![]() The first is the Maya of the world of nature, which holds a wealth of beauty and grace behind the appearances of the various landscapes that we take for granted – the magic of the mountains, rivers, ocean, sky and stars. There are two levels of this Maya of the world. The Wonderful Maya of Nature and the Dangerous Maya of Society Unless we learn to probe beyond these surface waves, we will unlikely find the truth of life and will often be deceived, not only by others but also by ourselves, as each one of us has his or her illusions about self and world as well. In the modern world, we live in a turbulent ocean of appearances, impressions and influences. They hold back, wait and observe before making any important judgments or decisions, looking to what may be behind the actions and motivations of others or the circumstances involved. Those individuals who are wise do not allow themselves to be taken in by appearances, promises, or marketing. The seeming or illusory nature of the phenomena, events or circumstances in the world is a common fact of our daily lives. We frequently get such ‘reality checks’ in life when we find out that things are not what we thought they were, and we were instead being misled by appearances or by our own expectations. In our social interactions, for another example, we often discover once we get to know a person that we find them to be quite different than how they first appeared. If we go to the store to buy groceries, for example, we commonly note that the actual nutritional value of a food item is usually different than the appearance or even size of the package. This experience of illusion begins at the level of our daily lives. The world is a shifting seeming, a changing appearance, which hides something different, deeper, invisible or unknown. ![]() It is an obvious fact for all of us – if we but look deeply – that things often end up not really being what they initially appear to be. ![]() Clearly Maya or illusion is there everywhere around us. Media biases are well known to all of us, both in the realms of business and politics, and new forms of communication are coming up regularly that are altering how we see the world. ![]() Science reduces the world to subatomic particles and our body to chemical reactions that deconstructs the reality that appears through our senses and leaves us only with energy moving in space. ![]() But how real is the world that we experience through our senses? Do we see reality through our senses, or are we merely receiving a surface glimpse of something far greater or even different than what it seems? Even if we add the tools of science and the media – with their instruments of greater communication and perception – to the data gained from the senses we may still be getting an incomplete or distorted view of the world, not the world as it is but rather only one side of it, like the proverbial blind men and the elephant. Of course, few of us like to have the validity of what we are doing in life challenged or the reality of the world as we see it called into question. There is a deep meaning to Maya that must be understood for any true cosmic or self knowledge to develop, including spirituality and science. The idea that the external world is an illusion was greeted by nineteenth century European thinkers as proof of India’s inability to cope with the practical world, but as we move into the high tech era, its media images and virtual realities the twenty-first century, our world is becoming more and more like Maya every day. That the world is Maya is the basis of the emphasis on yoga and meditation in Indian thought, which is regarded as the means of moving beyond Maya. The great spiritual traditions of India commonly teach us that the world is Maya, usually translated as ‘illusion’ or ‘unreality’. ![]()
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