Just as upon waking there is no water in the mirage, so, seeing with Self-Knowledge, the universe does not exist then.

The analogies of awakening from sleep and the illusion of the mirage are conjoined within a single verse. Awakening (prabodha) dispels the illusion not because the illusion itself is annihilated, but because the substratum of the illusion—sleep, the desert heat—has ceased. The water of the mirage does not “disappear”; rather