HOW DOES A UNIVERSAL PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
APPROACH THE UNIVERSE?
MAYA
Reason asks:
"Is there a larger psychology behind everything?"
We all know that
our minds are in many ways unresolved and unconscious.
This is psychology 101.
However, present day psychology explains only a
small portion of this unresolved, unconscious condition
we find ourselves in.
A cosmic model of psychology
Vedic spirituality approaches psychology
on a cosmic scale. It says, just as we are unresolved
and unaware of our personal problems due to a particular neurosis or trauma; on a larger universal
scale all beings are existentially unconscious of their divine
nature, and are driven to find only partial solutions to their prevailing problem in and through a world that's limited, broken up into little pieces and constantly changing. This is the dilemma of creation at large.
All minds are compulsively externalized. However,
just as problems melt away when we resolve
a neurosis, so Vedic Spirituality says that our existential
problems will eventually melt away as we calm our minds and focus on Transcendence.
The world has no absolute existence. It exists only in relation to your mind, my mind, the cat's mind, the dog's mind.
The promise of the saints and sages
The mystic, saints and sages the world over
tell us that through an ethical foundation, and by calming our minds through devotion to God, discrimination between the Real and the unreal, selfless activity or meditation on Reality, consciousness will gradually open and with time and practice we'll be able to perceive a larger,
Transcendent Reality.
Our general condition of mind
But our minds resist this
calming down process. They're dynamically externalized.
This unconscious condition in the Vedanta is called
avidya on the individual level and on a collective level is referred to
as maya.
We see the world through limited states of consciousness
Maya is that power that forces us to see the
world through our limited states of consciousness.
It's this collective misunderstanding, running
through life, that every being suffers from. In this larger psychological model,
the universe isn't seen as false or unreal. It simply has no absolute existence. The world exists merely as a result of all of these partial understandings and
misunderstandings of different minds, acting and interacting upon one another. The power of Maya (all of our
unresolved, psychic energy) forces us to see an ultimate unity, freedom and peace in and through a world of manifold change, limitation and fragmentation.
