The World is Like a Movie, a Dream, a Video Game
The World is Like a Movie, a Dream, a Video Game
By Rizwan Virk
From science, then, if it must be let so, man learns the philosophic truth that there is no material universe; its warp and woof is Maya illusion. Its mirages of reality all break down under analysis. – Yogananda1
Know all things to be like this: A mirage, a cloud castle, a dream, an apparition, without essence, but with qualities that can be seen. – Buddha, The Diamond Sutra
Throughout the centuries, mystics of all religions have effectively utilized similar metaphors to convey that the physical world around us is not the real world, and Yogananda was no different. Their goal is to try to detach us from our ‘over-attachment’ to the triumphs and tragedies we experience daily. These metaphors compare physical reality to a dream, a stage play, and, starting in the twentieth century, a film (via Yogananda).
I have tried to pick up the same thread in my recent books, using an updated metaphor that might seem like a departure from what the mystics of yore have said but isn’t. This is the metaphor of the world being like an interactive multiplayer video game, a computer simulation. Yogananda himself upgraded the metaphors of his predecessors by incorporating references to the latest twentieth-century technologies to make them appropriate and accessible for modern men and women. I’d like to do the same thing in this book in the twenty-first century.
The World Is a Dream
When we dream, we think the dream world is real. Think about the recent dreams you have had. Have you had a dream that involved less-than-ideal circumstances and woken up breathing a sigh of relief, thinking, ‘Wow, I’m glad that was just a dream!’?
The dream metaphor is one that has been used for thousands of years. Yogananda himself used it to describe not only the illusory nature of the world but also the doors of entry into and out of this incarnation. ‘Birth and death are doors through which you pass from one dream to another.’2
