Several people have asked me in recent days about the nature of māyā. This made me realize how little this concept is understood and prompted me to write the following long post describing the problem of illusion, the various problems arising from its solution, and the nature of the correct solution.
All students of epistemology cite many categories of experience that are not knowledge, in order to distinguish them from knowledge. These categories are different in Western and Vedic systems of philosophy. In particular, in the latter, dreams are not considered false, although there are other categories that are false. This post discusses the difference between the various categories that are considered...
The initial thesis of Freudian psychoanalysis and that of Vedic philosophy are similar—namely, that our surface behaviors are the result of a deeper “unconscious” reality. The person in both cases is described hierarchically—e.g. as an iceberg, with only the tip visible, while most of its reality is invisible. Nevertheless, there are numerous differences in the process of how the unconscious is created—the process...
