“Like a mirage in a desert, the world appears real but is not.”
The verse: Yoga Vasistha 3.1.19
The quote above is our paraphrase. This is the verse as it reads in the Vihari-Lala Mitra translation (1891–99):
“The unreality of the world appears as a reality, just as the heat of the sun presents the unreal mirage in the moving sands of the desert as real waves of the sea.”
About the text: Yoga Vasistha
The Yoga Vasistha is a long Sanskrit philosophical work, traditionally attributed to Valmiki, in which the sage Vasistha teaches Prince Rama through stories and dialogue. Its six books teach liberation through self-effort and insight. Scholars date it anywhere from about the 6th to the 14th century, and it probably grew over time.