SmartSurat  #  Hinduism

Maya

The perspectives we as human beings have of life are dictated by the dualities we see in it. Thus we can only know what good is in relation to bad or evil, light in relation to darkness, what we like in relation to what we dislike and so on. Human beings exist in space and time. It is the spatial aspect which entrenches differentiation between all the dual aspects of the phenomenal world - this as opposed to that, subject as opposed to object, knower as opposed to known. And all human beings see themselves at a point on the track of time, reflecting back on the past, or reaching forward into the future. Few people simply just are - just. living in a particular moment - for all but a few fleeting seconds, and the times in which one ceases to differentiate between the phenomena of life are probably confined to dreamless sleep! But Brahman is not only beyond the limitations of space and time, but is neti neti - neither this on the one hand nor that on the other; Brahman is beyond all the differentiations of life, and so is the atman which is identical to it. Realization of the atman can only come about when the mind is stilled, when it is withdrawn from the egoistic movement between dualities which help it make sense of life, and when it is in the isness or suchness of the moment. The mind is like a screen on which we project images, emotions, spatial conceptions, choices between dualities, and subtle modes of consciousness of which we ourselves may not be aware. It is when the screen is left blank for a moment that the thusness of the atman is experienced and its changeless Reality (sat); for how can the shifting, impermanent patterns we place on the screen be real? So experience of such reality is experience, not of the ordinary consciousness of daily life or the outcomes of unconscious and subconscious processes, but experience of Pure Consciousness (cit), an experience which brings the bliss (ananda) of identity with Brahman. Nothing illusory can bring happiness: only what is real, the fullness of Brahman, can bring eternal bliss.      There is one thing that is, and only one - the light within, the light in which these pleasures and pains, these Heating scenes and semblances, come and go, pass into and pass out of being. This primordial light, this light of lights, beyond the darkness of the self - feigned world-fiction, this fontal unity of undifferentiated being, is pure being, pure thought, pure bliss?      Because monism is a non-dual system of belief it denies the dualities of the world as unreal, emphasizing only the oneness of all the cosmos. Such dualities and the plurality and diversity of the world we see around us are illusory or maya : indeed, if they are transient and subject to decay and death, how can they be real? But it is precisely the diversity of the world which entices us as individuals, and the more we become involved in it the deeper the involvement with maya and the further away we are from Reality. Maya thus serves to conceal Brahman like a cloud conceals the sun. An analogy of the famous ninth-century philosopher Sankara illustrates this well. He likened maya to a coiled rope on a path which, at late dusk, gives every appearance of a snake. And anyone seeing it would have the very real fears and reactions which such a sight would create. But travelling the same path in the light of day and realizing that the snake was, after all, a rope, removes the illusion and presents what is real: likewise, losing the image of the phenomenal world as real and realizing the reality of Brahman, puts Ultimate Reality into its correct perspective. To suggest that this impermanent, constantly changing world is the only reality is to be living under the delusion of maya:      The sum of migrating forms of life, and of the spheres through which they migrate, is the ever-moving world. Everything in it is coming into being, and passing out of being, but never is.      In the ever-shifting scenes of life, how can there be the permanence which must constitute what is real? Because the Upanisadic answer to this question is to deny reality to the phenomenal world, only Brahman is real: all else is maya. Importantly, however, maya refers to the material world and not to the essence of phenomena in the world. It is the essence and not the material which is equated with Brahman: So for each human being it is the atman alone which is real; ' Self alone is, and all else only seems to be '.