What is Māyā?

By editor - 4.12 2024

Table of Contents

1 The Meaning of Truth and Delusion
2 Why the Material World is a Delusion
3 The Cause of the Material Delusion
4 The Inversion of Truth and Delusion
5 Elevating Ignorance to Knowledge
6 The Confusion of Māyā and Māyāvāda
7 Advaita Destruction of Vedic Traditions
8 Secularism and Favoring Monotheism
9 Advaita Destruction of the Economy
10 The Kingdom of God Without God
11 Flawed Attempts to Create Unity
12 Blatant Violation of Vedic Injunctions
13 The Western Rejection of Realism
14 The Western Adoption of Advaita
15 The Creation of Escapist Ideologies
16 The Creation of Veda Through Austerity
17 Why Kali-Yuga Creates Escapist Ideas
18 All Forms of Dharma Involve Austerity
19 Rapid Expansion of Escapist Ideas
20 Why Escape from Māyā is Very Hard

The Meaning of Truth and Delusion

In classical Indian epistemology, illusion was defined by the example of seeing a rope and thinking it was a snake. Truth was defined as distinguishing a rope from a snake. The method by which we could reject the idea that there is a snake and conclude that there is a rope was epistemology. The essence of illusion was seeing the similarity between two things—rope and snake—and thinking they are the same.

This essence of illusion constitutes Māyā. We see two things, we find some similarities, and we conclude they are the same because we ignore the differences. For instance, when God appears in this world, He eats, drinks, sleeps, marries, travels, and fights. We could compare this to an ordinary person and say that all those who eat, drink, sleep, marry, travel, and fight are God. This is a delusion because we have taken some similarities between God and ordinary people and concluded that they are the same.

Why the Material World is a Delusion

This delusion is all-pervasive. The gopis dance with Kṛṣṇa in Goloka Vrindavan. And so, women and men think that if they danced, they would be in heaven. Everyone in the spiritual world is well-fed. And so, we believe that if we feed everyone, it will be heaven. Nobody in the spiritual world is homeless. And so, we believe that if everyone had a home, it would be heaven. Everyone in the spiritual world is playing. And so, we think that if everyone started playing it would be heaven. Nobody in the spiritual world has to work for their survival. And so, we believe that if nobody had to work for their survival, it would be heaven.

Under these delusions, we want to stop working, start playing and dancing, and expect food and home. When we don’t get that, we ask: If it could happen in the spiritual world, why not here? The answer is simple: The spiritual world is a snake and the material world is rope. You saw a rope and thought it was a snake. Your delusion is your problem, not of the rope or the snake. Both exist, but one thing is not the other thing. That you can’t see the difference has to be blamed on you, not on the rope or the snake.

The Cause of the Material Delusion

The soul comes to the material world from the spiritual world. Since it has been in the spiritual world, it knows that people in the spiritual world have homes and adequate food, they dance and play, and need no job to survive. All these things are provided by Kṛṣṇa. He can supply everything and He supplies them for free to His devotees. But the envious living entity thinks: I can get these on my own and I don’t need Kṛṣṇa. And so, the living entity comes to the material world to become an independent enjoyer. After he arrives, he realizes that I cannot supply everything for myself just by willing it. I have to work in a job, to earn food and home, before I can dance and play. And yet, the innate memory of the spiritual is still there due to which everyone wants everything in the spiritual world for free without Kṛṣṇa.

The delusion is that a world without Kṛṣṇa can also be the spiritual world. That we don’t have to work for survival, that we will have a home and food, and that we will play and dance, without Kṛṣṇa. In this delusion, we see a rope and think of a snake, justify it based on the similarity between rope and snake, and ignore the differences. The difference to most people isn’t obvious since the difference is that Kṛṣṇa is absent. The delusion exists when Kṛṣṇa is forgotten. The delusion disappears when Kṛṣṇa is remembered.

