The Truth About Maya
You may also know Maya as illusion or mirage.
In Western languages maya has been translated very wrongly, and it gives the feeling in Western terms that “illusion” means “unreal.” It does not! “Illusion” means the inability to decide whether the thing is real or unreal. This confusion is maya.
This whole world is maya, a confusion. You cannot decide; you cannot be decisive about it. It is always escaping you, always changing, turning into something else. It is fantasy, a dreamlike thing. This technique is concerned with this philosophy. Illusions deceive or, that which deceives is illusion colors circumscribe, even divisibles are indivisible. In this world of illusion nothing is certain. This whole world is like rainbows. They appear to be, but they are not. If you are far away they are, but if you come nearer they dissolve. The nearer you come, the more they are not. If you reach to a point where you were seeing a rainbow, it is no more there.
The whole world is like rainbow colors, and it is so. When you are far away everything is hopeful; when you come nearer the hope disappears. And when you reach the goal, only ashes are there – just a dead rainbow. The colors have disappeared, and things as they appeared are not. As you feel them to be, they are not.
Even divisibles are indivisible. Your whole mathematics, your whole calculating system, all your concepts, all your philosophy, just become futile. If you try to understand this illusion, your very effort confuses you more. Nothing is certain there; everything is uncertain a flux, a flux of change, with no possibility for you to decide whether this or that is true or false. What will happen? If you take this attitude, what will happen? If you really go deep in this attitude that everything which cannot be decided is illusory, you will automatically, spontaneously turn to yourself. Then the only point where you can have a center is in your own being. That is certain.
Try to understand this: I may dream in the night that I have become a butterfly, and I cannot decide in that dream whether this is real or unreal. In the morning I may be puzzled like Chuang Tzu whether instead the butterfly may have been dreaming. These are two dreams, and there is no way to compare which is real and which is unreal.
But Chuang Tzu is missing one thing-the dreamer. He is thinking only of dreams, comparing dreams and missing the dreamer-the one who dreams that Chuang Tzu has become a butterfly, the one who is thinking that it may be quite the reverse: that the butterfly is dreaming that she has become Chuang Tzu. Who is this observer? Who was asleep and is now awake? You may be unreal, you may be a dream to me, but “I” cannot be a dream to myself, because even for a dream to exist a real dreamer is needed. Even for a false dream a real dreamer is needed Even a dream cannot exist without a real dreamer. So forget dream. This technique says forget dream. The whole world is illusion, you are not. So don’t go after the world, there is no possibility to gain certainty there. And now this appears to be proven even by scientific research.
For the last three centuries science was certain, and Shankara looked to be just a philosophical mind, poetic. For three centuries science was certain, but now, during these two last decades, science has become uncertain. Now the greatest scientists say nothing is certain, and with matter we will never be certain. Everything has again become uncertain. Everything looks like a flux, changing. Only appear ance looks certain. The deeper you go, the more everything becomes uncertain, indefinite. Shankara says, and Tantra has always been saying, that the world is illusory. Even before Shankara was born, Tantra was preaching one technique-that the whole world is illusory, so think of it as a dream. If you can think of it as a dream – and if you think at all, you will come to realize it as a dream-then your whole focus of consciousness will turn inwards, because there is a deep urge to find the truth, the real.
If the whole world is unreal, then there is no shelter in it. Then you are moving after, following shadows, and wasting time and life and energy. Then move inwards One thing is certain: “I am.” Even if the whole world is illusory, one thing is certain: there is someone who knows this is illusory. The knowledge may be illusory, the known may be illusory, but the knower cannot be. This is the only certainty, the only rock on which you can stand.
This technique says look at the world: it is a dream, illusory, and nothing is as it appears. It is just a rain bow. Go deep in this feeling. You will be thrown to yourself. With that coming to one’s own self, you come to a certain truth, to something which is indub itable, which is absolute.
Science can never be absolute. It is going to be relative. Only religion can be absolute because it searches not the dream, it searches for the dreamer; not for the observed, but for the observer, the seer, the one who is aware.
In India, in the old days, we said, “Acharya mrityuh” It means that the master, the guru, is a death. He is! And unless you trust him so totally, this surgical op- eration is impossible because in the beginning there will be suffering. Your anguish will come up; all your suppressed hells will be revealed. And only if you be- lieve, if you have deep faith and trust in him, can you remain with him; otherwise you will escape, because this man is disturbing you completely.
So, remember, the guru’s work is, his role is, to make you aware of your falsity, and because of your false center your world is false. The world is not really illusory, it is not maya. It is maya because your eyes are illusory. They are dream-filled. You project your dreams all around, and the reality is falsified. The same world will become real when your eyes are real.
When the false center is broken and you are again rooted in your real center, in your being, this world will become the nirvana.
Zen masters have been continuously saying that this world is nirvana, this very world is moksha, liberation. It is only a question of eyes. With false eyes everything is falsified, with real eyes everything is real. Your false entity creates a false world around you. And don’t think that you all live in one world. You cannot! Each one lives in his own world, and there are as many worlds as there are minds because each mind creates its own world, its own milieu. Even if you are living in a family, the husband lives
in his own world and the wife in her own world, and there are collisions every day between these two worlds. They never meet, they collide. Meeting is impossible.
With mind there can be no meeting – only collision, conflict. When mind is not, there can be a meeting. The wife lives in her own world, in her own ex- pectations. The husband for her is not the real hus band that is there in the world, he is just her own image. The husband lives in his own world, and the real wife is not his wife. He has an image of a wife, and whenever this wife falls short of his image there is struggle, conflict, anger, hatred. He loves his own image of a wife and the wife loves her own image of a husband, and these both are illusory, they exist no- where. This real wife is there and this real husband is there, but they cannot meet because between these two real things are the unreal wife and the unreal husband. They are always there; they won’t allow a meeting of the real ones.
Everyone is living in his own world, in his own dreams, expectations, projections. There are as many worlds as there are minds. Those worlds are illusory, maya. When your false center disappears, the whole world changes. Then it is a real world. Then for the first time you see things as they are. Then there is no misery because with illusion expectation disappears, and with reality there can be no misery. Then one comes to feel, “It is sol Fact is fact!” Only with fictions are there problems, and fictions never allow you to know fact. These fictions of the mind are maya.
Maya described by Osho in The Book of Secrets.
