The ice is made of water in reality ice is noting but water similarly all the three states are nothing but consciousness.

It takes courage to accept the truth and reject the accumulated knowledge. One has to be extremely interested in knowing the ultimate truth and prepared to shift his point of view after deeper inquiry and reasoning.   One has to be flexible and acknowledge and humility to learn to acquire Self-Knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana.  

  

Self-Knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana is the aim of every human being. Since everyone thinks the physical body is the self, their aim is misdirected and they focus their attention on materiality which makes one feel the duality (waking) as reality.

In pursuit of truth the ultimate truth has to be proved, not assumed.  The individual experience bliss is not Brahmic bliss or  non-dual Self-awareness.

Individual truth is not universal truth.  Individual cannot claim that he has experienced the whole.  There is no proof he has seen it, because the whole is not individual experience. The man and the world are within the whole.  Thus such claims of experiencing the  Atman  or soul is mere hallucination.

Man and his experience of the world are reality within the waking experience. Thus, whatever seen, known, believed and experienced as a person of the world are happenings within the waking experience.

The world within the waking experience is not unreal but the waking experience is unreal. The waking experience is phenomenal appearance till one gets his enlightenment or wisdom. It is just like a dream, which appears to be real so long as one is asleep but vanishes the moment he wakes up.  In the same manner, as long as we are steeped in ignorance, nescience; this waking appears to be real. Soon it sinks into oblivion when one wakes up to and gets firmly establishes in the conviction that the soul is the true self.

The waking is which is unreal appears to be real, but when the wisdom dawns one becomes aware of the fact that all the three states are unreal on the standpoint of the soul as self.

For a Gnani, this illusion is just a zero. An individual  still groping in the ignorance considers himself to be an integer and goes on adding zero to it. Thus, as that integer becomes then, hundred thousand etc., in the same way, for an ignorant man, this illusion makes the waking appear to be real with all this diversity of name and form. 

Only the Gnani perceives the reality as such. Just as several ornaments are made of gold, the one  soul (consciousness or spirit )becomes the waking or dream.  The ice is made of water in reality ice is noting but water,  similarly all the three states are nothing but consciousness.. The Gnani realizes that the all the three states is of one Absolute soul.

What is reality to the person within the world is unreality to the formless  soul,  the innermost  self. What is truth on the standpoint of formless soul, the innermost self  is untruth for the ignorant, who is experiencing the duality as reality.

In all the three states, the soul is wide-awake; in waking or dream, it is ignorant of its own  true nature therefore the illusion(duality) is experienced as reality