Into The Mystery Podcast Ep. 4: Postcards From The Matrix (On Maya)

Is any of our human experience “real,” or are we living in a very convincing illusion? The answer lies in the way our minds construct our sense of reality. In this episode, Rishika and Adi Vajra explore the Vedic concept of maya (“illusion”) and what it means in the context of spiritual practice and growth. 

Transcript

You're listening to Into the Mystery.

Is the world we experience even real?

Today Adi and I will consider the concept of Maya,

A Vedantic term which means illusion.

We hope you enjoy.

You were mentioning earlier in our conversation the glimpse beyond the veil and when we speak of Maya,

We are speaking about the veil or the appearance that we believe in in our life.

Maya is generally seen as a feminine force but it's the veil that is pulled over our eyes that keeps us from seeing our infinite nature and that veil is intricate.

It's tightly woven but it has holes in it and so what one experiences in a glimpse is just a certain kind of looking through the holes to see,

Hey,

There's something beyond what I see.

There's something beyond what I've come to know.

Yeah and the yogis prescribe pratyahara as a way of beginning to approach that which is sense withdrawal which speaks to the idea that we are mesmerized by the input of our physical senses,

By the data coming in through our eyes and our ears and the surfaces of our skin,

Etc.

Because it is that which prevents us,

Prevents is not quite the right word.

It's just a little bit like having a blindfold in the way or a curtain in the way and it is commonly referred to as that veil,

Of course.

And so as you go deeper into meditation and begin to become more skillful at tuning out what's coming in through your senses otherwise,

Then it becomes increasingly possible to see what's on the other side or what exists in the absence of that input which is not to say that you can't have a spontaneous experience of looking through the veil or suddenly seeing something greater.

Well,

You used a very peculiar word and one that I would like to elaborate on together which is mesmerized.

And it's not,

Of course,

It's not our senses alone that are the culprit.

I mean our senses are actually just very innocent and natural functions of a body but there is this mesmerized,

Mesmerizing quality or this hypnotic or sleep-inducing quality when we live our life only according to our senses.

And let's talk about that a moment because that mesmerizing quality,

I love that word,

It is what describes Maya,

Is the way of being mesmerized by our sense data.

Yeah,

Well,

The impressions are compelling.

I mean we are in a sense,

And again we want to maybe offer a little disclaimer here and say that we're not saying that anything that you're experiencing in third dimensional reality is quote-unquote unreal or is a hallucination or is somehow utterly wrong.

It is a layer of reality that is so durable that we take it to be the only one most of the time.

It's the thing that persists.

We go to sleep at night and it disappears for a while and then we wake up in the morning again and it reappears and because there is that repetition day after day,

It sustains this sort of sensory narrative that continues as our lives proceed.

What we described in our last talk on non-duality was the way in which our mind perceives objects.

Largely the operations of our mind is through objects and the way we relate to objects is through our senses and with that way of engaging life where we are simply a sensory vehicle operating as an object with other objects,

We're mesmerized by the appearance of this and that,

Me and other.

While that's a completely natural part of being human,

It doesn't allow us to see the underlying reality,

The underlying truth that isn't found in objects or the perception of them.

Yeah,

You know I've always kind of wondered in films like and we're going to do a whole episode on movies one of these days but just briefly in films like The Matrix or something like Inception where the filmmakers are exploring this idea of there being different layers of reality that are compelling to various degrees depending on your relationship to them.

Inception in fact,

With those five or six layers of dream worlds that you can go up and down through,

I thought that was really interesting.

I wonder whether the filmmakers who came up with those concepts were in fact exploring spiritual ideas here knowingly or whether it was just not accidental but if that was something they intuited from deeper layers of their understanding that were perhaps not available to their conscious intention.

Well it seems to me that that's where the collective unconscious pokes through is that what we know without even knowing it,

It comes through in our art and in our expressions and movies such as The Matrix do a fine job of articulating something that we all,

I mean there's a reason why that movie was so profoundly popular and well received and partially because there's something archaic,

Something archetypal that is recognized through that film where here's a character who as far as he knows lives within the only reality there is and yet there's this call,

This poking to discover something else and then of course he's invited to discover that the reality that he knows is not the reality at all but a construct.

