Can you talk about Maya? I don't really know what it means.

Question:

Can you talk about Maya? I don’t really know what it means.

Nukunu:

Maya is a Sanskrit word from the Vedic period of the ancient Indian high culture. Here, the science of inner man was born and from this age we can trace the origins of spiritual practices like yoga, mudras, tantra and meditation.

The Sanskrit language has words that can describe the most subtle parts of human psychology. Our Western culture is far behind India when it comes to spirituality and psychology, and we don’t really have a translation of the word Maya. The closest translation of the word is “veil” or “mirage”. If we see a mirage of water in the desert when we are thirsty it is the desire for water that is creating the illusion. In the same way the desire for creating the world we see, feel and know creates the world we project with our senses. This is Maya. The whole world which we believe is so real is just like a dream.

The great philosopher Plato in Classical Greece also knew that the illusory world we see and know is just a veil that hides a more real world. Plato used a very good analogy which points at this illusion: In a cave a group of people are sitting with their backs towards the entrance where the light comes in. All they can see are just the shadows of what goes on outside the cave. They can only see the shadows on the wall in front of them. They do not see the real objects moving in front of the entrance to the cave! In order to see the real world they have to turn their attention around and look out from the cave.

To see what Maya is hiding we also have to turn around – we have to turn from the outer to the inner. I call Enlightenment a “shift”; it is a shift from the three dimensional to the four dimensional. When this shift happens we know that time and space are not real. Then we know Maya.

When the shift has happened to us we know that all there is is consciousness and that we are that. The illusion of a “real” physical world is gone and with this the duality of matter and spirit. Our experiences are consciousness with forms and names, and we are pure consciousness. From now on we live in the dynamics between pure consciousness and the apparent world (the forms and names). When we become absolutely still the world is totally gone. This is called “Sahaja Samadhi”; our natural state. And when a thought arises from here, from our true nature, the world (Maya) is born again.

We are now living in the world of Maya. But at the same time we are constantly feeling the real nature as an undercurrent in us. It is the feeling of “one-ness” with all experiences, and this is unbelievably liberating.