Unveiling

... or how to be absolutely positive about everything

This post is the third in a series. In this series I am exploring a philosophical and theological tradition from India - most commonly called Kashmir Shaivism. I’m interested not just in the ideas of this tradition but also what they might mean in practice.

This tradition can be abstract, hard to make accessible or practical. Fortunately, this is exactly the kind of challenge I am built for. In this post we’re going to try to take the idea of ‘the Veil of Maya’ - an important principle in the tradition - and see what it can teach us.

The big idea here is that there is no ultimate difference between the most spiritual and the most earthly aspects of our experience, between the most profound and the most mundane realities of life. Every experience of life is given exactly the same weight and importance.

In many traditions it isn’t like this. Either the spiritual or the mundane tends to get the upper hand. The strict scientist, for example, will focus on understanding the mundane aspects o…