Mayajaal
By: Karthika Sakthivel
Tags: Maya, Magic, Illusion, Virtual Reality

Mayajaal

The Hall of Stars in the Palace of The Queen of the Night; scenic designs by Karl Friedrich Schinkel

Usually when I undertake a project it is either because I’m drawn to the design brief or I’m interested in the site specified in it. When there is a real space to be in and draw from — inspiration is abundant and it radically alters the creative process. (edit: Why can’t the site I draw from be virtual? what would it be to create a “virtual site specific” project? How do we define the extent of a virtual space? Does it have boundaries? Who are its neighbours? )

However, with this project I don’t know where to begin. I didn’t come to the RCA with any plans. I was going to take it one step at a time and see where it takes me; but the steps have gone by in a blink — and I’m left, blank. Over the past year I actively avoided engaging with or encouraging any thoughts and ideas for the Independent Research Project and now I must say I deeply regret it.

(What are my interests? /What is my practice?/ What stories do I have to tell? / Who am I? / Where am I? / Why am I here? )

An existential crisis later, I decide to go with my gut.

I look back at the VR&A symposium and my initial thoughts and responses to some of the concerns that came up:

The VR Symposium was an extremely stimulating event. After the panel discussion and the Q&As I was left wondering about some of the topics that came up. I didn’t find myself relating to the questions the topics arose. As some of my Asian counterparts brought up, there seems to be certain inherent understanding we possess in matters about the ‘virtual’ and the ‘real’ that perhaps keeps us from wondering about it or fearing it. However it did make me wonder why that’s so. Some of us with similar feelings engaged in a discussion afterwards and the word Maya came up and that cleared a whole lot up.

Maybe there really is something to unpack here.

According to Wikipedia:

Maya, literally “illusion”or “magic”, connotes a “magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem”. Māyā is also a spiritual concept connoting “that which exists, but is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal”, and the “power or the principle that conceals the true character of spiritual reality”.

Author Joseph P.Kauffman ( Is he a credible source you ask? Is a PHD necessary to be deemed credible? Some of the greatest Indian epics are believed to have been penned by my main man over here 👇🏾 ) writes:

Ganesha writing the Epics as Sage Vyasa dictates

“When we perceive the stars, the stars are the object of our perception — they exist within us. When we perceive the ocean, the ocean is also within us. The idea that things exist outside of our Consciousness is an illusion. Ancient wisdom traditions have known this for centuries, and even modern science has recognized that our sense organs merely receive information and project it within our own minds. Vision does not take place in the eye, but in an area located in the back of the brain. Everything that we perceive to be “out there” is being experienced “in here.” “In Advaita Vedanta, and in many other ancient wisdom traditions, the world is said to be an illusion. This illusion is commonly referred to as maya, a Sanskrit name which refers to the apparent, or objective reality which is superimposed on the ultimate reality in order to generate the phenomena of what we call the material world. Maya is the magic by which we create duality — by which we create two worlds from one. This creation is an illusory creation — it is not real — it is an imaginary manifestation of the one Universal Consciousness, appearing as all of the various phenomena in objective reality. Maya is God’s, or Consciousness’s, creative power of emptying or reflecting itself into all things and thus creating all things — the power of subjectivity to take on objective appearance.” ― Joseph P. Kauffman, The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom

To put it simply:

“Your entire life is a Virtual Reality, because you are seeing it only the way it happens in your mind” — Sadhguru

Here is an interesting film by Amber Bemak — touching upon this very idea.

However, it is also important to not take the phrase “the world is an illusion” at face value. Even that phrase isn’t what it seems. The article below really puts things in perspective.

An intro to the concept for beginners

I then began my process by writing a loose logline to help navigate through this vast topic.

This project aims to trace the use of ‘magic’ in storytelling traditions with a focus on technology. It seeks to explore the shifting modalities of storytelling through the underlying Vedic principle of Maya that deems the world- a creation of play (lila), an illusion- where nothing is as it seems.

I then drafted a proposal which in all honesty is rather vague. Hopefully I will gain more clarity over the course of this project.