In yoga we term the veil of illusion : Maya.
What is the veil of illusion?
The first time I heard this I was in my early 20s when reading Carols Castaneda’s book: The Teachings of Don Juan.
In the book Don Juan (his spiritual mentor) said something to the equivalent of: ‘Nothing is real’.
This blew open my mind and had me ask a lot of questions.
What did he mean by nothing is real?
Does this mean that this book is not real, are trees not real, are buildings real, are people real?
What about feelings, emotions and sensations… are they not real?
What about sound, smell, light and gravity… are these not real? What about my thoughts and my words.. are these not real?
For many years, from that moment, I was dealing with confusion. I took this concept quite literally and would spend hours trying to make that which I saw with my eyes dissipate from my vision.
I never manage to do it.
I expected things to dissolve in front of me or that I would be pulled out (unplugged) from this reality.
I used to ask…..Is this a dream? If it is a dream, then I should be able to do anything I want. Yet I found myself bound by the laws of nature. If reality is actually a dream then surly, when I wake up every morning, I should wake up in a different environment/location.
This never happened either.
I really felt that I was always on the edge of that which I know as reality and that which is on the other side of my reality.
I read this concept: ‘nothing is real’ a few times after that initial quote in other philosophy, self-help books and scriptures, but still could not grasp the concept.
When the movie The Matrix came out….. I fully believed that this was a message about the illusion of reality.
I didn’t believe that we were in a simulation made by robots, but rather that we were trapped in an illusion that we didn’t even know we were in. In the movie some people ( the chosen ones) knew something was not what it seemed but they could not figure it out, nor could they escape it.
The Matrix re-enforced how I’d been feeling since that Carlos Castaneda book.
Ohm
Then, in 2012 I went and studied my Hatha Yoga Teachers Training in India.
In Hinduism they have a sacred symbol – the Ohm sign.
The ohm sign is supposed to represent the first sound EVER made and is the ultimate cosmic sound.
In our Pranic Body (energy body) this sound, Ohm sound, relates to the crown chakra.
Learning the interpretation of the Ohm symbol gave me a deeper clue to what this veil of illusion is: 3 arms of the symbol represent the 3 parts of the sound and our 3 states of consciousness:
- AH – this represents the waking state
- O – this represents the sleeping – dream state
- M – this represents the deep – no dreaming sleep state After the ‘M’ sound there is silence which represents infinite consciousness.
The idea is to master these three levels of the mind / states of being. Only then can you break through the veil of illusion (maya). Once you have done this you reach the God consciousness / universal consciousness / Samadi / Nirvana.
Ah, now at this level it started to become more clear. According to this philosophy; illusion is what we create with our mind. We see /experience the world through a specific lens that only we have.
No one else experiences the world like we do. This means that this world that we perceive is actually not real. In a moment we can view the world as beautiful, with opportunities and connections with people and in the next moment (due to some change) we can perceive the exact same world as hostile, limited, dark, and lonely.
So, according to this ohm symbology, it’s not the objects outside of us nor the law of nature that is the illusion. The illusion is within us.
THIS is why so many self – help books have been written, talking about changing your inner world to change your outer world. As your inner world affects your outer world.
In yoga this concept is known as your micro-cosm. Your micro-cosom (inner world) affects your macro-cosom (outer world).
The Truman Show is another movie that reflects this concept.
Truman believes his reality till one day he discovers it’s not real. He goes through immense confusion. He feels that something is wrong within himself; that he’s having a nervous breakdown or is dilutional.
He tries to make meaning of the odd things he is observing by blaming memories and past circumstances.
He can’t explain what is going on yet he knows – without a doubt – that there is something he has to seek to make the unknown known….. to figure out what is ACTUALLY real.
Raising in consciousness
In the past we believed that the illusion was only in our minds.
Then as collective consciousness raised, we shifted from thinking that everything was in our mind and shifted from thinking that it was only the mind we had to work on. We started to realise that emotions played a huge part in our perceived reality.
Now a day with an even higher level of collective consciousness, people are starting to wake up to understand that it is also our energy that creates our reality.
We understand that energy shapes our emotions and that emotions, in turn, shape our thoughts.
So reality and the illusion of it is all related to energy.
When I started practicing Kundalini Yoga I experienced this ‘lifting of the veil of illusion’ at yet an even deeper level:
It is not only the mind, emotions and energy that we have to work on to shift the illusion, but EVERYTHING that we have gathered as a human in our existence from the moment we were born to this very moment in time.
The Maya is that we take on beliefs, values, ideas, habits, patterns and behaviors that are not ours…. We take on what our parents, family members, teachers, peers, culture, society, and media told us (and tell us) to take on.
This IS the illusion.
We are NOT these limited things.
None of this conditioning is who we truly are.
*It is through Kundalini Yoga is where I embodied this understanding, but other people may come to lifting the veil through other spiritual practices. All spiritual paths lead to the same understandings.*
Kundalini Yoga and Meditation in lifting the veil
A HUGE part of Kundalini Yoga is to become AWARE of the un-real limited ‘stuff ‘we took on (and take on) that is keeping us running an old program. Once we have awareness we can then work to detach ourselves from this old program.
When we participate in each class, in each of our morning Sadhana practice, with each meditation we practice on our own, we come closer to the truth and closer to lifting the veil.
My mission is to guide other with the concepts and techniques required to lift the veil of illusion and to help humanity raise their consciousness.
I personally have found 2 ways that this works for me:
– Meditation.
– Kundalini Yoga.
Personally the meditation that works best for me is going to Vipassana for 10 days OR spending 15 to 20 days at a Buddhist Meditation Centre. Here, the main focus and objective is to meditate without any external distractions.
In between these meditative intensives I practice Kriyas, Meditations and Pranayamas from Kundalini Yoga.
Kundalini Yoga is not called the ‘fast track system’ for nothing. This helps me to live with 1 foot in truth and 1 foot functioning in the illusion (but I know what the illusion is now!!)
What is truth?
Truth is what lies beyond the veil.
The only thing that is real IS truth
– is soul
– is Devine consciousness
– is GOD
– is Universal consciousness.
(note: when I write about GOD, I’m not speaking about the religious GOD, I’m speaking about GOD in the energetic sense and in the higher consciousness sense).
– When we connect to that vast still point – we are beyond the veil.
– When we are so still that our humanness dissolves – we are reaching beyond the veil.
– When time and space collapses – we are beyond the veil.
– When we see, know and embody that everything in the universe is connected – we are beyond the veil.
– When we feel immense peace without attachment – we are beyond the veil.
– When we a filled with love – unconditional love – we are beyond the veil.
Article written by Nicola (Sita Amrit Kaur) August 2021
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