Unreal World
2026, January, Issue 182
Dreams and Daily Life,
We discover
are exactly the same,
not real in any way whatsoever,
APPEARANCES!
not real, not real
And NOT NOTHING!
Get that silly notion out of your head!
Stop making all sorts of untested assumptions!
Just because something is not real
does not mean
that it is not nothing,
it also means that it is not not nothing,
and a whole series of ridiculous assumptions
that can lead you to equally nonsensical ideas
about what is real and what is not!
A poem by Robert Aho © 2025
People ask me over and over again about my death experience, wondering if it was just a dream, wondering if it was real or just some fantasy tied into my beliefs. Well, the answer I give over and over again, without hesitation, is that it was more real than anything we have ever experienced in our daily life, or in our dreams for that matter. Our daily life pales by comparison, not really seeming real at all, especially after that indescribable brilliant awareness. What I experienced was my mental body getting absorbed by a light that is so intense that not even the slightest trace of me existed ever again. Self vanished.
People are horrified by that, even though I further explain that it was the most exhilarating fantastic incredible open heart and mind direct experience that is possible, without any sort of limits or anything that can cause even the slightest reason to recoil in fear. I, this oneness, this Source, this Primordial Buddha, remained perfectly at ease in a state of total awareness for an eternity. It’s not possible to find anything better than that!
When self disappears, it’s plain to see that it’s only a figment of our imagination that disappeared. It’s never been real, so there’s nothing to worry about. The whole world is only appearing in ways that you want to see it, in ways that conform to your sense of self, in ways that appeal to this fabrication of mind. Only if you cling to this life might that seem disturbing. Only if reality causes aversion to you in some way would you not want to awaken. Only if you really enjoy eternal suffering would you want to avoid that incredible light at the end of the tunnel.
What I discovered is not something that I can show you. It’s not something that I can point to or wrap in some sort of philosophy or religion. It is a discovery far beyond mere human imagination. So, in that, I cannot ask you to believe anything that I say. I can only ask you to look at your own mind and examine everything that I’ve said, looking at that with scrutiny. You need to think for yourself. That’s all I can say that will help you in any way. If you don’t examine mind, it is certain that you will wander in confusion for an eternity, looking outward for solutions, wondering why life is so unfair. If you examine mind, the confusion and clutter will begin to clear. You will discover a reason to step onto the Spiritual Path.
Again, I’m repeating myself on purpose, this unreal world appears, and we think that it is real. It’s not nothing, and what appears is far too vast for the human mind to fathom. We cherry-pick what we perceive. We only pay attention to those things that we want to pay attention to, in order to validate a self who has never existed. This self is a fabrication of mind, a figment of our own imagination, one that we defend in order to build our own egos, in order to perpetuate suffering, in order to remain trapped in our own cage that we have created. We avoid reality at all costs, then we complain that life isn’t fair.
We are just like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. We’ve always had the ability to go home. It’s so simple. Unlike Dorothy, we spend far too much time battling the flying monkeys, or cringing in fear. We think home is far away and not worth the effort. When someone comes our way, helping us to get home, we question their motivation, or simply avoid them altogether. We like the horribleness of our fantasy world. It’s the last thing we would ever want to give up. We want it to be real, even though there is absolutely no evidence to support such an assumption.
When you look at this unreal world, ask as many questions as you can. Embrace both scientific and spiritual inquiry. Don’t limit yourself to any dogma, paradigm or school of thought. You’ll need to embrace everything before you can let go of all limitations. In order to do that, you will need to step onto the Spiritual Path, which simply means that you intend to discover reality at long last, you intend to awaken. You don’t need to believe in Ultimate Reality in order to discover what that is. All you need do is investigate mind until your mind merges with the Nature of Mind.
Seeing this world as unreal means that you are ready to begin. You are ready to start discovering reality. It is time to awaken.
Blessings in Light,
Rigdzin Robert Aho
What a wonderful way to start the year. Thank you!
Robert, would you please help me with this? I know there are people, myself included, who find the Dzogchen description of that Ultimate Awareness you speak about being "luminous" or "Light" confusing, since all those words seem to point out precisely at appearences within Awareness, Awareness which by definition can't have any characteristic Itself. It might lead the mind to create the image of that Awareness as something exterior to us, as something to reach outside, as the typical NDE light at the end of the tunnel. Can you please clarify?
Thank you so much for that wonderful texts you gave us the whole year.