When you’re a child, you might, at some point, become afraid of whatever goes bump in the night and, in particular, of the bogeyman.

For a while, you might close your eyes and hope that by virtue of your falling asleep, he won’t appear. But this won’t do since sleeping children could still be bothered, couldn’t they?

Consequently, suppose that one night you muster up the courage to see whether he actually exists. You grab a flashlight or turn on the lights and actually look beneath your bed to see whether he’s there. Lo and behold, you discover that no such creature is there.

Let’s end our story there–with the insight that something that doesn’t actually exist cannot possibly harm or hurt you.

The problem is that we transpose this understanding–fine so far as it goes–into the spiritual life and thus we import an error. Let me elaborate.

The common fallacy is that if X doesn’t exist or if X ceases to exist, then I am well, or happy, or peaceful. There’s an equivocation evident here, an eliding of “does not exist” with “does not appear” (or, even, “shall not ever appear as an arising ever again”).

In the teaching of Advaita Vedanta, there’s no such equivocation, and this is clear if we refer to the oft-employed phenomenal analogy of the mirage and the desert sand. In this analogy, both the ignorant person and the sage see the same color-shaped appearance, which, in language, we can call “this beautiful pool of water.” However, whereas the ignorant person believes that this beautiful pool of water isn’t just a mere appearance but is also a genuine reality, the sage knows that this appearance is, in fact, desert sand and thus not what it seems to be.

In the same way, the ignorant person believes that when a negative emotion, an undesirable state, a certain pattern of thoughts, and so on, cease to appear, thereafter he will be free, happy, and at peace. Yet the sage knows that all of these are mere appearance and that their true nature is nothing but consciousness, or being.

Come back to the bogeyman to see how trenchant this fallacy is. Don’t many of us continue to believe that when X ceases to appear, then–and only then–will we be at peace? Aren’t we confusing “does not appear” with “does not exist”? And doesn’t the sage instead point out that what appears is not what truly exists? Doesn’t the sage just see the Self, irrespective of the form it temporarily assumes without ever ceasing to be the Self?

How, practically speaking, does the above discussion help? It invites one to drop desire: the desire to be rid of appearances of such and such a kind, and the further desire to experience appearances of some other kind. The teaching urges one to see what truly exists–that is, to know that whatever is appearing is made of the very same stuff out of which you are made. In this way, one experiences “all of this” as nothing but the one and only Reality and thus fear has truly come to an end.