The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita : Ch -19.11
20/05/2017. 19: True Knowledge : 11. 1. That is why it is said that we live in a world of maya—phantasm, illusion, phantasmagoria—and we pass for realities and judge all things as if they are ultimate realities, while the so-called reality that we seem to recognise in these reflected forms is a faint distraction of the original which is operating through them. Reality is visible in appearance, just as in the famous Vedantic analogy we have the silver appearing in the oyster shell, or the snake appearing in the rope. The substantiality of the snake is the rope. 2. The ‘this-ness’, the reality, the substantiality, the visibility of the so-called snake is the rope there underneath. But we perceive the snake rather than the rope on account of a distortion of our vision. So is the case with every kind of perception of anything in this world. The substantiality, the solidity, the value that we attach to things is the ‘rope-ness’ that is behind the ‘snake-ness’ of these forms.