When I said, “All of us are pretending,” I wasn’t talking about fake smiles or empty promises. I meant it in the Advaitic sense: the entire drama of “I” and “you” is a cosmic role-play, Brahman’s theatre of masks. Even love — when I say “I love you” — is both a pretence and the deepest truth. Pretence, because the separate “me” and “you” don’t exist. Truth, because love is the very essence of that One Reality. In this play, pretending is how the Real shines through.