Right,

It really is sort of an awakening story in a lot of ways and I think that movie hit me very powerfully back when it was first released which I think was the late 90s.

We may end up doing a movie episode here unintentionally but something in me did really resonate with it because it almost accidentally answered some big questions I didn't even know I had especially in one of the sequels where they introduce the character of the architect who obviously is a stand-in for God and yeah there's just like as you said it brings up some very and it plays with some very powerful archetypes that we don't commonly talk about.

Even in our religious and spiritual practices we don't necessarily invoke those in quite the same way as being relevant to us in an immediate sense,

You know as something that we're experiencing right now.

It seems to me the spirituality even those of us who practice yogic techniques and are on this specific path are sort of always deferring our enlightenment often to the future somewhere but it's here,

You know it's just a matter of can you see it,

You know can you sort of resonate with it,

Can you begin to I don't want to use the word believe but embody it.

Well there's a great deal of I don't know that this will sit well with people but it happens to be true.

There's a great deal of spiritual practice and spiritual practitioners who are simply trying to make life inside their matrix more comfortable and you know while that's perfectly understandable for a person who's experiencing suffering and difficulty and struggle we don't necessarily grasp that our spiritual practices aren't ultimately to allow us to feel more comfortable with Maya or with the illusory construct of life that we have created for ourselves but they are in fact an invitation to pierce the veil,

To move through the construct and to actually discover what's real,

What's true and that takes heart and that takes courage because it is not an easy thing to deconstruct the stories,

The narratives,

The mental fabric of our lives that piece together our idea and version of reality to deconstruct that and find what's really real,

What's really true.

Yeah you go doesn't like that at all.

You know Ego is like the guy in the matrix,

I forget his name now the character's name but who has been outside the matrix and then ultimately comes back.

Spoiler alerts for anybody who hasn't seen that movie in the last 20 years but he ultimately decides that it's not what he wants,

He wants to go back to that comfort,

Go back to being somebody,

Being a big shot in the quote unquote well in the matrix I guess you know in not the real world and he doesn't want to fight anymore and he's like I don't want to remember any of it and I want to be able to eat steaks again and think that they're real and I don't know how common that is but I suspect there are people whose egos will at some point simply put the brakes on and say no we're not going any farther you know we like we like our comfy little physical existence.

Yes well you know Maya if we if we if we'll call her that or him that or it that that force which veils us keeps us very entrenched within these very animalistic quests to be secure,

To be comfortable,

To experience pleasure,

To feel a bit of power or reputation or fame and you know you're describing that character Cypher from Matrix and he wants to go back to sleep,

He doesn't want he doesn't want the struggle of being awake anymore,

He wants to go back to a life of ignorance and pleasure and you know of course that's that's within one's choosing,

One can do that,

One can choose to live this life in pursuit of pleasure but the the cost of that is deep because to live a life of Maya is to live a life where we lose meaning,

We lose a sense of what our true nature is,

What true unity and connection are and so as much as we can understand a life that's designed for comfort and pleasure it's not a real life,

It's not a truly it's not a life well lived.

And it's not a durable life and I maybe think that's one way that we can point to Maya is by saying that Maya always changes,

None of it is permanent so your you know your name,

Your status,

Your physical body,

All of the things that you drop pleasure from will ultimately pass away and so not that there's anything wrong with enjoying those things in the moment but if you invest your sense of security there,

If you invest your sense of meaning there as you were saying then ultimately you're just deferring suffering,

Which is a whole other topic.

Well practically we can ask the question you know what are you living for,

What's your life for and if it's a life that's lived purely for pleasure or comfort or security or a little bit of fame and recognition and being liked then you know in the end that's cheap and in the end it feels that we've sacrificed something so profound in pursuit of those things and that's the trance,

That's the mesmerized quality of Maya,

What keeps us in the quest for these things that not only change but are ultimately carry no satisfaction in them.

Right because if you're taking your sense of meaning or your sense of self-worth from other people's opinions of you that can change on a dime.

If you're invested in your healthy body say maybe spend all your time at the gym and that makes you feel powerful and meaningful and superior then you know it just takes one bad car wreck or severe illness to take that away from you so it's a tenuous place to be in even though it can feel I'm sure if you're Beyonce or somebody and I love Beyonce like everybody you know that's got to be a pretty heady and powerful experience but I'm gonna guess that she keeps herself pretty well grounded in order to cope with that.

