Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00224)

Maya could be considered the opposite of reality. But what is Maya and
what is the truly real? If you take one person's viewpoint, that
person's place in life determines his or her view of things. Someone
working in a high-pressure office in New York City might consider the
exact clock time and daily schedule to be extremely real. Another person
spending a month hiking in Nepal might consider the time of day as very
unreal. A young mother with four hungry, noisy children charging about
the house might consider their needs real. A Buddhist student on the
sixth day of Dai Session might consider the sound of children at play
outside as no more real than the ant crawling on the floor before him or
the momentary sound of honking car horns.

Maya is misperception. A stick lies beside the sidewalk. Walking home in
the dark, someone is startled to see a snake. After a brief shock, the
person realizes the mistake and sees what is really there. 

Our ordinary perceptions of life are full of such mistakes. That is
Maya. It is not that the physical world is a mirage, unreal, and does
not exist. It is as real as everything else, on whatever plane of
existence. It may be grosser, more material, more limited in
expressiveness, but it is not a figment of our imagination. What is
unreal is our false perception of it. We see it. We could understand
what is happening. But we misperceive, fooling ourselves, seeing things
that are not here and missing seeing things that actually exist before
us.

The biggest cause of Maya is the action of the lower mind in creating a
false sense of permanence to things. In addition, we paint the world
with our minds, making it look like our worldviews. If we are devout
Christians, we have a story of life involving the church doctrines we've
been taught. That story colors our perception. We picture the world as
acting according it. We make the world appear as though that story were
actual reality. In doing so, we fill our minds with Maya, deluding
ourselves. 

In a dream, there may be a narrative voice. That voice explains the
setting and what is going on. Our minds take on that role in waking
life, adding a subtle narration to our experience of life. The storyline
that is followed represents how our beliefs are organized.

How do we get closer to the Real, and reduce the influence of Maya in
our lives?

First, we need to be aware of the presence and influence of Maya. We
need to keep aware that what we believe about the world and what is
happening are preconceptions that hold us back from seeing things more
directly.

Second, we need to practice disassociating ourselves from Maya. This is
helped if we have multiple ways of thinking about things, taken from
vastly differently outlooks. Switching frequently between these
different views, we come to see that each is something that we're doing
rather than literal reality. Contrast the traditional theosophical view
with a Buddhist or Islamic view. Then add a Jungian view. Throw in a
sci-fi view or perhaps a taste of Taoism. Give each a turn, continually
wondering about life.

Third, we recognize that life is multimodal. That is, there are many
equally valid perspectives. None is ultimate truth, to which all people
must someday accept. There is fullness and emptiness, sunya and sunyata.
There is the unmanifest and the manifest. There is life and death. There
is deism and not-deism. There are many different outlooks, each assuming
the face of reality when we embrace it. Each, though, is but one of many
equally real faces to life.

I think it's a misconception to think that we're closer to reality if we
could somehow exist on a higher plane. The materials of that plane, its
"laws of nature," may be subtler, but they are equally capable of
deluding us. Insight into life is cultivated from within. It is not
conferred upon us from outside, from visiting special places, be they
Tibet or some higher plane. Wherever we are, we exist in some form and
are doing something. If we don't cultivate our perceptions, polish the
mirror of our minds, and draw forth insight from within, we remain
subject to delusion. 

There are higher faculties than the mind. Besides cultivating it, we can
draw deeper within and be aware of the world in other, richer ways. But
these faculties are *in addition to* what we work with, not *instead of*
them. All of them are important add to the richness of life. We can draw
upon inner sources of light that illumine the mind. But if the mind is
not clear, acting as a well-polished lens to focus that light with
clarity, the light is rendered impotent. A mind that is unclear, that is
opaque, that diffuses and scatters the light -- it makes one
dysfunctional, much like cataracts may render otherwise perfectly
healthy eyes useless. 

The mind should be clear, transparent, luminous, focused, and a
responsive instrument of the inner nature. As such, it allows one to be
a potent, creative being in the world. Without it, one is frustrated,
confused, confusing, disoriented, without purpose, and but stumbling
along in life. (This sounds like most of us, to a degree! We all have
room for improvement in sharpening our mental faculties.)

Maya arises when we let our preconceptions rule us, and don't carefully
look at life. The world is real. Life is real. We don't have to long to
be on some higher plane, to be totally absorbed in our favorite deity,
to achieve final "liberation" in nirvana, or active any "not here, not
now" objective. When we stop the "somewhere else, some other time"
outlook, and instead give up, stop rejecting our current selves, and
instead seek to discover the riches already within ourselves -- then
Maya is fading and Reality is showing its face. And we discover that we
have actual riches to draw upon that have more to give us than anything
we might have longed for.

Longing for something higher, seeking for further perfection, wanting to
escape our current limitations, we function within time and deal with
that part of us that is subject to evolution. But there is also a higher
part of us that is timeless, and as such does not evolve. To evolve,
something must participate in time, and thus is something less than that
part. 

Being timeless, that highest part of us is as available to us now as it
was billions of years ago, and will be no more available to us at the
end of some great Manvantara as it is this moment. It is both available
and unreachable at the same time. It is unreachable in the sense that no
action we might take could bring us closer to it nor is there anything
we can do to grasp it more fully. But it is also as available at this
moment as any other. We will never get any closer than we already are.
And we are more intimately close to it than we could ever conceive. It
is the Unknowable, or our personal experience of it, or our essential
rootedness in it, something that could be considered the ultimate
mystery of life except that it also is that thing which we more
ultimately, truly know.

-- Eldon