The Inversion of Truth and Delusion

Advaita inverted the concept of truth and illusion. Now, both rope and snake became illusions and not distinguishing between the two became the truth. All methods of epistemology that could be used to distinguish between rope and snake became irrelevant. You could equate anything to anything else, and claim that they were essentially the same thing. Epistemology—the attempt to distinguish between rope and snake—itself became an illusion. Thus, in classical Indian epistemology, the illusion was confusing a rope for a snake, while the truth was distinguishing between the two. Advaita inverted this epistemology such that distinguishing between rope and snake is the illusion and equating them is the truth.

At present, the Advaita definition of Māyā is the common idea about Māyā. When we talk about Māyā, people think we are saying that the world is a delusion (which is true) but it is interpreted to mean that the world doesn’t exist (that what we see is a simulated hallucination), when the original description of Māyā was that there is a rope which we see as a snake. The world, in the original Indian epistemology, was real; the illusion was in the observer. The world existed but it was misunderstood. Advaita made the world and all its understanding an illusion removing the need to distinguish between rope and snake.

Elevating Ignorance to Knowledge

Knowledge in the Vedic tradition has always meant the capacity to discriminate, which involves three steps. The senses help us distinguish, the mind helps us identify, and the intellect helps us prioritize. The combined result of these three is that we organize things in a hierarchy, prioritizing the truth over falsehoods, the just over the unjust, and the good over the bad. However, under Advaita, discrimination is itself the main problem. Instead, not discriminating, not organizing in a hierarchy, forcibly equalizing, and dissolving the obvious differences as illusion is called knowledge. If you see higher and lower, Advaita calls it ignorance. Dissolving their difference is knowledge.

Essentially, Advaita elevated ignorance to the status of knowledge. Those with the capacity for discrimination were called ignorant while those without such capacity were called enlightened. The capacity to discriminate is described in Sāñkhya. Advaita called it a byproduct of Māyā. Advaita justified these things as the teachings of Śaṅkarācārya, who is an incarnation of Shiva, without noting that Shiva is also the personification of tamo-guna, the quality and condition of ignorance.

The purpose of renunciation in the Vedic tradition was to stand apart from reality to see it clearly and not be biased due to attachment to some part of reality, such as family, nation, culture, language, color, gender, class, and so on. Detachment separates us from the world to help us see it correctly so we can discriminate and organize hierarchically. But if there is no difference between the self and the other, what is the need for detachment? Why separate yourself and magnify the illusion of separation when you can dissolve it by staying attached? Why do penances, in which one tortures one’s body and mind, only to magnify the appearance of the self-other difference?

When we organize things in a hierarchy, the higher level is superior and the lower level is inferior. The lower level serves the higher level and through this service, the lower level ascends to the higher level. And yet, there is no limit to this ascent. There is always someone higher, due to which progress and service are eternal. Advaita reduced eternal progress to static eternity supposedly attained by flattening the hierarchy and dissolving all differences. The elimination of eternal progress, and its replacement by a static emptiness, became the supreme Vedic conclusion.

Advaita is actually the elevation of tamo-guna to the state of intellectual supremacy. Indian history bears out the effects of the tamo-guna ideology. People became lazy, ignorant, selfish, complacent, and greedy. Their identification with their local region, language, culture, food, empire, and customs grew with time and their identification with the wider Vedic civilization declined. Their attachments to their narrow world grew while their detachment from this world, which Advaita called an illusion, declined. Instead of accepting that all material things are an illusion, as Advaita claimed, they became even more attached to all things that Advaita called an illusion. They abandoned their dharma, which is based on their higher and lower status determined by their qualities and activities, and started doing whatever they wanted on the presupposition that they were all equal. Everyone wanted the right to do everything without the duty to do a specific thing. Advaita destroyed dharma in India.

Therefore, I say this with great responsibility: Advaita is a tamasic ideology. It is not the highest, but one of the lowest. It is not violent, so it is not as bad as violent ideologies. But it destroys duty, austerity, detachment, discrimination, and broad-mindedness and makes people lazy, ignorant, selfish, complacent, greedy, and narrow-minded. Their attachment and identification to local region, language, culture, food, empire, and customs grow instead of decreasing with time. Contrary to Advaita, diversity increases and unity declines. People get deeper into material attachment instead of coming out of it. Advaita claims that we will come out of material illusion if we follow its ideology. The facts of history show that we descend deeper into materialism.