Let's not talk about Beyonce.

But you know what I was trying to express was the idea that you know you can be rich,

You can have power and fame and none of it lasts and ultimately it means that you have invested your sense of permanence in things outside of yourself things that aren't real.

Other people's opinions those are ephemeral as we all know it you can be loved today and you know be sort of kicked off the top of the mountain tomorrow.

I don't know who would want that.

That's you know in the yogic tradition the word Sat is often used to denote reality or being and it's usually described as that which doesn't change and if we can contrast that which doesn't change with everything which does and let's say for a moment that Maya is all that changes.

If we look at our human experience we won't find anything that doesn't change and yet there is this call of the underlying Sat,

The underlying reality of the beingness which doesn't come and go,

Which doesn't change and when we seek that when we seek to live our life as an embodiment of that we're no longer mesmerized by these fleeting aspects of our experience.

Yeah and the tricky part about that I think we talked about that a little bit in the last episode is the way that plucks you out of the circus or sort of that melee of human activity.

Well we talk about being in the world but not of it.

You become much more of an observer moving through it as it and less of someone who's taking yourself so seriously and operating from that very egoic perspective.

Yeah beautifully put we're less a character in the play and more the whole play itself.

Yeah.

Yeah well you know Ramana Maharshi was asked one time to describe what Maya is and he gave the most basic definition I've ever heard.

He said,

Maya is that which is not.

When we if we if we were to just look at that statement for a moment Maya is that which is not and really examine what that might mean for our lives to see where the narratives,

The stories,

The dramas that we play out in our lives are not necessarily real but instead they are constructs that we play out mentally and then you know obviously we act them out in our physical life too but to understand the role of these non-existent mental structures that we obey and play out in our life is to understand that Maya is a force.

It's a preoccupation with what is not real.

It doesn't have substance or reality and ultimately when we see its nature it's empty.

There's nothing to it.

So how does a person move through the world with this understanding?

How do you continue to be?

I've had people to say to me well how do you get anything done if you don't have an ego?

How do you do you see what I'm saying?

Starting from the perspective of being somebody,

Being an identity,

Having a job,

Having a family and to not lose those things necessarily but to release your psychological attachments to their meaning,

To their.

.

.

Here we go with language again.

I think I understand what you're getting at here which is you know what is a life when it's not guided by the drive for security,

Pleasure and power.

Yeah and glory.

Where do you find your glory if you're not going to be taking it from this Mayic experience?

Is that a word?

Is Mayic a word?

You just made it work.

That's the question that no ego can reconcile because a life for the ego,

For the separate self,

A life that is not designed for security,

Pleasure and power is not a life worth living and until we have a glimpse or an understanding of the possibility of living a life that is richer,

Deeper and more meaningful than those drives,

We simply can't conceive of how we might live in the world but to live in this world with that knowledge,

That true knowing is to live a life of service and it's to live a life where the goal if you will is to be an embodiment of the One and to serve that,

To facilitate that recognition and understanding in those that you encounter and it's not a life of personal glory,

It's not a life of security,

Pleasure and power,

It's just the opposite.

It's a life of deep service.

Right,

Right.

Which explains why the saints have tended to be so humble and so willing to simply disappear and not allow themselves to be glorified because they knew how meaningless that was.

Yeah,

Well,

Glorification of the self,

The separate self is no different than its idolatry.

Anything that is placed on high turns into idolatry and the truly wise ones know that not only of themselves but of anything in existence and that idolatry is part of the scheme of our egoic consciousness playing itself out.

So the question that maybe follows that is,

So why is there Maya?

If Maya is the context in which we are experiencing this reality,

Then why?

Why did God give us this playground to express ourselves in,

In which we would be ultimately disappointed by it?

I'm so glad you asked that question because I would say that God didn't give a playground,

God gave a classroom and Maya is our confusion in thinking that this is a playground rather than a classroom and it's a delusional attempt to make ourselves comfortable.

It's like trying to travel to a place that's not your home and pretend that it's your home and there's all sorts of reasons to do that but this is where I think Ramana's definition is so important is that Maya is that which is not and I would say that Maya is not created by God because there is in essence this is where it gets really esoteric to speak about,

There is no Maya actually.

