The world is neither an illusion nor a dream but is analogically like both. It is true that the mystics or yogis do experience it as such. This is a step forward toward liberation but must not be mistaken for liberation itself. When they pass upward to the higher or philosophic stage they will discover that all is Mind, whether the latter be creatively active or latently passive; that the world is, in its essential stuff, this Mind although its particular forms are transient and mortal; and that therefore there is no real difference between earthly experience and divine experience. Those who are wedded to forms, that is, appearances, set up such a difference and posit spirit and matter, nirvana and samsara, Brahman and Maya, and so forth, as antithetic opposites, but those who have developed insight perceive the essential stuff of everything even while they perceive its forms; hence they see all as One. It is as if a dreamer were to know that he was dreaming and thus understand that all the dream scenes and figures were nothing but one and the same stuff--his mind--while not losing his dream experience.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 3 : The Individual and World Mind > # 24
