Course XXXVI - Teaching 13: The Great Illusion

If God is the Undifferentiated One and the Unknowable One, to define him is to negate him, and everything that is existing, defined and variable cannot be but a fancy; great philosophers of pantheistic religions hold this. But, to dualists and theists, to those who feel all existing things are integral part of the Self, it would be a blasphemy to say all things created, all things seen and around us, are an illusion
Then, what is Maya? Is it reality or illusion?
The Universal Manifestation, as purpose, cannot be an only reality. To say so would be to reduce to something the concept of God who is out of any concept; but even this wonderful succession of divine events constitutive of life in the created Universe cannot be an illusion.
The manifested Universe, life, is a reality, inasmuch as the Undifferentiated and Unknowable One is real, but that settles its existing reality in the continuous becoming. Is reality what exists? Yes, it is reality; but not because it may be the Eternal One in himself, but because it is Eternal One in his manifestation. God is Non-Manifested, Indefinable and Indescribable; Immobile in Himself. But his inversion, the Divine Breath-out, is the visible Universe. What comes from the Eternal One is then also eternal and real; it is not reality in itself, but becoming of the Only Reality.
This Reality is illusion just as idea of continuous change, not because one wants to attribute to it a negative value or considers it a dream, a phantasmagoria and nothing more: but as a result of its continuous movement of variability.
In this continuous becoming, in this continuous variability, in this perennial transformation of all things, we find the concept of illusion, or Maya, of Vedantins.
God is What cannot be named, What never changes its nature; but his manifestation is Ired, because it is what continuously changes, becoming accessible to knowledge; a Unity expressed by antithesis.
The Whole Divine Manifestation is the Great Illusion, which in continuous vortex goes down from the Root-Principle and again goes up to the Eternal Principle, but so eternal as the very God.
Also, to concentrate in the concept of manifestation is to stop in the road, because the path to liberation is a continuous journey to eternity.
If the Universe has emerged from the unfathomable depths of Eternity, we should not forsake it, because the Universe becomes a basis of knowledge that a man is given, so that incidentally he learns how to reintegrate himself to Eternity.
The Great Illusion is changing reality, which in its name contains the secret value of what is unknowable, when becomes knowable.