The Confusion of Māyā and Māyāvāda

At present, when we talk about the original definition of Māyā, most people think we are talking about the Advaita interpretation of Māyā. Originally, getting out of Māyā meant distinguishing the rope from the snake. In the modified Advaita interpretation, it means dissolving the distinction between the two.

The Advaita view of Māyā is actually called Māyāvāda, different from the original view of Māyā. Māyā is not Māyāvāda. The resolution of Māyā is distinguishing rope from snake. The resolution of Māyāvāda is discarding the distinction between the two. And yet, because everyone equates Māyā to Māyāvāda, hence, discussing the nature and problem of Māyā is taken to mean the discussion of Māyāvāda.

Advaita Destruction of Vedic Traditions

According to Advaita, temple deities are man-made illusions, and Brahman is the only truth. There is no such thing as God or Supreme Being because all beings are ultimately one. The concept of the Supreme Being requires distinguishing between various beings and is false. But if you want to retain the idea of God, then God is a self-realized man, and self-realized men are God. If you want to worship God, then worship self-realized men as God. Thus, men claiming to be self-realized came to be known as Godmen in India because there is no difference between God and self-realized men in Advaita. These men were worshipped as God because they had become God. Some men even prefixed their names with Bhagavan. There was no philosophical challenge to men being called Bhagavan because men and Bhagavan were the same.

The worship of Godmen was a substitute for the worship of the deities in temples. The images in the temples are just statues of self-realized men, just like the statues of kings and queens in public places. They can serve as reminders of their deeds, virtues, and ideas but nothing comes from worshipping these statues. Instead of giving special status to priests who worship these statues, we must treat everyone equally Brahman. The priests in temples are not worshipping God. They are, at best, worshipping statues of self-realized men. The less intelligent people worship statues while the more intelligent people focus on the deeds, virtues, and ideas of self-realized men.

The Vedic tradition deifies the cosmos. Water, Fire, and Air are all deified. This deification is a problem in Advaita. Instead, of deifying the cosmos, as elements governed by higher beings, we must take a scientific approach to reality in which these deities are replaced by laws of nature. Since the traditional Vedic education system deified the cosmos, it must be replaced by a modern education system.

Secularism and Favoring Monotheism

According to Advaita, even followers of other religions are Brahman, and conflict between them is based on an illusion. It doesn’t matter whether you believe in Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, and so on, because they are all illusions. Only the oneness of Brahman is the truth. Advaita took a moral high ground above all religions, calling all of them illusions on the one hand and arguing for their harmony on the other. All other religions were the children fighting with each other. Advaita was the adult among these children calling for peace.

Indian secularism was merely an extension of Advaita. Since all religions are illusions, it doesn’t matter what religion you choose. Even atheists can align with Advaita, and they do so in the West because Advaita considers all religions false and delusory.

Advaita accepted and encouraged the iconoclasm of Abrahamic faiths because deities and temples were illusions. Praying in a Mosque or Church without an image of God was closer to the truth than worshipping an image of God in a temple. Hindus fighting against Muslims or Christians was farther from the truth because Muslims or Christians worshipped God without images while Hindus worshipped images.

Advaita argued against the exclusivism of Abrahamic religions too, based on the oneness of Brahman. But it argued against Hinduism more, based on the principle of rejecting deities and temples. When push came to shove, Abrahamic iconoclasm (opposition to images) was closer to the truth than people worshipping hundreds of different images in temples. The monotheistic religions were closer to the oneness of Brahman than polytheistic Hinduism. While playing the adult in the room filled with children, criticizing both sides based on its ideas of oneness, Advaita ultimately tilted in favor of monotheism, Buddhism, and its own impersonalism.

