Saṃsāra appears like a dream

The dream analogy runs through the Vāsiṣṭha like an underground river. It is not a decorative metaphor — it is the doctrine itself. A dream appears real while it lasts; its rules seem incontrovertible, its sufferings move, its joys transport. Upon waking, everything dissolves — not because it disappears, but because it is revealed never to have been substantial. The phenomenal world, says Vasiṣṭha, has exactly that consistency. It is not that the world is an illusion in the vulgar sense of “it does not exist” — it exists in the way a dream exists, which is a mode of existence that cannot withstand scrutiny.