There are three major parameters that tell you that you are operating within the Dream that has no ultimately reality: any phenomenon which involves time, or space, or cause-and-effect. That is, in short every phenomenon within the Dream.

All of these phenomenon are found within what we call our apparent universe. For some time now, scientists—particularly physicists and astronomers—have been concluding some strange things about our universe. For instance, astronomy professor Mark Whittle:

The total mass/energy of the universe equals zero: the universe sums to nothing. This is comparable to what one associates with traditional spiritual-based cosmologies. This also gives us insight into how the universe came into being: perhaps it came from nothing… So the universe could come from nothing because it is, fundamentally, nothing.

And physicist Don Lincoln:

According to the theory of general relativity, before the universe began expanding—before the ‘bang’—all of the matter and energy of the universe was located in a single point: a sphere with zero size. The scientific term for this is a singularity.

If all mass and energy existed in a single point, and mass and energy are equal to space and time times a constant, then space and time must be in a single point.

That means that there is no other space. It’s not that space exists, and the singularity exists in that space and then explodes. It’s that all of space exists inside the same point. And if everything exists inside that point, then it stand to reason that nothing is outside of that point.

This means that when the big band occurred, the explosion didn’t expand into space. It means that space was created during the expansion. There was nothing outside of the universe.

So, how real is the universe? It is said to have emerged—along with time, space and the cause-and-effect which appear in them—from a point zero in size.

In other words, we have a universe which is fundamentally nothing supposedly exploding from a zero-size point in nothing. How real does that make it?

The “universe” is in the mind—and the mind itself is ephemeral. The universe is not ultimately a reality; no more so than is the mind an ultimate reality.

Bear in mind: Nothing thou art, and to nothing thou shalt return.

That is the message of ajata.

“There is no doubt whatsoever that the universe is the merest illusion,” Sri Ramana told Sivaprakasam Pillai when questioned as a young sage at the outset of his teaching career… “clearly perceive, beyond all doubt that the phenomenal world (as an objective, independent reality) is wholly non-existent.”

We could list many other statements to show just how strongly Sri Ramana felt about this, but two more should suffice to drive the point: “At the level of the spiritual seeker, you have got to say that the world is an illusion” and, “Unless you give up the idea that world is real, your mind will always be after it.”

– Mountain Path Journal