Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00240)

> From: Steve Stubbs [mailto:stevestubbs@yahoo.com]
> Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 2:35 PM
> Subject: Theos-World Re: Maya and Beyond
> 
> > Maya could be considered the opposite of reality. But what is Maya
> > and what is the truly real?
> 
> Maya is the split between reality and out perception of it. If you
> see matter as solid, when science tells you it is really vacuous,
> then that is maya. If you see an apple as red, when science tells
> you xolo r does not exist outside our consciousness, that is maya.

I would say that there are multiple equally valid perspectives on the
same situation. We might view life in multiple modes. In whatever mode
we may function, reality not only seems a particular way, it really is
that way. These multiple outlooks are equally real, equally valid, and
coexist, even though we as individuals may only experience one of these
facets of life at a time.

We can view the external physical world as solid, real, substantial, and
a place into which everything is outpouring. We might switch
perspectives and see things from a standpoint of emptiness, wherein the
first outlook is invalidated. 

>From the standpoint of atomic physics, a rock is not solid, but is
composed of subatomic particles with mostly empty space, and even those
particles are mostly empty areas in which quarks exist. Taking that
perspective, the empty space is real. But from the standpoint of regular
everyday existence, a rock is solid and will break a window if tossed at
it. In our ordinary world, two solid objects are truly solid and cannot
occupy the same space at the same time.

Considering any plane of existence, its denizens would consider it the
actual universe, and its laws of nature and rules of existence would be
real. Other things that coexist but are on other planes would be
insubstantial, unreal, not existing.

>From the time scale on which we exist, time as measured on earth in
hours, minutes, and seconds are real to our everyday consciousness, but
nanoseconds at the atomic level or hundreds of billions of years on the
cosmic scale are beyond our perception. These other scales may have
consciousnesses that experience them in a form that seems "normal" to
them, and find our timescale as unreal as we find theirs.

There are, then, things that are relatively unreal and things that are
absolutely unreal. The relatively unreal are things possible to be
experienced, were they not so far away, so far removed in time, so big
or small, or so different in some other way that we simply cannot relate
to them.

The absolutely unreal are things totally impossible of experience,
except by transition through some "abyss." That is, we have to leave
where we are completely and take on an entirely different mode of
perception or experience. We leave our present one behind to reach the
other one. There is no overlap. It is a one-or-the-other-way thing,
where the world and we seem a particular way, and other possibilities
disappear. These shifting modes of viewing reality include (a) emptiness
or fullness, (b) the Nirmanakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Dharmakaya modes
(self, situation, or universality), (c) being manifest or unmanifest,
and (d) being Atman or Monadic Essence (having a Self or ever-unbroken
stream of consciousness).

I think one area where there is unnecessary dispute is where we take
some aspect of life or reality, pick one of its modes, say that mode is
highest or most real, and then dispute the reality of other "lesser"
modes. I would say that when there are multiple modes to perceiving
reality, none is highest, all are equally real in a general sense, and
the one an individual is currently experience is reality, for the
moment, to that person.

-- Eldon