Maya in Modernity

Our eastern folklore often harps one catchy phrase “sobi maya” (everything is under illusion). Even in Hindu divinity Maya and Mukti (delusion and liberation) are pretty preached concepts. But our linear and occupied modern educated mental set-up seldom thinks about that. Mystics and poets tend to linger beautiful lines on the very delusion of the life in various ways.

Now, let’s look at our life at a broader scale. Why we often tend to repent at our own past deeds? We realize that even though the moments what we lived quite sorrowfully might be averted just with sudden freak of decision. Our life as we think later on the past mistakes, conflicts, pain and whatever stressful situation it may be, on a whole it was a drama, where we created a mess all around it unwittingly. So these unresolved issues where we constantly put our false ego can be termed as the very delusion component of our life. Although the very pain through which a man moves, it just matures him. Even negating the very delusional ideas actually shapes a human being, rather it lives no stone unturned to make him intelligent.



The Hollywood movie Matrix (1999) portrays a battle of a single man waging war against the very machine-driven system, which enslaved humanity through its artificial virtual reality. Now this matrix concept is much more valid ideology in our daily life. Apart from our education system our life was actually made to be hooked with this artificial ignorance from the days of Industrial Revolution. In this era our psyche is in complete hangover with a modern cyber-driven digital world. The very falsification of the ideas, false news, pornography, fake propaganda, political hypes, cyber-bullying, heroic mentality, publicity even commercialization gradually clutching the humanity into a maze of artificiality. Actually these things are delusionary components, which make people just to ignore themselves rather than stuck with external delusions. Now this artificial ignorance can be termed as Maya.

If we simply dive into our mythology, it is shown that lord Shiva to be in closed eyes. Here he is actually shown to be shut off from all his senses from worldly pleasure. Basically here the benevolent form of Lord Shiva actually pointing towards the real awakening of true intelligence, when one can win over the grasp of Maya or delusion. This form can be very symbolic in our life, where we need to create our perspective as clear as lord Shiva, as we can break all the matrix and negativities of life with sheer ferociousness.