Maya Is Both Existent and Non-Existent

[Reading from chat] Then one says ‘Everything dissolves in deep sleep, yet we find a different form of the world when we wake up in the morning. Everything dissolves in deep sleep and yet we find a different form of the world (matter) when we wake up in the morning. Is it because the matter is also Awareness and activity of Awareness happens even when a person sleeps? Is it because the matter is also Awareness and activity of Awareness happens even when a person sleeps?’ So, there is a lot of subtlety in that question. One way we can say that yes; that which seems to arise out of Awareness must also be made up of Awareness. It seems to dissolve back into it and loses all its quality. Then seems to arise out of it and seems to be qualitatively different but fundamentally the same, so then it must be made up of the same substance. So it’s like saying water and ice - sometimes it is just liquid, liquid and sometimes it freezes up, it can feel like solid. So we can you these kinds of analogies if it helps. But actually, Awareness is beyond any such sort of formulation. So as long as it helps our intellect it’s helpful to understand all of these. This one [inaudible] but we can never even say that Consciousness arises. Authoritatively I cannot say. But this saying or not saying also seems to happen in that seeming arising. That is why Adi Shankara said that ‘Maya is that which is both existent and non-existent.’ tiow does that help our intellect? It doesn’t help at all. It is not telling you anything. It’s not saying whether it is existent or non- existent. But when you go beyond your intellect, you will see that how to say something really about that which we at one level can say ‘It never existed nothing ever happened’ and ironically even to say ‘it never happened’ can only be within that existence. So what we can say provisionally is that ‘Yes, it is the same stuff everything is made up of this Awareness itself.’