Unspirituality: Maya/Illusion

I have always been frantically cynical about what is said about the idea of maya or illusion. I may be caricaturing but generally speaking it's the idea that everything is illusion and by extension nothing matters. It's cognate with the idea that not desiring anything will make us happy. You might as well start saying other people only have power over you if you let them.

I am very sceptical of any philosophy that tries to deflect from the suffering of the world in front of us, while also being very aware that that is sometimes the only coping strategy we have. I am also very wary of any philosophy originating in the East, as peddled in the west. Literally all of the ideas of Eastern philosophies are understood in the west through the prism of Theosophy, because that is how we first came across them. We therefore subtly misunderstand all of these ideas including karma, reincarnation, and so on.

Is it conceivable that an ancient world view would come up with the sort of thing you hear in a workshop in Moseley? Of course not.

Vedanta philosophy refers to the term “Maya” as the cosmic illusion on account of which the one appears as many, the Absolute as the Relative. Adi Sankara in the hymn Bhaja Govinda, also known as Moha Mudgara, cautions people about the power of Maya by which this entire creation is constituted, pointed out Sri B. Sundarkumar in a lecture.

‘The world is only as real as the image that is seen in a mirror,’ says the acharya in the Dakshinamurthy Stotra. When this image of the world is seen within oneself, it is similar to what is seen by one due to an illusion.

In the state of sleep, one sees many scenes that appear real. One might have reacted to a fearful dream and cried out aloud while still in the dream state. 

 So the dream is true to the one who has seen it. This reality of the dream state is shattered when one switches to the reality of the waking state.

So is the dream state true or not? If the dream state is true, what happens to the dream when one wakes up? If the dream state is untrue, then what happens to the experiences felt in the dream state?

In the Advaita viewpoint, the illusory world is known as Mithya. What is seen, what is heard, what is thought by the mind and felt by the heart are all because of Maya. All this appears as Truth, but it is not the truth.

As long as one avoids the question ‘Who am I,’ one lives in this world thinking it is real. Confronting this question in earnest opens the path for the search for the Absolute Truth which a jnani is able to realise, while the ignorant are yet to transcend the veil of Maya. Source

 

So not the caricature I gave above, and at the same time exactly the kind of thing that white people run away with and get all wrong.

I am, however, coming round to the possibility that the realities we experience can consist of multiple layers and need different understandings. I am now aware that the idea of maya which has been peddled to us is an illusion and that is some pretty freaky shit.

One of the things which has made me shift slightly is the study of Kabbalah and tarot, and particularly the idea of the cube of Space, where the major arcana are laid out on a cube rather than the more familiar tree of Life. The outer faces of the cube represent different initiations and hence perceptions or understandings, and the axes inside the cube cannot be perceived.

So I'll just leave it there, because I recognize one of those things you're not supposed to understand when I see one.