Advaita Destruction of the Economy

Wealth must be equally distributed among people because they are equally Brahman. The rich man must give his wealth to the poor and should be taxed to dissolve rich-poor differences. The underclasses must be especially empowered to bring everyone to the same status. Governmental controls must be applied to ensure that economic disparities are not created because they lead to social discrimination, undermining the concept of oneness. Entrepreneurs and businessmen are evil while poor farmers, small shopkeepers, and working classes are good. Laws must push the entrepreneurs and businessmen down while lifting the farmers, shopkeepers, and workers.

Advaita ideologues coined the term Daridra Nārāyaṇa, or that the poor are Nārāyaṇa, thereby linking Indian economics to religion. Nārāyaṇa, the husband of Lakṣmī, the deity of wealth, became poor. Wealth was supposed to come to India by deifying the poor. When India became independent, there was a famous slogan that we rarely hear today: Service to man is service to God. If the government was serving the people, then it was serving God. If the government created jobs and reservations for the poor, it had a spiritual legitimacy. Meanwhile, those who encouraged entrepreneurship, created economic disparity, were not serving God, and hence, had no spiritual legitimacy.

Most people at present don’t know that Indians did not take socialism from the West. It was already in India as Advaita. Small groups of Indians took Marxism, Communism, and Maoism from other places, but Indian socialists rejected it because their vision of India was not violent like the imported ideologies. Indian socialism was a benevolent idea of uniformity and it rejected violence. Wherever Marxists, Communists, and Maoists came to power, socialists bitterly fought against them. That is because Indian socialism was not materialism. In fact, matter is an illusion and spirit is reality in Advaita. Indian socialism was the political extension of Advaita philosophy.

The Kingdom of God Without God

Indians today can’t see the elephant in the room—Advaita—responsible for the destruction of the Vedic traditions, insertion of secularism, preferential treatment of Abrahamic religions, the socialization of the economy, and how all this delights India’s former colonizers. Colonizers elevate Advaita above the Vedic traditions, giving it more respect and importance, because it keeps India backward. But if you are angry about something, you can blame individual politicians, political parties, religious groups, and conversion schemes without looking at the real culprit giving intellectual, moral, and emotional support to all of them, i.e., Advaita. One blamed party can be replaced with another, as long as the underlying ideology continues.

Srila Prabhupāda called this the kingdom of God without God. But I like to call it sleeping with the enemy because (a) people are sleeping, (b) the enemy is ruling them, and (c) they believe that their enemy is their protector. This destruction is rooted in the one idea that diversity is an illusion and oneness is the truth.

Someone put this to me as gold is real but the gold earrings are illusions. Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and all others, are gold earrings. They are all tolerated because they are equally illusory. They are all rejected because none of them is the truth. The pragmatism of Advaita lets it outwardly accept everyone while inwardly rejecting everyone. That is a wolf hiding in sheep’s clothing. It is nobody’s friend but pretends to be everyone’s friend.

Flawed Attempts to Create Unity

People influenced by Advaita believe they are the adults in a room filled with fighting children. There is insurmountable hubris in these people, which makes them think that they will bring brotherhood and peace to the world based on their ideas of oneness. Every few months I meet some such people.

Some try to reconcile the Vedic tradition with Abrahamic religions by attempting to align their histories, reducing the Vedic history to a few thousand years, and overlooking the immense differences in the ages of the universe as given in these traditions.
Some try to unite the West with the Vedic tradition based on the study of the mind, disregarding the enormously complex descriptions of the mind in the Vedic tradition, hoping that these could be equated to the overly simplistic ideas in the West.
Some cite Western philosophers, find similarities to their claims in the Vedic tradition, and try to equate the two, neglecting the fact that philosophy in the Vedic tradition is a system of infinite diversity while that in the West is a system of universal uniformity.
Some cite verses of love and devotion from the Vedic texts and equate them to similar verses from Abrahamic texts, disregarding the multifaceted conception of God and the soul in the Vedic texts, and mono-faceted conception in the Abrahamic texts.
Some try to digest Vedic science descriptions of qualitative nature within Western science axioms of quantification trying to make the Vedic tradition appealing to the Western world, disregarding the logical contradictions between these ideologies.

