Thursday, January 20, 2011

9. Maya and Illusions

What is Illusion?

Illusion is one that can never be accepted as a perceived image as the information gathered by the human brain to give a percept does not allay with only one. And the human brain is confused for some time to understand the two percepts and then project it to the Mind.


In the figure we can find a person with a spectacles, now just by tilting the head to the left we will find a word LIAR, now the human brain constructs a world inside our head based on the percepts and sometimes tries to organize the information it feels best and in other times it tries to fill in gaps this is the way human brain works on the basis of an illusion.

This illusion was created since there were two in the one picture. The human brain has to struggle out to find out the perfect percept to deliver it to Mind. Like wise there is only one Absolute Brahman and He alone is true (Satya). The materialistic world we live in is not real (Asat), or it is only vyavaharika satya.

What does vyavaharika satya mean? Let us suppose we dream of winning a brand new car in a lottery and driving it, though we experience the drive once we are awake there is no car. Did we not experience the car drive in the dream is it not true? Yes, it was true, if so then where is the car? This is vyavaharika satya. Sri Sri Shankara says that appearance of this world is due to Maya—the illusory power of Brahman—, which is neither Sat, nor Asat.

As for the “falseness” of this world - first let us make it clear that Advaita does not claim that this world is false. It only says that it is illusory. Let us pause a minute here and go over the rope and snake analogy. A man sees a coiled rope in insufficient light and thinks it to be a snake, and is therefore afraid. Later, when he sees it again with the help of a light source, he recognizes it as a rope, and realizes he was in error when he thought it to be a snake. However, till he realizes that this object of perception is not a snake, he harbors the illusion that it was a snake i.e. he was under the influence of his own ignorance about the true identity of the thing, and was therefore under "mithyatva". The same "snake" is later, at the moment of realization, understood to be a "rope". Similarly, we humans’ think this world has an independent reality, and assumes that the pleasures, joys, frustrations and miseries we experiences here are somehow "real". It is this that is "mithya".

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