply visitor. That’s all. You are seeing this dream and that dream. You are, you are fact, but what you are seeing, that is dream.

Hanumān: But I have the impression that “This is true, and my dream is not true.” What is the dif...?

Prabhupāda: No, no. Everything is untrue. How it is true? If it is true, why you forget at night? Why you forget? If it is true. Do you remember at night?

Hanumān: No, I don’t remember.

Prabhupāda: Then? How it is true? As you don’t remember the dreams which you saw last night..., That, therefore we say “dream.” Similarly this thing, because you forget at night, this is also dream.

Hanumān: But I have...

Prabhupāda: This is day-dream, that is night-dream. That’s all.

Bahulāśva: Jaya. Day-dream and night-dream. And the night-dream, then you perceive that as being real.

Prabhupāda: Eh?

Bahulāśva: When you dream at night, then you think that is real.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is real. You cry... It is dream, but you are crying, “There is tiger, tiger, tiger!” Where is tiger? But you are seeing it is fact, tiger. “I am being killed by a tiger.” But where is tiger. [break] ...in dream you are embracing some beautiful girl. Where is that beautiful girl? But actually this is happening.

Hanumān: Is it happening?

Prabhupāda: It is happening because there is discharge of semina, night pollution. But where is that girl? Is it not dream? So similarly this is also dream. You are having the effect of truthfulness, but it is a dream. Māyā... Therefore it is called māyā-sukhāya. The same thing, that at night you are dreaming you are embracing nice beautiful girl, as there is no such thing, similarly, in the daytime also, whatever advancement you are making, this is also like that.

Māyā-sukhāya. We are happy, we are dreaming, “This process will make me happy. This process will make me happy.” But the whole process is dream only. You are taking this day-dream as reality because the duration is long. At night, when you dream, the duration is for half an hour. And this is for twelve hours, or more than that. That is the difference. It is a twelve hours’ dream, and that is half an hour dream. But actually, both of them are dream. And because it is twelve hours’ dream, you are taking it as, accepting it as real. That is called illusion.

[Morning Walk: LA, 9 Jan 1974]