This is not an exhaustive list of baseless attempts; these are just the most prominent ones that I have seen personally. All these attempts are an illusion because the similarities are emphasized while the differences are ignored. People want to see a rope as a snake. There is obviously some similarity between the two. The differences are even greater. Due to these differences, none of their attempts succeed. But they don’t stop trying. They are gripped by Māyā, which in classical Indian philosophy meant seeing a rope as a snake. But they don’t see it as Māyā either because Advaita redefined it as the illusion of diversity hovering over the oneness or because they consider the Western worldview the standard against which everything else must be understood.

There is a great similarity between Western Universalism and Advaita Impersonalism: In both cases, the diversity of ideas is false and universality is true. Both subscribe to a binary conception of truth, i.e., there is only one truth and everything else is false. The actual Vedic conception is a ladder of truths in which there is some truth even in the lowest rung of the ladder but the truth grows to become complete truth at the top. Attempts to reduce a ladder of truths to a binary truth are like reducing infinite colors to black and white. Unable to discard Western ideas, the supremacist West tries to merge Vedic ideas into itself while the mentally colonized Indians try to coalesce themselves into Western universalism. The net result is that neither moves even an inch on the ladder but they believe they found the only truth.

Blatant Violation of Vedic Injunctions

All over Vedic texts, we find stories of Asuras attacking Devas, Devas taking shelter of Viṣṇu, who then supports Devas in their war against Asuras for the protection of dharma, despite both being His children. Before the Mahābhārata war, Arjuna argues with Kṛṣṇa against fighting a war with his cousins, the Kauravas, who were equally related to Kṛṣṇa. And yet, Kṛṣṇa urges Arjuna to fight for the protection of dharma, despite Pandavas and Kauravas being cousins and equally related to Him. In different Vedic texts, Viṣṇu appears in different forms to kill his servants—Jaya and Vijaya—who had become demons due to the curse of the Four Kumaras, protecting His devotees, for the protection of dharma.

There is simply no equivalence between Devas and Asuras, Pandavas and Kauravas, devotees and demons anywhere in the Vedic texts. But Advaita created that equivalence by calling both sides equally illusory. To do that, Advaita undermined the Purāṇa and Itihāsa where these pastimes are discussed in detail, upholding an impersonalist philosophy of Advaita based on the Upaniṣads and Vedānta Sūtra although the Advaita conclusions have to be twisted out of these texts through misinterpretations.

The fact is that Advaita has never been a Vedic tradition. It was a tradition outside the Vedic system but railroaded it when Śaṅkarācārya wrote commentaries on the Vedic texts, marginalizing large portions of the Vedic system, twisting limited portions to extract an interpretation that was refuted over and over by successive generations. At the heart of the Advaita misinterpretation lies a redefinition of Māyā or illusion, not as seeing a rope as a snake, but as the illusion of both rope and snake, creating an equivalence between Devas and Asuras, Pandavas and Kauravas, devotees and demons, contrary to all Vedic texts.

The Western Rejection of Realism

Advaita currently finds great resonance in the West because of the failure of modern science to account for mind and consciousness. This has to do with the fact that science separated the mind and the body as secondary properties (qualities) and primary properties (quantities), implying that quantities are primary and qualities are secondary and that we must reduce the qualities to quantities. Factually, no such reduction is possible because quantities use binary logic and qualities use non-binary logic. In the Vedic tradition, there are ternary opposites but in Western thinking, there are binary opposites. The Vedic ternary opposites are codependent while the Western binary opposites are mutually exclusive. The difference is so profound that there is simply no way to reduce qualities to quantities. All quantity sciences are also fundamentally flawed because reality is ternary and codependent opposites.

