godnotgod
Thou art That
The difference is that Brahman is the only true Reality, while 'I', 'the thinker', 'the soul', etc, are the maya manifested by Brahman. Brahman is not a concept nor an aspect of reality: It is Reality itself.
What has occurred is that Brahman has become so immersed in the character, in the maya, that It has forgotten It's own true Brahman nature, and really thinks it is the character. When asked if the fictional life it is living is reality, it answers in the affirmative, absolutely. That is how well It is playing the Cosmic Game of Hide and Seek. From this POV, the atheist is the divine nature pretending it does not exist, and the theist is the divine nature pretending it is some 'other'.
That is a very good question, and one deserving of a topic unto itself, actually. However, I would say it is largely a matter of degree. When I was at Zen Center in San Francisco, the monks told us that when they engaged in every meal, they chewed each mouthful at least 25 times. Why? Well, in the East, the center of consciousness is not in the head, but in the hara, just below the navel. You don't want any digestive problems interfering in that area during meditation that might ruin or limit your experience in some negative way. Of course, this is fine tuning, admittedly. But there is one thing: and that is that sufficiently evolved people tend not to think of bodily pains as 'my' pains. Personally, I have chanted away many a bodily pain, usually within 30 minutes. But more severe conditions would probably cause too much distraction from the bliss of the spiritual experience, I think, but maybe all the more reason to turn to higher ground for sustenance. What brief experiences I have had were enough to cause me to know beyond a shadow of any doubt that there is nothing that can go on in the physical temporal body to compare with life in the spiritual world.
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