To the Gnani, birth, life and death, is a mere mirage, because he is fully aware of the fact that all the three states are mere illusion. All the three states they appear and disappear in succession. The witness of the three states is neither the body nor the ‘I’. Thus the witness is apart from the body and ‘I’.
When one is “awake,” he incessantly thinks, and when he goes to sleep and dream, he does not think any the lesser. But when he pass from dreamful to dreamless sleep, his thoughts cease and he enjoy undisturbed peace, till he wakes again and resume his thinking and with it his restless, peace-less state. But all these are happening within the three states and he is aware of the experiences only in the waking experience.
Birth, life and death are part of the waking experience. The waking experience is mind, because when the mind exists, then only the duality prevails. Absent of mind absent of duality. Therefore waking/dream/mind/duality is one and the same thing.
People think life is miserable because they are not aware of the fact that ‘I’ is not the true self and all the three states are unreal on the standpoint of the soul, which is the true self.
Waking /dream consist of nothing but experience. In deep sleep the waking and dream disappears and the experience -Free State prevails. But soon experience appears again in the dream /astral/vision and continues till a full “waking” takes place in a new body, after another dreamless lull. This daily cycle of waking and sleeping is a miniature of the cycle of birth, life and death.
Man and the universe are within the waking/dream. The substance the three states is the soul, which is the true self. Soul is the source from which waking/dream arise. To transcend birth and death one has, therefore, to transcend the waking/dream and abide in the soul which is eternal.
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