If Life is But a Dream, then WHO Dreams It? Perspective of Advaita Vedanta

Many great philosophers have boldly declared that the world is like a dream. But did they really believe that SOMEONE is actually dreaming the world? Dream metaphor according to Advaita Vedanta.

0:00 Dream as a Metaphor
4:47 Creation and Creator
10:15 God: Immanent and Transcendent
20:13 Avatara: Divine Incarnation

This idea can be traced back to Plato in ancient Greece and the enlightened rishis of ancient India. Later, this idea became highly refined in the philosophy of idealism taught by Berkeley and Hegel, and in the works of famous Vedantic and Buddhist scholars like Shankara and Nagarjuna.

Use of the dream metaphor is particularly striking in Hindu philosophy. Just like Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva are responsible for the creation, sustenance, and destruction of the universe, in a similar way, for the world you create in your dreams, you are responsible for its creation, sustenance, and destruction. And just like the universe returns or merges into Ishvara at the end of time, so too, your dream world, along with everyone and everything in it, merges into you when you wake up.

Unlike a potter who needs clay to make a pot, Ishvara doesn’t need an external source of material. The Mundaka Upanishad gives a wonderful example of a spider that creates a web from material found within its own body. The spider is both maker and material for its web, and Ishvara is both maker and material for the universe, like you are both the maker and material for your dream world.
The immanent aspect of God is called saguna brahman, brahman with attributes, attributes like being the creator, sustainer, and destroyer of the universe. That means, saguna brahman is really just another word for Ishvara. Some people refer to saguna brahman as the personal God, to distinguish it from nirguna brahman, the impersonal God. Nirguna means without attributes. Nirguna brahman is pure being, existence itself, the underlying substratum because of which everything exists. The sleeper who lies in bed represents nirguna brahman. Because of the sleeper, dreams can be dreamt. And so too, because of nirguna brahman, everything here exists.
When you dream, you usually project yourself into the dream world as the main character. But during the dream, you don’t know that you’re dreaming. That’s why it seems so real. Yet it’s possible to have a lucid dream, a dream in which you’re fully aware that it’s just a dream. The projection of yourself into your dreamworld represents the Hindu doctrine of avatara, in which Ishvara projects himself into the world as a divine incarnation like Krishna or Rama.
Swami Tadatmananda is a traditionally-trained teacher of Advaita Vedanta, meditation, and Sanskrit. For more information, please see: https://www.arshabodha.org/