The Reality Of Illusion

He who speaks too early of the world as "Maya" or illusion should be more careful. The entire world of the senses is often a sort of illusion; but, not because of that, nonexistent.

If I walk in front of a fast moving car, something will indeed happen to me. A fly doubtless doesn't see or perceive the impact of a fly swatter in the same way a man perceives the impact of a car, but the result is in both cases death. No matter where your soul is, unless it can build up a body from scratch, you have no more chance with that car than a fly has with a fly swatter. Doubtless death is not the simple thing it seems to be on the physical plane, but that doesn't make it nonexistent.

A hurt hurts and a pain pains regardless of how or even whether or not it is noticed. The appearance is illusion, but there is a face behind each mask. It is the purpose of the mystic and the seeker after knowledge to unmask the many faces of reality, not to deny that there is some reality connected with what is seen. By the simple process of continued stripping of one mask after another, a point is eventually reached where all faces seem to be the same; or there seems to be no face at all. The latter is rooted in that greatest of follies, the denial of one's own existence. The former is material for pleasure or meditation, but signals the need for a new beginning and a new unmasking rather than the end of thought.

One must not forget that the experience of the Oneness of the All is often only a denial of the Difference of the Many, and not anything more or less than that. It is a mental action in the first instance, not an observation.

All this is quite a different thing from that state of meditation which transcends unity and difference and experiences all things in all places at one time. (Extract taken from The Road To The Sun)