Sanjay Kumar Zutshi
Are we living in a multilayered web of illusion? Does this illusion embrace itself different layers of consciousness? It seems as if each layer of consciousness we live in is enveloped by a concrete layer of illusion. That is why we remain entangled in finiteness and are not able to touch infinity. The infinity comes every time to us in the disguised form of finiteness. We seem to die and take birth again. We seem to go through different stages of joy and sorrow in our lives. We sometimes emerge out as alive and kicking and knower and insightful and soon we emerge out to be dull and lazy and nescient holding that only material phenomena can be known and knowledge of spiritual matters or ultimate causes is impossible. This is all illusion.
In the Bhagavad Gita, we come across three ‘Gunas’– 1) Sattva 2) Rajas and 3) Tamas that sprung from ‘Prakriti’; Sattva is light giving and healing and attaches us to happiness; Rajas keeps us bound with bond of action and attaches us to action; Tamas keeps us bound with heedlessness, sloth and slumber. In the event of Sattva, this illusion melts into knowledge and wisdom and insight; and in the event of Rajas, the illusion gets darkened and gives birth to sensory pleasures, a little knowledge and false ego; and in the event of Tamas, we completely sink in the inner depths of illusion or obliviousness.
Now for consciousness and enlightenment to emerge, it is that we have to pass a filteration test through the multilayers of illusion. And the Soul or the Being within is an immortal spark of the Divine. For a cleft in the conscio- usness has made us oblivious of our true Self that is never bound or conditioned by the vagaries of illusion. For in that case illusion is itself a potential power of that true Self. Separa- tion due to ignorance has reduced man to the wave-consciousneess exclusively absorbed in itself as a separate entity unware of the sea that is the soul. Ignorant of his greater self– the hidden sea, the man remains to be oblivious and in aloofness thereof.
To accept this as illusion and take it as Leela of the Divine, our ego is bound to melt and make us aware of our true nature, otherwise the ego consciousness swollen with pride and vanity of individualism mixes up with this illusory background and nurtures falsehood and ignorance; and the individualism of the human ego is not now free but a phenomenon bound in a chain of cause and effect.
Now the ego has assumed form and a tangle of perplexity has been reached to around this form of physical consciousness. Then it is not possible to recognise the Self with our deceptive sense instruments and the blind and imprisoned intelligence. But the Maya or illusion or Leela contains within it all the consciousness and this total awareness or consciousness can be bestowed upon us if we tilt our consciousness to look deeply into our own constitution and constituents. Then immediately this Maya or illusion melts into a Leela and stretches itself into infinity and the representative of the secret Spirit , the real person we are emerges out and the imperfect superficial I penetrates into this Leela and the illusion we live through becomes a spiritual play or a dance.
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