“Lead me from illusion to Truth
Lead me from darkness to Light
Lead me from cycles of birth
and death to spiritual liberation.
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti.”
– Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
Hold onto your hats folks, this one’s a toughie.
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The yogic concept of Maya is the idea that everything is an illusion, from the chair you’re sitting on to the computer you’re reading this on, from the grass beneath your feet when you walk outside to the sea you swim in – it’s all a figment of our collective and individual imaginations.
It’s pretty hard to take in huh? It’s pretty hard to take seriously at all.
As my yoga practice developed over the years on both a physical and spiritual level it began to have a deeper and deeper effect on my life in general and I knew that much of the esoteric ideas and philosophies relating to yoga definitely had something in them. But then I learned about Maya.
Maya was a massive stumbling block for me for a very long time. Yoga had taught me to open my heart and feel compassion and empathy to a much greater degree than I had before. It also had an amazing effect on my physical body. But how could it if my physical body is nothing but an illusion? How can this be an illusion, these things I can see, these things I can touch, smell, feel?
And yet….
The world is constantly changing, day by day, season by season, year by year, eon by eon; and to believe too strongly in it as something static can trap us. Belief in Maya isolates us by placing a mirage in front of us to focus on and preventing us from embracing our Atman, our true selves.
…a human being is part of the whole called by us a universe — a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and his feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us; it restricts us to our personal decisions and our affections to a few persons closest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
–Albert Einstein*
Throughout our lives we are told certain things that we accept as fact. How the world works, how we should behave, the things that society deems right and to always back up our thoughts with material evidence.
Along the way we lose our innate intuition, the guidance within us all, so bogged down are we by what the material world has taught us to be correct. We lose the ability to believe that is so prevelant in small children. We lose our divine guides (imaginary friends if you will) to concentrate on the real world. Which may or may not be real after all.
We have forgotten who we really are. Behind our various roles we are all one energy — one spark of life. Our true selves.
And our yoga practice can bring us back to where we are meant to be. The illusion of Maya is a series of judgements, positive and negative and through yoga we can begin to break through these judgements, theses illusions, if only for a moment, and set ourselves free.
Everything will change. It is the nature of things. But the energetic spark of life within us all will never change.
And that is reality.
True happiness does not come from a wide screen tv, or a designer handbag, or (in my case) another pair of shoes. It does not even come from the beauty of literature, art or nature (although all those things are worthy of our time too). It comes from within and it is right there inside if we are willing to look. It may take many lifetimes to find, but it will be there.
Forever.
The Mona Lisa is a great piece of art, but you would view it as a weapon if you were hit over the head with it. Likewise, understanding Maya doesn’t make the physical a bad thing. It allows us to step back and appreciate its beauty without having it blind us to our true nature…**
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*From “I am with you always” – Douglass Bloch
**Yoga and the Path of the Urban Mystic – Darren Main (p.27)
