Just as a child does not know that a dream is a dream, O Lord, so this confused world does not know inverted perception.

The innocence of the bāla — child — is not virtue but operative ignorance. The child who cries in sleep does not know he cries in fiction; the adult who suffers while awake does not either. The difference is that the adult could know. The vimūḍha loka — the confused world — is not condemnation but description: the majority operates under viparyaya not because it is inevitable but because it has not examined. The illustration is pedagogical: one does not judge the child for not knowing; one teaches him. The yogin who sees this does not develop superiority but karuṇā — compassion — because he knows that confusion is common and the exit is accessible. There are no chosen ones; there are those who have awakened and those who still sleep, but all are the same consciousness that dreams and awakens.