(One of MOO-COW Gamma series by the Left Uqbar, Fqg. Being somewhat terse in introduction. Also speaking of Maya, a somewhat serious subject. More so than usual, anyway.
Maya. The concept, if not the word, is common to many diverse religions around the world. Thus, assuming it must be good for something, Thee Wholly Church Ov Thee Grate MOO has adopted it as doctrine as well. In Buddhism, Hinduism, Gnosticism, and a variety of other religions, a central tenet holds that the world is illusory. That is, that the world of perception is not the real world, and that either another, better, world exists beyond it, or that existence is Void.
The confusion between which of these interpretations is correct is one of the veils of Maya. Maya is the illusion, and quite a devious one at that, which keeps us from seeing things the way they actually are (or aren't, as the case may be). It is analogous to Alien Mind Control Satellites which keep you from seeing the truth, and warp your logic and common sense so that their version of reality seems reasonable when actually it isn't.
According to Buddhists, the Buddha was one who had seen through the veils of Maya, and stopped the Wheel of Life. Also known as the Wheel of Karma, which keeps us attached to the world, keeps us coming back for more reincarnations, and prevents us from attaining Nirvana. Maya is the state in which we believe that we want to keep coming back for more births and deaths, and Nirvana is what happens when we see beyond Maya into the Clear White Light of the Void.
According to Gnosticism, Jesus Christ is the way out of the state of Maya, which is the false creation, in which the fake God Yaldaboath imprisoned the light. In this model, our souls are sparks of the light created by God, and Yaldaboath created a fake universe and cut us off from the source of the light. Escaping the world of gross matter and moving into the world of light or spirit is the way to freedom.
Buddhists would argue that Maya is really devious, and makes us think we've escaped the world of gross matter and have become free. By thinking we've escaped, we've actually gotten ourselves more deeply dug in.
The confusion between these two viewpoints is yet another trap of Maya. It holds us here by confusing us about how to escape.
Devious little fucker, innit?
MOOist Maya is different from Buddhist Maya or Gnostic Maya, because our Maya is better than their Maya. Of course, they may believe that our idea of Maya is silly and yet another, even more devious, trick of Maya, but that idea is itself another trick of Maya. Unless it isn't.
The way I tell it to you is the way it was revealed to me by means of an hallucination of a giant flying spork with mauve running lights. The giant craft landed, and out came something looking rather like a rabbit, soft and luminescent. It explained to me that it was an hallucination, created by my mind, and that the nature of reality is similarly hallucination. What it said came to me in the Language of the Rabbits, which is a language I have never learned, but which I understood perfectly when it spoke. I will transcribe what it told me into English as best I can.
All we ever experience is hallucination. We ourselves do not exist, and we are complex parts of the hallucination, complex enough to have a rudimentary awareness. Who it is that is dreaming us is beyond knowing, beyond the first level of Maya. There are many traps and cunning ploys in the hallucination, and each time we believe we have solved the problem, we have actually fallen into another of the veils of Maya.
But the nature of Maya is not linear: we do not move progressively closer or further away from the source, nor do we move deeper into Maya. Maya is a complex system, and we move from one node to another in the net we are snared in, thinking each one to be an escape. The act of trying to escape the net simply tangles us deeper into it.
The way out of the net is to relax, not try, and recognize the universal presence of the Clear White Light of the Void in everything: for the net itself is an hallucination, and we were never trapped. Once we have escaped from the net, we have moved to yet another complex of Maya. Sitting in Nirvana, no longer trapped by the Wheel of Life, we no longer feel the need to escape. This, too, is a trap of Maya.
It may then become apparent that the nature of the illusion is that there is no illusion at all. The illusion all along has been that life is an illusion, and the only trap of Maya has been believing that Maya ever existed. This, too, is a trap of Maya.
Recognizing ourselves to be in a network of Maya, we may find a way to move up to a higher level, no longer in any node at all. We find a new world, a real world, which Maya has been hiding from us, with new laws, new inhabitants, and wonder behind every grain of sand. This, too, is a layer of Maya. We ascend yet another layer, and this too is a layer of Maya. Each layer we reach has its own network of traps, and the higher we reach, the more complex they become. It is more difficult to escape each layer, since every time we escape, we believe we have escaped for the final time. We ascend through infinite layers, beyond each degree of infinitude, and rise towards the light from which we have been separated for so long. We pass through all the layers of Maya and we finally reach the Source of which we were only a spark.
And this too is a delusion of Maya, for the layers themselves were just the form of a node in the network of Maya be began in. We have been burrowing deeper, and finding more and more complex forms of Maya, attaining Godhood, annihilating our own existence, changing our consciousness, all part of exploring each level of Maya, all imagined by a single node in the network we began in.
In fact, Maya is a complex system, logically closed. Whenever we make a leap beyond the system, escape the illusion, we find that the "leap beyond the system" was itself part of the system. Maya is infinite and logically Strange, with no outside and no inside, like a Klein Bottle. There is no dreamer, or else the dreamer is itself a part of the dream, and a local cluster of awareness in the hallucination.
And beyond all this, beyond the world of Maya, its infinite Universes and Multiverses, its many histories, its brains in vats, dreams, hallucinations, beyond Nirvana, beyond the Clear White Light of the Void, beyond all the logical layers of escape which feed back into itself... What?
This is the mystery we call Thee Grate MOO. It cannot ever be known, for there is no escape from the world of Maya.
MOOist Maya is special because we think it's a good thing. We live in Maya, we ARE Maya. The world of Maya is the One Mind, the Clear White Light, and we are its eyes, looking at itself.
Since we are part of the world, we are what we are. Maya is not evil, it does not trap us, nor do we try to escape. Maya simply plays with itself, deludes parts of itself into believing the world is evil, luring them into games, so that Maya, who is ourselves, the dreamers and the dream, can have some fun.
That's why MOOist dogmas, catmas, potatomas and yo-yomas are designed to lead you through twists and turns of the mazes of Maya, lead you to improve yourself and attain the Godhood that is the deepest trap of Maya there is. We are instruments of Maya, and proud of it.
If you think that there is an escape from Maya after all, you're welcome to try your best. But understanding what I've told you, there will remain the nagging doubt that your own illumination may only be another trap of Maya. That doubt itself is the trap. This proclamation has been nothing but a Maya-virus, to infect you and spoil your illumination. Reading this cuts you off forever from knowing the Beyond, which we call the Grate MOO.
And if you believe that, you'll believe anything.
This proclamation, until now, has told you what the giant rabbit in the flying spork with green running lights told me. It has not told you an important MOOist secret.
The secret is that there IS a way to escape out of all the logically impossible escape routes. No, it's not to recognize that Maya doesn't exist: that's another trap. Also traps are the paths of meditation, of laughter, of continual growth, of logical paradox, of self-annihilation, of absurdity, of noting the perceptual nature of Maya, and anything else you might think of.
The true escape path can never be known. It was once said that the Tao which can be Taoed is not the true Tao. Meaning that the Way which can be walked is not the true Way. It will not do to simply note that you have already escaped: you have, but that too is an illusion.
If you can find and follow this secret route, you have not really understood how to escape the veils of Maya. I can't put it any simpler than that.
I once escaped through this hidden path. I wandered beyond the world of Maya which we call home, and saw Thee Grate MOO. Although no memory of that experience can survive the return to Maya, I can tell you that it must have been frightening, because I returned, and busied myself ever since making my illusions better and better. If you insist on trying to escape, I can only tell you that a hint which will let you break free is in this proclamation.
So you can either try the impossible, or join Thee Wholly Church Ov Thee Grate MOO in making our life in Maya an interesting one.