/lit/ - Literature

>>11346902

Pic related is a good explanation of Maya from Guenon's book 'Studies in Hinduism'.

>Well in certain sense that "void" seems more liberating than returning to "the One".

From the perspective of the conventional self it can be considered a void because the conventional self is revealed to be totally not real (in relation to the eternal unchanging reality), the only real aspect of the being is revealed to be Atma. However, it should never be taken as a void in an absolute sense because the awareness that is already present in you itself remains.

Atma is the very awareness which makes you aware of being awake, of having memories and emotions, of being aware of thinking. This awareness witnesses but does not participate in and is not affected in any way by any other aspect of the self. This awareness is Brahman itself and when all other aspects of the being are stripped away and revealed as transient through realization of the truth one becomes a jivanmukta and does not return to the manifest at the moment of death. The awareness which is Atma returns to the all-encompassing and eternal awareness which is reality, the awareness by which you are aware of existence as a human is the same awareness by which Brahman obverses itself throughout eternity. So you already contain a seed or kernal of what the highest reality of Brahman is and this is what Advaita teaches when it says 'thou art that' and 'Atman = Brahman', not merely that we are all manifestations of Brahman (which is true in consideration of our bodies in time and space) but that the very awareness which makes us cognizant of existence is the awareness of Brahman itself.

Guenon's essay on Māyā from 'Studies in Hinduism' is good. Some vedantic texts can be a little confusing insofar as they don't make explicitly clear the exact nature of the relation of the 'illusion' or the phenomenal world to the Supreme Principal; or they explain it through metaphors. Reading this made some of the vedantic texts I've read a little clearer.