The “only” Truth

Who are you? Who are you after divorce or the end of a romantic relationship? Who were you before?

Who is someone after a fatal diagnosis?

Who is someone that gets their happily ever after?

Billions of people have lived on this Earth before you took your first breath.

They laughed.

They cried.

They hated.

They fought wars.

They prayed to their God.

Each believed their story was special, their love unique, their pain incomparable, their victories eternal.

Where are they now?

They are all gone and hardly a trace remains. It’s as if they never existed…

Their dramas, their ambitions, their heartbreaks…….vanished….like writing on water.

You too are repeating the same dream.

You fall in love and believe, “Ah, this has never happened before.”

You suffer and imagine your suffering is exceptional.

But it is not.

It has unfolded again and again across billions of lives, and existence remains unconcerned.

The sun still rises.

The stars continue their ancient dance.

Rivers flow on.

Existence does not take notice of your dramas. This is one of the most important truths to remember: do not take your story too seriously. Do not be obsessed with your joys and sorrows.

They come and go. You …….come and go.

Spiritual leaders have always said the world is a dream—sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly, but still only a dream.

Watch it, play in it, enjoy it, but never forget that it will pass.

What remains?

Only one thing: the watcher, the pure awareness within you. That which has no beginning and no end. That flame of God. That spark. You are a piece of God which never dies.

Whatever you call your life is simply a drama on a tiny stage. One day you are a lover, the next day an enemy. One day a king, the next a beggar. Success comes and you soar. Failure comes and you fall. And all the while you believe this is real, ultimate, permanent.

But existence does not take it seriously. The sun does not stop rising because you are brokenhearted. The stars do not pause their journey because you celebrate. Trees do not weep with your sadness, nor do rivers clap for your victories. Life goes on, unconcerned.

This is why the spiritual advisors say: do not get too identified with the play.

You are an actor, but the role is not you. Today you play a father, tomorrow a businessman, the day after a corpse carried to the graveyard. Roles change, the stage remains. And you—the watcher—remain.

Once you see this, a lightness enters your being.

You no longer cling to success or tremble at failure.

You see it all as passing show. A great relaxation happens when you realize man’s misery is taking the dream for reality. Forgetting yourself, you become obsessed with shadows. But the moment you remember that this too shall pass, something extraordinary opens inside you.

Look at your dreams. In sleep, someone insults you and you wake with anger in your chest. Or you meet your beloved and wake with sweetness lingering in your heart. In those moments the dream feels real. Yet the moment you open your eyes, it vanishes into nothing.

Life is not much different.

While you are in it, everything feels solid, urgent, final. Money feels real. Status feels real. Suffering feels like a permanent wound. But when death opens your eyes, all that seemed so important dissolves like last night’s dream.

This is why the awakened ones insist: learn the art of distance. Do not drown in the river; sit on the bank and watch. Yes, the river flows—waves rise and fall, sometimes calm, sometimes violent. But you remain the watcher.

Forget this, and you suffer unnecessarily.

Remember it, and a miracle happens: you are no longer a victim of the dream. A space opens within you, and you can even laugh at your troubles. In that distance, the watcher reveals itself.

Joys come and go. Sorrows come and go. Life comes, death comes. Still the watcher remains.

To recognize the watcher is to wake from the dream. That awakening is the beginning of true freedom. Deep inside you, beneath thought and emotion, is a silent space. That silence is your reality. It has no birth, no death. It was here before you were born, and it will remain when your body is gone. Everything else changes—your body, your mind, your desires. But the awareness that observes never changes.

Think of life as a movie screen. Thousands of stories are projected onto it—love stories, tragedies, wars, comedies.

But when the film ends, the screen itself remains untouched.

The fire in the film does not burn the screen. The flood does not make the screen wet. The murder does not wound the screen.

The screen is just there—pure, empty, silent.

Your consciousness is that screen.

I remember the story of a brain surgeon who had a near-death experience. His car had crashed into a telephone pole, and he went through the windshield. And—let's just call it his soul—was floating at the top of the streetlamp above the car wreck. As he was looking down and coming to the conclusions of where he was, what he was, and what had just happened to him, he said to himself, Oh my God, they got it all wrong. Consciousness is not in the brain, because he was realizing he was still thinking the way he had always thought. Yet, his crumpled, broken body and smashed brain remained below him on the ground.

That “thinking” is consciousness.

All your dramas, your anger, your love, your fears, your victories are only projections. They come and go, but the screen remains.

Most people forget the screen. They get lost in the movie. They cry, they laugh, they scream, they fight. But the moment you turn your attention back to the screen, everything changes. A deep relaxation enters you. You can enjoy the movie without being consumed by it. Remember who you are.

You are not the role you play.

You are not even the body or the mind through which you act.

You are the pure witness, the eternal awareness. To touch this truth is to touch freedom. Once you know it, you can live in the world but never be possessed by it. You can love without chains. You can succeed without pride. You can fail without despair.

Religion itself is not Hindu, not Christian, not Muslim. The moment you chop truth into pieces and label them, you have already lost the point. There are not many truths.

There is only Truth.

One doesn’t say “my gravity” and “your gravity.” If water boils at 100°, it always has and always will. Whether you are a sinner or a saint, a Jew or a Hindu, it makes no difference. Nature does not check passports. And genuine religion is the same. When you come upon truth, you do not find it stamped “Made in the East” or “Property of the West.” Truth is not a franchise. It is not historical or geographical. It is timeless, spaceless, simply what is. Lies can be endless, paraded in costumes, but truth shines like the sun—without a label, without division.

Have you noticed how many faces you wear in a single day? In the morning with your spouse, you put on the mask of a husband or wife. At work, the mask of a professional. With children, another mask, the parent. With friends, still another. With strangers, perhaps the mask of politeness. Yet none of these are truly you. They are roles, costumes, borrowed behaviors. They appear automatically: walk into the office and your back straightens, your tone shifts—you do not even think about it. The mask simply appears. After so long, you forget your original face.

That is why people feel so tired and disconnected: they are living in constant performance.

Imagine, for a moment, dropping all masks. No husband, no worker, no father, no leader, no servant. Just you—raw, unprotected, without pretense. At first it feels frightening, but soon it becomes liberating. Suddenly, you do not need to impress anyone. You do not need to protect an image. You can finally breathe. This is why people long for silence, for meditation. Deep inside, they are tired of pretending. They want to feel their real face again. And when the masks fall, something miraculous happens. Love becomes real. Relationships become alive. Because now you are not relating through masks, but through essence.

The greatest courage is to live without masks.

The mind itself is mechanical. When you first learn to drive, you are alert—you watch the road, the gears, the mirrors. But once you know, the robot takes over. You can drive and talk, drive and sing, drive and dream.

The same has happened with life.

Personalities, reactions, emotions—all belong to the robot part of the mind. They function automatically. You are not living.

You are being lived.

The only way out is awareness. Watch the automatic patterns. Watch the masks you put on. Watch the dream as it unfolds. The more you watch, the more the mechanical loosens its grip. And in that space, freedom enters.

Everything will disappear: your love, your hate, your success, your failure—all will vanish. The curtain will fall. The drama will end. Silence will return. Do not get lost in the dream.

Play it, enjoy it, but do not forget it is only a play.

One thing alone remains: the witness, the awareness, the Eternal Flame within you.

That is who you are. That is the only truth.

To remember this, and to live from this Truth, is the most significant thing.

(from Alan Watts: the Most Important Truth in Life on youtube)