Ajata is an extension of advaita, taking it to its logical conclusion. With advaita, one genuinely wakes up, but within the cosmic dream. Through ajata, what one wakes up to is transcendent of the dream.

The major principle of the transcendent teachings is that all cosmic things are empty of reality: not anything has ever actually originated, far beyond any supposed beginning. The Indian monk Nagarjuna presented the first systematic view, it is thought—of the principle of emptiness described in Buddhist sutras—around 200 A.D.

Where there has been no origination—meaning causation or creation—phenonema, which we suppose arise and disappear, cannot be anymore ultimately real than is their mere impermanent appearance. All things are actually empty: emptiness is not a cause–or an effect–of anything.

This principle can be understood not from the place of supposing that things have been created, and then figuring out how emptiness relates to them, but rather from the position of emptiness in which not anything can have been originated. From that standpoint, it can be seen that anything which appears to be existent must be false, or unreal.

This viewpoint will lead us to the conclusion that where not anything is originated, there is no cessation. In other words, birth and death are not actualities, apart from the dream. In other words, one’s “life”–between “birth” and “death”–is unreal; this is the “dream.” In fact, there having been no creation, the universe itself is within the dream, the illusion of “existence.” Seven billion dreamers are born into, and are dreaming, the dream of their “reality.” Some few wake up to their–and thus, all else–emptiness.

And because of the unreality of the dream, none of what appears within the dream is important. Even any explanation of the dream, or what occurs within it, has no real importance.