Time, place and object are the three pillars on which the visible creation rests. Creation or world is what the senses in our body alone reveal. Besides the senses’ revelation, the world has no existence at all. But do the senses reveal the world always? One third of the day, every one, at the end of the day, as he was wakeful till then, goes to dense sleep, unaware of himself and the world. Time, place and object also cease to be. But the one who was awake does not disappear. He wakes up revealing the world again. Who or what is the truth then, and what is the false? Obviously the one who was awake and asleep is true, not the world he sees for a while!

The Knower identifies himself with the ‘I’, the Self, on which wakefulness and sleep rest, like bubbles in water. For such a one, can there be anything like time, and hence any past, present or future? Even in sleep all the three become extinct. Having experienced their extinction, is it right to cling to them?

In sleep were you lacking or needing anything at all? Do you not say you comfortably slept? Why should that you, on waking up, look to the illusory phenomena? Between the illusion and the substratum on which it rests, the truth is undoubtedly the substratum, not the other. Rest on this substratum, the ‘I’, the Self, and its inner sovereign, magnificent splendour. All the rest will follow like the seasons. This is what Janaka says he does.