Do You Really See the World as It Is?

Illusion is not in the world, but in the way we perceive it. What we call reality is always filtered through consciousness, and therefore shaped by how we see. Ignorance (avidya) is not a lack of knowledge, but the tendency to take as real what is not fully so.

Black-and-white photo of a man holding both hands over his eyes, yet strangely, his open eyes are visible through his fingers.

Home / The Satsang blog/ The Revelation

Do You Really See the World as It Is?

Perception and Illusion

Summary: Illusion is not in the world, but in the way we perceive it. What we call reality is always filtered through consciousness, and therefore shaped by how we see. Ignorance (avidya) is not a lack of knowledge, but the tendency to take as real what is not fully so. By returning to a simpler perception, free from identification, it becomes possible to recognize a more stable dimension of both oneself and the world.

Text

How is it that two people, faced with the same thing, do not see the same thing? In Indian traditions, one speaks of illusion, of maya, and says that the world is an illusion because everything that is born dies, and everything that dies is illusion.

In truth, illusion lies in perception. A deeper consciousness sees Unity within multiplicity, and the world appears real to it; a consciousness caught in illusion sees only division.

The gaze of the Observant perceives Unity in all things, while a consciousness caught in illusion sees only separate forms. Unity is within multiplicity, and multiplicity within it, just as raindrops are within the sky (Bhaktimārga, 5).

To Each Their Own World

The way we see the world is never objective. Two people looking at the same landscape will see two different landscapes, without a doubt.

One will notice the orderly lines of vineyards; another, the way light colors the leaves and the sky, sometimes drifting beyond what is visible into imagination.

There is no single “humanity,” but a multitude of human beings, each with their own vision of the world. For someone who loves the city, in the evening, when windows light up one by one, each with a different hue, like a string of holiday lights, a quiet poetry emerges and gently stirs a sense of nostalgia; some reveal the same white glow of television screens.

For someone who rejects it, the same scene brings only frustration: those windows become cells, the white glows behind them—the glow of television screens—turn into signs of alienation.

The Consciousness Behind the Gaze

It is not so much the eyes that see, but the consciousness that looks through them.

Perception is never neutral. Show a photograph of a person to ten individuals, and you will receive ten different opinions. Yet what that person truly is does not depend on those views.

If the eyes can be compared to lenses, the consciousness that perceives through them is not. Its vision is shaped by its own subjectivity, often without noticing it.

In the Indian tradition, four states of consciousness are generally distinguished: jagrat (waking), svapna (dream), susupti (deep sleep), and turiya (pure consciousness). Inner illusion corresponds to the ordinary waking state when it is colored by ignorance, or avidya.

Maya

Illusion does not mean that the world does not exist, but that it is not seen as it is.

The world is what it is, not what people see in it. Consider the idea that some places “vibrate” more than others: no place is intrinsically superior to another. A place like Mount Rushmore does not “vibrate” more than any other place.

What is felt there depends on the one who stands before it. For some, such a place evokes a deep sense of history and meaning; for others, it remains simply a landmark.

An Inn Where You Bring Your Own

The world is like a place where you find what you bring with you. That is maya, illusion. It is people who project their illusions.

The world is what it is—neither good nor bad. Creation, in its fundamental order, is perfect, and everything within it exists in harmony. Nothing is unnecessary.

Simplifying

That which sees through our eyes, hears through our ears, and speaks through our voice—what is it? “Know thyself,” said Socrates. But to know oneself requires patiently unraveling what has been built up around us.

The task, then, is to simplify, to prune away. To set aside what is not truly oneself, all that has accumulated and been mistaken for identity over time. There is something within us that has always been there: a constant. When this constant is recognized, perception changes. The world is no longer seen in the same way.

This is the purpose of The Path: to go to the depth of that simplicity, where perception is no longer distorted by illusion.

If you have any questions, please write here:

madhyama.marga@gmail.com

#spirituality, #english, #illusion Maya, #Gaze, #meditation, #yoga, #Original Yoga, #The Path, #Hans Yoganand