There's only the appearance,

There's only you know just as we might look at a mirage and we see something that appears to be water but isn't.

So if we ask well why did God create the water?

God didn't,

There isn't water there.

Well you know a lot of people object to that statement but I know what you're talking about but… Object to what statement?

That there is no water,

That it's all a mirage but if we hearken back to our previous discussion on non-duality then really what we're talking about is the fact that this is all a dream in the mind of God that we're all players or thoughts or dream characters.

Well the mistake that is sometimes made in speaking about Maya is you know when we refer to Maya as illusion and we refer to the world we live in as illusion we're not saying that this life we live is a hallucination.

We're not trying to characterize it as something that doesn't exist.

What we're attempting to do is we're attempting to reach our understanding to see that there is a faulty premise within our story of what life is and life is you know we can experience life with our senses and that's real.

It's not a hallucination but the construct,

The mental construct that we use to say this is who I am,

This is what life is,

This is the purpose of life,

This is the meaning of life those constitute the illusion and as that illusion breaks down we begin to have an awareness that there is a deeper impulse,

A richer impulse to life than what we have made of it based on our cultural values,

Familial values,

Our own personal desires for security,

Pleasure,

Power and to me that's what's really useful in understanding Maya is not that we walk around with a hallucination but that the life we've constructed for ourselves doesn't constitute our real life,

Our real existence.

Right.

I want to maybe qualify something there though because there is definitely once you're aware of Maya and you have perhaps glimpsed through it there is a distinct shift in perception that happens and I've heard you describe it in the past as watching life go by like a movie perhaps.

When that shift happens there's a way in which it's not that your perceptions become less real but the meanings you once attached to them become completely irrelevant and the freedom that comes out of that is that you develop this ability to stay in a moment and simply watch what arrives,

To kind of watch what's unfolding without trying to predict where it's going to go or without trying to extrapolate something from the past to then you know pin it down and make it mean something it becomes this very free-flowing gosh it's like it's just being in a river and seeing where it takes you and so lest anybody think that seeing through the illusion somehow makes it more boring there's actually as you say a much richer understanding and experience of it that arrives out of there's kind of a miraculousness that occurs if that makes sense.

Ah yes,

Yes well that's the point isn't it that this glimpse beyond the veil is it will reveal the dream-like nature of life and the cinema of life the drama that we are here partaking in and if we're left asking then what's the point there's something that we've failed to see and it's that the world isn't out there that the world is inside of you and with that understanding a profound shift occurs because when you believe that life is outside of you you're mesmerized.

When you understand that life and the world are inside you it's a completely different life you live then you realize not only the dream-like nature of reality as you encounter it but you also recognize who the dreamer is.

Yeah and who contains the dream yeah yeah beautiful.

You know much of our conception much of our idea of Maya hinges upon this idea that there is a world out there and even even with a very basic investigation into how we experience the world our entire experience of the world happens within our own perception and to understand that alone is to begin to understand or to begin to glimpse through the veil of Maya.

Do you happen to have a poem?

Yeah I have one.

Ah excellent.

Yeah I like this poem.

I've always liked it since I first read it and it's by the the mystic Kabir and what I like about this poem is in a way is he's speaking as that voice to beckon you to look through or to glimpse past the veil so he's actually that invitation to move through the veil.

Are you looking for me?

I am in the next seat.

My shoulder is against yours.

You will not find me in the stupas,

Not in Indian shrine rooms,

Nor in synagogues,

Nor cathedrals.

You will not find me in masses,

Nor kirtans,

Not in legs wound around your neck,

Not by eating nothing but vegetables.

When you really look for me,

You will see me instantly.

You will find me in the tiniest house of time.

So tell me,

What is God?

He is the breath inside the breath.

I like Kabir.

He is brilliant.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Into the Mystery.

We hope you gained something useful.

If you'd like to learn more about our work,

You can go to our websites.

Mine is at adivadra.

Org.

Or visit rishikas at interdimensionalyoga.

Com.

If you have questions or topics you'd like to hear about in future episodes,

Be sure to drop us a line.

We'd love to hear from you.

Thanks for listening.

We'll see you next time.

Reviews

I absolutely LOVE these podcasts. I'm wondering if you've ever read Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. It is through his books that I am coming from when I listen to these podcasts.