Maya (Illusion) in Hindu Philosophy

In the last post, we considered the problem of infinity, also known as the "continuum problem." If the world is made up of many, many, many small particles (an infinite number of atoms) that are somehow all separated by space, then what is it that unifies the world? What makes the world a continuous, solid, unified whole?

Put into mathematical terms by George Cantor, the father of set theory, the question is how many points can be counted on a simple line, AB, in Euclidean space.

Because a single point is defined, in geometry, as having no height, no width, and no depth, the answer is paradoxical and extremely counter-intuitive: A simple line that begins at point A and ends at point B may contain an infinite and unlimited number of points between the two end points.

By that very fact, every segment of the line AB also contains, within the smaller subset, an infinite number of points between the two endpoints of the segment. Like its Father (the line AB or BA), the Son (a baby segment of the whole) can be infinite.

But how, wondered George Cantor, can there be such a thing as a small infinity within a larger infinity? Wouldn't this make the Father (big line) and Son (little line) identical? Beginning with these questions, Cantor developed his theories of infinite and well-ordered sets -- infinite sets that differ in order, kind and magnitude, as if baby infinities could somehow be held and embraced by mother infinities.

Magnificat: The Lord Doth Magnify My Soul

When the continuum problem is put into purely human terms, the paradox becomes a very real problem of perceiving and assigning social values. Can we really judge a human's value based on the category or "set" it belongs to?

How can one say that the life of one human being is infinitely valuable, while the life that belongs to another category or set of human beings is somehow "expendable"? Is the life of a poor carpenter's son worth less then the life of a King? Are they not both part of the very same set -- the set of all human life? Why distinguish between the small set of one's own family and the much greater set that is the family of the human race?

Why not treat all strangers as friends?

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Maya and Mary

In her puzzling and paradoxical nature, the Blessed Virgin Mary is very similar to the Hindu goddess Maya, the goddess of Illusion who veils the reality of the Hindu god Brahman. The following article on Maya, taken from Wikipedia, certainly gives one food for thought:

"In Advaita Vedanta philosophy, Maya is the limited, purely physical and mental reality in which our everyday consciousness has become entangled. Maya is held to be an illusion, a veiling of the true unitary Self -- the Cosmic Spirit also known as Brahman . . . .

"Many philosophies and religions seek to 'pierce the veil' of Maya in order to glimpse the transcendent truth from which the illusion of a physical reality springs, drawing from the idea that first came to life in the Hindu stream of Vedanta.

"Maya is . . . the appearance of phenomena. Since Brahman is the only truth, Maya is true but not the truth, the difference being that the truth is the truth forever while what [appears to be] true is only true for now."

In other words, Maya is the world of sensory perception, the world as it appears to our minds and our senses rather than the world as it actually is. As a goddess of appearances she might be called false, or deceptive, but in fact she is being absolutely honest and true. The error lies in our own minds and our own perceptions -- we have not seen her rightly.