Tad:

To answer your question: from the standpoint of ultimate reality, it doesn’t matter what you say, feel, think or do: “you” are not the doer as the advaita teachings say, because you do not exist as you think you are—a separate individual.

So, does it matter if you save a (separate) “life”?: no; as there is no you who has a life (as Buddha says in the Diamond Sutra), there are no lives, separate or otherwise.

The most refined or deepest, investigation of advaita is known as ajata. Ajata teaches (as do I, at my website ajatasunyata.com) that our so-called reality is an illusion. We are dreamers, living in a dream: the dream has no reality, in any ultimate sense. We ourselves are within the dream; we are no more real than the dream itself. In other words, not any thing which occurs in this “universe” or “world”—good, bad or neutral—is actually real, or true. So, does it really make any difference what we do? No: no more so than any difference it makes as to what is done in a sleeping dream.

In the big Dream, which occurs while we’re awake (in particular), we are conditioned to presuppose that certain things “exist”, in addition to ourselves: such as time, space and cause-and-effect, even life or death. As dreamers within the Dream, these things which we are conditioned to believe exist—such as, for instance, “I” or “death”—shape the nature of our Dream. As a dreamer, “I” will suppose, for instance, that “life” (especially mine) has a higher value than “death” (especially mine). Therefore, one will consider it most sensible to “save lives”. But not anything which occurs in the dream has any actual reality.

So, to answer your question, in the Dream you will, or you will not, attempt to save someone’s life. Apart from (or “outside” of) the unreal Dream, it makes no difference what you do, or do not do. Not anything within the Dream has any reality, from an ultimate standpoint.

As the Buddhists put it, every thing within the illusion which we call life, and this universe, is “empty of reality”. Likewise, anything beyond (or “apart” from) this illusive life and universe is equally “empty of reality”. Ultimate reality is “emptiness” (Sanskrit: sunyata).

In emptiness, not anything matters. In fact, in emptiness not anything has ever actually happened or occurred. Why? Because from emptiness, not anything can actually ever have originated or “arisen”. This tells us why “life” is a dream of an unreal dreamer within the unreal Dream.