Page 70 - Matter: The Other Name for Illusion

moment is a dream. But for some reason they are not suspicious that the life
that starts with a "waking" image (what they call "real life") can also be a
dream. However, the way we perceive images in "real life" is exactly the same
as the way we perceive our dreams. We see both of them in the mind. We
cannot understand they are images until we are woken up. Only then do we
say "what I have just seen was a dream". So, how can we prove that what we
see at any given moment is not a dream? We could be assuming that the

moment in which we are living is real just because we haven't yet woken up.
It is possible that we will discover this fact when we are woken up from this
"waking dream" which takes longer than dreams we see everyday. We do not
have any evidence that proves otherwise.
Many Islamic scholars have also proclaimed that the life around us is only
a dream, and that only when we are awakened from that dream with "a big
awakening", will people be able to understand that they live in a dreamlike

world. A great Islamic scholar, Muhyiddin Ibn al-'Arabi, referred to as Sheikh
Akbar (The greatest Sheikh) due to his superior knowledge, likens the world
to our dreams by quoting a saying of the Prophet Muhammad (may God bless
him and grant him peace):
The Prophet Muhammad [may God bless him and grant him peace] said
that "people are asleep and wake up when they die." This is to say that
the objects seen in the world when alive are similar to those seen when
asleep while dreaming, meaning that they exist in the imagination. 15

In a verse of Koran, people are told to say on doomsday when they are
resurrected from the dead:

They will say, "Alas for us! Who has raised us from our sleeping-place?
This is what the All-Merciful promised us. The Messengers were telling
the truth." (Surah Ya Sin: 52)

As the verse demonstrates, people wake up on doomsday as if waking
from a dream. Like someone woken from the middle of a dream in deep sleep,
such people will similarly ask who has woken them up. As the verse points
out, the world around us is like a dream and everybody will be woken up from
this dream, and will begin to see images of the afterlife, which is the real life.

68 MATTER: THE OTHER NAME FOR ILLUSION