Maya what creates illusion

The word Maya is often understood as referring to an illusory, unreal world. This text offers a simple shift: the world is not an illusion, it is a temporary reality. The illusion lies in the perception, in the way consciousness sees, interprets, and projects.

A woman with big sunglasses that make her see the world in the colors of their lenses.

Home / The Satsang blog

Maya

What creates illusion

Summary: The word Maya is often understood as referring to an illusory, unreal world. This text offers a simple shift: the world is not an illusion, it is a temporary reality. The illusion lies in the perception, in the way consciousness sees, interprets, and projects. By recognizing this, it becomes possible to restore the world to its rightful place and learn to see more clearly through attention and meditation.

Text

A common confusion

It is often said, in certain traditions from India, that the world is an illusion, a deceptive appearance called Maya. This idea is based on a simple observation: everything that exists appears, changes, and disappears. From this, it is concluded that whatever is not eternal must be illusory.

This way of seeing contains some truth, but it easily leads to confusion. What changes is not therefore unreal. The world is here, tangible, given to experience. It is real, though temporary. What arises and passes away is not an illusion, but a transient reality.

Illusion, then, is not in the world itself, but in the way we look at it.

The perception that distorts

When consciousness remains at the surface, it does not see depth. It interprets, it comments, it projects. It does not meet reality, but the idea it forms about it. This is where what is called Maya takes shape: not an external force that deceives, but a way of perceiving that distorts.

Then very ordinary illusions appear, often unnoticed: believing that what is temporary can provide lasting happiness, expecting from situations or people what they cannot give, attributing to others intentions that come only from oneself, or giving excessive importance to what is, by nature, bound to pass.

The world is not the problem. It is the perception that mistakes what it sees.

The rightful place of the world

From this arises another confusion. When the world is considered illusory, it becomes tempting to turn away from it, as if one had to withdraw from it to reach a higher truth. But this rejection is still a way of not seeing. For the world, in its very reality, is where everything takes place.

It is within concrete existence that the possibility appears to recognize what does not depend on conditions, not outside of it.

Incarnation is not a mistake to correct, but a situation to understand. It offers consciousness a field of experience in which it can lose itself, but also recognize itself.

What some traditions call Maya points precisely to this possibility of misperception: taking the relative for the absolute, and overlooking what is always present.

The ordinary forms of illusion

True illusion is not spectacular. It does not lie in a world that would be false, but in subtle, repeated, almost invisible shifts: seeking stability in what changes, expecting the world to fulfill what does not belong to it, refusing what is instead of seeing it, or projecting one’s own movements onto what is perceived.

Because they are constant, these illusions become a source of suffering.

Seeing more clearly

Reducing illusion does not mean denying the world or withdrawing from it, but learning to see more clearly. This clarity does not come only from ideas or acquired knowledge, but from an attention that becomes steady, that gradually ceases to scatter.

In meditation, perception becomes simpler. It no longer tries to grasp or interpret, and allows things to appear as they are.

Then the world regains its place. It is neither rejected nor idealized. It is recognized for what it is: a changing, limited, yet real reality.

And in that recognition, illusion loses its hold, not because it has been fought, but because it is no longer being sustained.

If you have any questions, please write here:

madhyama.marga@gmail.com

#spirituality, #Illusion, #Maya, #English, #meditation, #Yoga, #Original Yoga, #Hans Yoganand