illusion (Maya ) A terribly misunderstood word,and perhaps most responsible for the popular image of India
in the West as being a country that is other-worldly. It is also a grim commentary on the power of colonial structures in determining the future image of subject cultures. Western scholars in the 19th century hastily translated the word as
illusion and now it will not shake off that connotation. Even worse, the English educated section of Indians have internalized this word as
illusion because that is what the respected centres of learning of the west labelled it. Maya is maya ideally, but if a translated term were necessary then secondary reality would do. Maya is not a term that negates the world of existence, rather it seeks to explain the nature of existing reality. Maya is even more accurately
perceptual reality as opposed to the higher truth which is a
conceptual reality. What we think and feel to be the nature of the world is not necessarily so. Our perceptual reality tells us that the sun rotates round the earth. Conceptual reality teaches us that quite the opposite is the truth. We live in a conceptual reality of Einstienian physics, but the perceptual reality of Newtons physics is what still dominates the mind. It is difficult to accept that solid objects are actually vibrating energy fields; that is a deeper conceptual truth that is rarely attained without difficulty in the experience of man. And even though we know the truth about atoms, we still feel and percieve solids as we always did. Which is what maya is all about , an acknowledgement that there are truths beyond our daily grinds. Maya does not deny the world, but tells us the world is not all that it may seem. Maya therefore is an exhortation to find the highest truth and not be sidetracked with easy explanations. There is nothing mystic and wooly-headed about the concept, it is the plainest sense. All this trouble actually originated because the spiritual term Maya was confused with another word maya which roughy means either creative power or magically induced hallucinations. This was a magical weapon used by both the great god Vishnu and his many avataras, as well as the mother goddess in all her manifestations. At a lesser level, this maya was a power accessible to lesser dieties like the devas and gandharvas or yakshas as well as the titans and giants of indian mythology, the asuras, danavas, rakshahsas and so on. (You really should check out our mythology section for details on all these interesting people.) In my opinion it is very similar at its lowest level to Kawarimi- the ninjutsu art of misdirection and illusion. Any Indian commentator would have classified it immediatly as a species of maya. Mixing up these two terms, one the philosophic Maya and the other the esoteric maya, was an act of great intellectual unsophistication, but the deed was done and India forever saddled with a reputation as the country that believed the world was an illusion. This was a bit thick considering that English actually has a word- cleave- which means both to join together and to cut asunder. Nobody has any problems with that, but Maya remains a tough nut.