Western Realism is also divided into two main positions. One, in Naïve Realism, the world is just as we see it and knowing the world is no problem because everyone already knows it from birth. Two, in Scientific Realism, there is some difficulty in knowing the world but it requires no changes to ourselves. As Francis Bacon, who formulated the scientific method, put it: Nature is a witch who must be tortured to reveal her secrets. Torturing the witch is slightly more difficult, but it requires no changes to us.

Scientific Realism is a response to Christianity in which each person is evil, having descended from the evil Adam and Eve, and they cannot know the truth due to the evil in them; truth has to be revealed to them by a savior-messiah. The Scientific Realism response to Christianity is: We are not evil; we are fully capable of knowing nature. This is sometimes described as mind is a blank slate. As the slate is blank, there cannot be evil. Rather, upon observation, the world is clearly imprinted on the slate. However, nature is an evil witch for having hidden all her secrets from us. The method of knowing nature is torturing her to make her reveal her secrets. Scientific Realism transfers the evil from us to nature. In Christianity, man is evil and cannot know. In Scientific Realism, nature is evil but can be tortured.

The Western Adoption of Advaita

But the failure of Scientific Realism both in mainstream science and in the study of consciousness and mind has now compelled the West to reject Realism and look at Idealism. Idealism doesn’t require the distinction between primary and secondary properties because there is no reality. What we see is the qualitative appearances and we have no way of knowing what, if anything, causes it. The best way to get out of the problem created by the inability to know reality is to say that it doesn’t exist. Thereby, the world we see is an illusion or delusion created by consciousness. Of course, if that consciousness was us, then we should know that we are creating that delusion. In fact, we should be able to precisely forecast what next delusion we will see. Since that is not possible, therefore, you have to look at a delusion creation mechanism in which we are not creating the delusion, and yet, we are experiencing it. The West hopes or believes that Advaita has an answer to this problem, although Advaita itself doesn’t know it.

Advaita is nearly identical to Western Idealism because in both cases, there is no reality, what we see is just our experience, and due to the absence of reality, this experience is a delusion. Since the delusion is painful in Advaita (we are suffering in the world), therefore, dissolving it is preferred over keeping it. Thus, Advaita goes a step further than Idealism to say that an illusion exists and we must get out of it. Idealism doesn’t take this step or says that it cannot be taken. Thus, in Idealism, the illusion continues, we have no way of getting out of it, and even if that illusion is suffering, it can never be resolved.

The West has coopted Advaita in the name of studying and prioritizing mind and consciousness over the realist stances. Advaita is already non-religious, so you can’t be blamed for siding with one religion. You can also say that the study of mind and consciousness is scientific, so you cannot be called opposed to science. Thus, the West walks the tightrope between not being anti-scientific and not being pro-religion. It is factually anti-scientific because science means mathematical realism which has already failed, but if you don’t say that openly, then it’s okay. It is also factually pro-religion because the ideas of consciousness and mind are being drawn out of the Vedic tradition but reformulated in a secular language, but if you don’t say that part out loud, then it’s okay. The tightrope of Western Idealism is just hypocrisy.

The Creation of Escapist Ideologies

Māyā is neither Western Realism nor Idealism. A real world exists but we misperceive it. So, in a sense, the evil is in us, rather than nature. We cannot torture nature to know her secrets. We have to purify ourselves to know the truth. But this evil is not inherited due to our ancestry—i.e., Adam and Eve—so revelation is not necessary to know the truth. At most, revelation can tell us about the nature of the truth which we have to confirm via reason and observation. Thus, the focus of Western Scientific Realism is on torturing nature to make her reveal her secrets while the focus of the Vedic doctrine of Māyā is on torturing ourselves to purify ourselves after which we know the truth automatically.

Most people don’t like torturing themselves. Some people prefer that the truth be revealed to them so that they can have blind faith in that revelation without having to torture themselves. Other people would like to torture nature to get to the truth, instead of torturing themselves. Yet other people want to avoid torturing nature, or having blind faith in a revelation, or torturing themselves, and they prefer to dissolve the world by calling it an illusion. All these are escapes from self-torture. Christianity escapes self-torture by having blind faith in a revelation. Scientific Realism escapes self-torture by torturing nature. Advaita escapes self-torture by calling the entirety of the conscious experience an illusion.

