/lit/ - Literature

>>20316549
>if the illusion is prior to the "maya-mind" then who's being "victim" of this illusion then? certainly can't be the maya-mind since is somethign that happens after the casting of this first movement of the illusion
There is no "first"

The maya-minds and the greater maya they are all a part of both have beginningless relative-existence as the ontological category of the indeterminate ajnana/falsity/maya. There is no beginning to maya and there is no beginning to the ignorance and transmigration of the jiva. Hence, there is no "first casting" of the maya illusion, if you seek for its origin in time you will just go back into a beginningless past of circular time that's all located within maya still, and no matter how far you go there is no past limit. Temporality is an illusionary distinction that only ""exists"" relatively within the mental framework imposed on maya-minds by the illusionary maya, Brahman is atemporal.

Maya is not dependent on individual jivas, it continues for the collective of jivas when one jiva is liberated from maya. Things that are parts of maya depend on maya being what it is for those consequences or parts to take place within maya as a part of maya, even though both are beginningless. If the totality of maya vanished, all maya-minds would vanish in the same instant.

Thoughts, perceptions and beliefs don't inhere in awareness according to both Advaita and classical Sankhya-Yoga, they are material structures comprised of the tanmatras (subtle elements) and inhere in the insentient manas/buddhi (both in subtle body). When the material structure of the components of the subtle body receives the illumination of the light of the Atman, it allows these translucent material structures to glow with the light imparted by awareness and thereby seem as if they themselves are conscious. The "victim" of the illusion of maya is just this material structure existing in a sort of beginningless complex with ignorance, and so the experience of being a transmigrating being in maya, the experience of ignorance etc is just this beginningless material structure being perpetually invested with the light of unaffected unconditioned Atman in a beginningless manner, thereby having the beginningless false notion that the Buddhi itself is conscious instead of it being an unconscious thing illumined by unaffected luminous self-awareness. The Atman remains independent and unaffected while providing it's light to all these beginningless jivas.