ब्रह्म सत्यं जगत् मिथ्या-Brahman (the Absolute Reality) is True, the World (Jagat) is Illusory/Mithya

    This line or the verse has been said to us many a time  and we have difficulty in understanding it. The complete line is 'The individual soul is nothing but BRAHMAN'

But our experience does not go with this. We live in this world and we experience all the things around us like trees and mountains and rivers, fruits and many things in nature . We also experience the man made things like clothes and buildings and we have family and we have job and so on. So how can be the BRAHMAN can be the ONLY TRUE? This apparent paradox can be explained by definition of what 'REAL' or TRUE or REALITY.

    We call something real, when it does not change or one which is CHANGELESS. When I look at the table or chair , yes it is there and it is real in the usual sense -it is not figment of out imagination. But when we talk about real or not real , we use some other criteria . The table is there for now and it will appear unchanged for tomorrow. But would be unchanged in next 1 or 2 years ? Certainly not . It will change ,it will get warped if made of wood and get rusted if made of iron. So it CHANGES and then disappears . So everything that we see and experience CHANGES with TIME . The BRAHMAN is the only thing that does not change with time. So that is why we call the BRAHMAN as the only reality. 

   The other explanation which is rather difficult to digest or accept , is that the entire universe is nothing but a dream and we are players in the dream. If I have  dream - my entire dream is made by ME and the events that are happening are all CREATED by me. And when I wake up, everything that I see in my dream, is gone. The character in my dream are not aware of my existence  and MY world like my job, my home , my relatives etc. There is no way the dream characters have any idea or concept of the dreamer's so called real world. The same thing can be applied to US as character in the BIG DREAM.

     So if we are the characters in CREATER'S dream then we are not real. I understand this explanation but have hard time accepting it and I feel that when we talk or reality, we are taking about 'UNCHANGING' and limitless - No limits of DESH- KAAL - VASTU, means Location-Time -Identity. We all have these limits and only BRAHMAN has no such limits. The chair that I am sitting on is HERE and not THERE , that is limitation of location. It is here now and may not be there tomorrow -this is limitation of Time  and it is Chair and not table or computer -is the limitation of Identity. 

    So these are the some of the explanations of the statement that the Brahman is only REAL