The Creation of Veda Through Austerity

In contrast to these escapist ideologies, the doctrine of Māyā insists that the reason we see a rope and think it is a snake is due to problems within ourselves. Factually, the rope is not a snake; we cannot call it a snake because it doesn’t bite us. Factually, there is a rope; we can confirm that there is a rope by using it as such. Factually, the misunderstanding of a rope as a snake is due to a problem within us; the rope can be confirmed and the snake can be denied, so our seeing a snake in a rope is our problem. Factually, this misunderstanding can be removed; we have to distinguish between a rope and a snake, confirm a rope, and disconfirm a snake, and through this process, we have to change our understanding. Factually, this process involves self-torture, although we find the truth in this way and there is no other way.

Vedic texts describe how Veda (i.e., knowledge of truth) was created—Brahma was born on a lotus, he didn’t have a clue about who he was or what he was supposed to do, then he heard the word tapa (austerity), proceeded to perform austerity, and after a long time having removed the delusion within himself, the truth automatically appeared in his mind. Then Brahma gave this truth to his sons, which could be called a revelation, but they went on to perform austerity, to realize the revelation. These sons then expanded the revelation to more revelation, and yet, everyone was still expected to perform austerity to realize it. Thus, austerity is embedded in the Vedic tradition from the beginning.

Why Kali-Yuga Creates Escapist Ideas

But in Kali-Yuga, people become hedonistic and cannot do austerity. The body and mind are so weak that they cannot stand hardship. They invent varieties of schemes to avoid austerity—such as blind faith in a revelation (Abrahamic religions), torturing nature (Scientific Realism), claiming that what I see without austerity is the truth (Naïve Realism), or claiming that the world is an illusion (Māyāvāda). The varieties of religions, ideologies, philosophies, and theories are just schemes to avoid austerity. They are all delusions because they try to shut the door on the only way of knowing the truth—i.e., austerity. They cannot succeed because they never address the problem of Māyā, i.e., purifying oneself. And yet, every such scheme seems extremely alluring because it promises the result without a lot of effort.

Vedic texts describe how greatness is achieved through austerity. Sages performed austerities for thousands of years to attain greatness. Very few people could perform such austerities even in the former times, hence greatness was limited, and those who had done such austerities were respected. The Bhagavad Gita states that out of thousands in this world, hardly one endeavors for perfection; out of thousands endeavoring for perfection, hardly one attains perfection; of the thousands who have attained perfection, hardly one knows God. While no one is forbidden from pursuing perfection, in practice, it is known that perfection is rare. Nobody equalized the opinions of everyone.

But in Kali-Yuga, people cannot do austerity. They also cannot accept that they lack greatness. So they equalize everyone’s opinion as free speech. Every lazy man incapable of austerity comes up with a new scheme of staying lazy and attaining greatness. In Abrahamic religions, you go to the kingdom of God without the purification of consciousness. In modern science and Western philosophy, you create an Earthly kingdom of God by trial and error. In Advaita, you become God by calling everything an illusion. There are unlimited options to elevate mediocrity to supremacy. Each person’s option is based on their level of mediocrity. Choose the one you like. Of course, the fact is that none of these elevations are factually true. They are simply different kinds of self-delusion to stop the austerity but make the mediocre think they are on the path to greatness and supremacy. This self-delusion is temporary; it doesn’t end suffering; in fact, it exacerbates it. And yet, most people cannot stop believing the delusion. They shoot the messenger who tells them about the futility of their endeavors.

All Forms of Dharma Involve Austerity

Each of the four principles of dharma—truthfulness, kindness, cleanliness, and austerity—is nothing but austerity in Kali-Yuga. If we tell the truth that the delusion is in each person, everyone is offended and they shoot the messenger. If we show kindness in any form, people think that we have something to gain and attack us trying to undermine out of envy. If we ask them to follow a systematic approach, they remain unsystematic, fail to achieve anything, and accuse the person who gave them the systematic approach of having given them a bad approach. If we take the austerity of guiding anyone, they dump their austerity onto the person who is showing them the path of austerity and end up torturing the person who shows that path. Simply doing dharma is very hard in Kali-Yuga.

