God Dreaming as You

A mask of flesh, a fleeting name,

The dreamer hides within the game.

A thousand roles, a thousand tries,

God awakens through disguise.

The wave believes it’s lost at sea,

Yet all along the ocean’s me.

What if you are God dreaming you are human? Not as something to believe blindly, but as a playful idea to sit with, a thought experiment that might just make this strange life feel richly meaningful.

If you were infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, you’d be bored out of your divine mind. Everything perfect, nothing to surprise you. So what would you do? Invent the ultimate game. Hide from yourself. Forget who you are. Pretend to be the unseen actor behind every human, animal, star, and tree. You’d lose yourself so completely in the role that the masks hold you.

This is the cosmic mystery of Leela, or divine play, a Hindu concept where the world is creation’s playful expression, not duty. 

Death? It’s just the curtain falling, the mask lifting. The dream ends, but you're still the dreamer. And with a smile, you choose another dream, another life. The play continues.

Through this lens, suffering isn’t punishment, it’s the shadow that sharpens the light. Loss grants contrast. Silence shapes sound. Without darkness, joy has no texture. A child’s laugh, heartbreak, triumph, they’re all gods experiencing self through a fragile form.

If this resonates, you might explore deeper by reading The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts, which explores this illusion of separate self and unity behind the mask.

Here’s what shifts when you glimpse this truth: You stop taking the drama so seriously. Failures become scenes in a play, not final acts. You laugh, forgive, and feel compassion flow naturally, you see everyone as God playing yet another role.

After death, when you awaken, you think: "That was a vivid dream." And then, you step into another costume, another incarnation. Forgetting is the device of the divine. Without forgetting, the play would collapse.

To taste that joyful remembering, consider holding a timeless reminder, The Upanishads (tr. Easwaran), ancient texts that whisper about the deep self and unity behind illusion.

So live your life as though the play matters (because it does). Dance, cry, love with abandon, knowing you're not trapped. You’re the universe wearing a disguise. When you catch that whisper of truth, you awaken within the game.

Finally, for moments when you want to linger in that awakening, let this gem stay within reach: Be Here Now by Ram Dass, a spiritual classic that anchors you in presence beyond persona.