WHO IS PRETENDING?

"You are what you pretend to be," Kurt Vonnegut wrote in his novel Mother Night.  What or who you are pretending to be is your social role, as defined by your social and psychological conditioning.

This, though, is not the whole picture.

In Vedanta, who you are pretending to be is called "maya," meaning illusion, but illusion not in the sense of unreality but in the sense of the cosmic play of Brahman.  Alan Watts said about it, "it's all a big act." 

What you are pretending to be is really what the Brahman is pretending to be.  The difference is, you don't know it.  The reason you don't know it is because you are it.