This is why Kali-Yuga is almost completely hopeless, except for those who are ready for austerity. There are literally infinite imaginary schemes for avoiding austerity, which delude people into futile pursuits. Everyone who tries to take them out of this futility is shot, attacked, accused, and tortured.

We can summarize it succinctly: If it is simple, it is probably not true; if it is cheap, it is probably not a diamond; if it is easy, it is probably not great. That doesn’t mean we make the truth unnecessarily complicated, make diamonds unnecessarily expensive, or make greatness unnecessarily difficult. We simply focus on the truth, diamonds, and greatness, and accept the minimum necessary and sufficient complexity, cost, and hardship required for it. Māyā is the delusion that the simpler is truer, the cheaper is more valuable, and the easier is greater.

Rapid Expansion of Escapist Ideas

The original form of Māyā is a delusion in the self as an independent enjoyer. It develops into numerous schemes of independent enjoyment. As that independent enjoyment is not fulfilled, but the tendency to enjoy independently is solidified, it becomes the inability for austerity to end the original delusion. To justify the inability for austerity, Māyā expands into infinite schemes for avoiding austerity, which are also delusions because they won’t remove the original delusion, and instead further reinforce it.

At each successive step, Māyā increases and keeps the soul trapped in its control. The original delusion is very simple, but as it progresses, it becomes more and more complex and becomes harder to escape. Most people are enamored by the simplicity of the original delusion; they think that they can easily remove it. They don’t realize that the original delusion has expanded and solidified immensely.

Most people think that there is some truth in modern science, Western philosophy, Abrahamic religions, Māyāvāda, and dozens of such things prevalent today. They don’t understand that these are expansions of Māyā—i.e., to perpetuate the delusion of the self being an independent enjoyer, firming the tendency for hedonism, reducing the capacity for austerity, justifying the hedonism, and trying to avoid austerity. Since there are infinite schemes to avoid austerity, which keep appearing, disappearing, and evolving, everyone trying to avoid austerity keeps jumping from one scheme to another thinking that even if the previous scheme failed, the new one will succeed. Thus, new theories, religions, philosophies, and ideologies keep popping up. They are quite popular because they promise the impossible goal of independent enjoyment. Deluded by these escapist ideologies, the soul remains trapped in Māyā.

Why Escape from Māyā is Very Hard

This is the infinite and inescapable trap of Māyā. The root cause is the inability to take the austerity of purifying oneself, coupled with the renunciation of the idea of independent enjoyment. Everyone wants a heaven in which they don’t have to work for survival, that they will have food and a home, and they will simply play and dance. But they don’t want God in that heaven. While God would have given all these things for free, we want the kingdom of God without God. This is the real meaning of Māyā.

But to avoid the austerity of purifying oneself, and accepting God, Advaita created a misunderstanding of Māyā in which the distinction between rope and snake is an illusion. After that, you don’t have to talk about the difference between the two. You can abrogate differences and focus on similarities. Of course, the differences don’t disappear just because we don’t want to look at them. They come back to bite us when we least expect it. The redefinition of Māyā is therefore nothing but a delusion. While Advaita likes to call the world a delusion, the fact is that its imaginary notion of oneness is the actual delusion.

This delusion is not harmless. As India’s history shows, it is extremely harmful because when you state that you are not separate from your enemy, then you have to part with your wealth, property, and life for the enemy. Your enemy will now exploit you, take everything that you have, while you are standing silently hoping to attain oneness with him. Therefore, if someone doesn’t agree with the problems of Advaita based on the Vedic texts, then there is a secular and empirical confirmation of that problem. Of course, precisely due to Māyā, even when you see your self-destruction, you will blame individual politicians, political parties, religious groups, and conversion schemes, rather than yourself.