A Simple Framework to Recognize 'Abstractions of Illusion'
As I have come to observe myself and the world more closely, I notice that māyā* or illusion works by repeating the same hidden patterns in many different forms. It brings forth what appear to be opposites — competing voices, opposing sides — each carrying, beneath the surface, the same unspoken core. Because I did not recognize this, I identified myself with one side, called it “my purpose,” and turned against the other. Yet from a wider view, both sides rest in the same innocent forgetting of who we truly are, each quietly mirroring the other.
What follows is a simple framework for noticing which layer of illusion one may be operating within.
A necessary starting point is the idea of māyā* and the assumption that we live within it — a systemic veil that lets the one appear as the many. Events in our personal lives, social dynamics, and world affairs can all be seen as extensions of that same veiling. I understand this process as the stacking of “abstractions upon abstractions”, with each new layer strengthening the illusion.
What slowly becomes apparent, when we look with patience and introspection, is that most of what unfolds in our days, in our relationships, across the globe is already shaped by patterns set in motion long before any single person appears to steer it — these upstream patterns establish a form of conditioning.
The people who appear to be “calling the shots” often have far less independent agency than the surface story suggests. The root is a poignant illusion of free will: we experience ourselves as the chooser, yet the chooser is shaped by the very pattern it thinks it is choosing from. Outcomes more often than not, feel “pre-decided” once the initial conditions are set. At its deepest, what we call choice is simply the self-reinforcing feedback loop of ignorance (avidyā) moving through us.
We can notice this mechanism everywhere: in the rhythms of governance, in the way beliefs and dogmas ripple through communities, in the way conflicts arise cloaked in noble banners, and in the sudden rise of technologies that quietly reshape how we touch and see one another. When we step back just a little and observe, these movements stop fitting neatly in the ordinary causal terms and begin to raise more questions than answers, leaving us in quiet awe of the ‘play’.
We also witness how entire collectives resist an idea for years, even fight it, only to one day embrace it, live by it, and even preach it. What invisible force engineers such reversals?
Of course, any given single incident when taken in isolation, can be explained with a step by step logic. The deeper pattern reveals itself only when we follow a long, unbroken thread of seemingly separate happenings — the bigger picture. At that point, the reasoning often stops being linear and starts looking cyclical. The ‘final layer’ I personally reach is simply where my mind meets its own limit — the place where every question dissolves into the silence that gave birth to it. What I encounter there is the self-reinforcing nature of the māyā or illusion itself.
Once this is seen clearly, the “sense of separate-self” begins to soften. What looked like deliberate choice earlier begins to look like a link attaching itself perfectly in the chain of the given pattern unfolding in the world. Yet this insight does not collapse into hard determinism or license to drift into passivity. At a human level where love and courage are lived, we continue to choose, practice, and take responsibility — precisely because the chooser and the pattern are not two.
Even the thought “I see the layers” can become another layer of illusion if I hold on to it. A sense of relief occurs when this final cleverness is also recognized and let go.
Now to illustrate with an example without turning it into an entire argument, consider the rapid global adoption of smartphones and social media between 2007 and 2015. At the surface layer: brilliant inventors, visionary founders, and consumer demand created a new technology. One level deeper: regulatory frameworks, venture capital incentives, and architectured narratives about connectivity and progress synchronized across nations that were otherwise geopolitical rivals. Another level: the psychological hooks (dopamine loops, social comparison, fear of missing out) were identical whether marketed in Silicon Valley, Beijing, or Bangalore. Tracing further, the ideological core — expansion of consumption, surveillance-as-service, and identity-through-profile — remained the same on every “competing” platform. At the apparent bottom layer the chain circles back: the very desire for connection that drove adoption in the beginning is now conditioned by the newfound isolation created by consequences of smartphones and social media (Some consequences include- obligation to being ‘online’ to remain in contact, illusion of ‘global secularism’ and forgetting the old ways of connecting in physical presence). The point in that the issue circles back to itself just in a different flavor.
I could give more examples, but one is enough to show the method. The invitation is not to prove a conspiracy, but to cultivate the capacity to trace any moment back through its layers until the sense of a separate “I” who chose or resisted gently dissolves into simple awareness.
Take this piece of writing as a tool for clearer seeing. The real invitation is to use the tracing method, act responsibly at the human level, and rest in the wonder that the play is playing itself perfectly — including the moment this seeing arises.
*This is how māyā appears to me:
- The stark difference between how something appears on the surface and what it actually represents.
- The pervasive illusion of free will at personal, interpersonal, and collective levels.
- The unawareness that cause and effect have already been patterned long before they reach the level I call “my decision.”
Māyā has several observable traits. One of those is relentless expansionism. In the mind it manifests as a ‘natural’ wish for more - more money, more status, more consumption, more knowledge, more spiritual experiences — each new desire planting the seed for the next layer in a self-fulfilling cycle. A strong mind can penetrate several layers, yet remains vulnerable to the subtle pull of desire, which is itself a finer grade of illusion.