Maya we know the word. We know that it is regularly defined as illusion. But what is the illusion? Albert Einstein believed that a “deeper, more complex theory“ of reality would one day emerge from his equations, that the intuitive reality we define with our senses, memory and mental agility is a reality that is limited by that intuition.The fact that most people believe in the afterlife, andor undiscovered laws underlying reality , confirms our expectation of deeper meaning a greater and more profound reality than the one we presently live in. What we call “life“ by this measure is a mere fragment of living, and why do we persist in living diminutive lives?
Greater vision Wouldn't it be to our benefit to escape maya's tentacled grip and emerge refreshed with a greater vision of our individual and collective potential a visual of life and reality free of contradiction, accident and deceit?
Indeed, it would be to our benefit, but the motivation needed to cross maya's fallow sea is a difficult disseverance to accommodate. To give less attention to who and what we think we are, and more attention to what we are not and can become to wantonly disavow ego myopia and all its attendant identities requires a persistence recognition of identity insignificance.
But no one wants to think of himself as not existing, as having little or no value. And we need not do so because our value is in rejecting the myopic of ego constraints, not embracing them. To think we are given greater value by what we are than by what we can become is an error of perception that can be corrected by minimising fear of insignificance: the fear of individual identity dissolution.
Identity attachment
However, minimising fear of insignificance, even in its most simplified forms, requires persistent effort. To see through ourselves into a world without us in it is not a vision sculpted by the faint of heart. But fear of a loss of “I“ is as much an illusion as “I“ itself. For this reason we can minimise identity attach ment to “i“, to ego myopia we can evolve beyond identity limitations beyond the mechanics of man.
Thought experiments
One method, or exercise, we can use to expand perception, while minimising attachment to perception, derives from “thought experiments“, imagining what ifs. Consider, for example, a counterintuitive point of view that of the human species near the end of its life, eons from today .
After all present-day definitions of humanness are forgotten, will individuals within the species, near the end of human existence, see themselves as human?
Would we define ourselves as human today if we had no need to sleep, eat or remove waste from our bodies, if we were made more of parts made by man than parts made by nature?
Artificial intelligence
Just as we are creating artificial intelligence below us, is the human species creating artificial intelligence below it? Are we that artificial intelligence, the artificial intelligence we believe we are creating? Can we define maya as human intelligence?
Viewing ourselves from a point of view which provides the means of seeing ourselves and through ourselves simultaneously , one that is free of attachment. It is an incremental step away from the oppression of ego myopia.
