Avidya / Ignorance

The player who lands in avidya forgets the illusory nature of existence and becomes attached to certain emotional states and sense perceptions. This snake draws his energy down to the first chakra and the sensual plane. Loss of understanding of the nature of maya causes suspension of the rational faculty of the mind and leads to identification with certain states.

Vidya is knowledge; a means without. The absence of knowledge is ignorance. Knowledge is understanding one’s role in the game from wherever one is at the moment. The real avidya is within the mind. No avidya exists outside the mental realm. Our perceptions of reality are but reflections of our own selves. But while nothing exists outside the mind, this does not mean that only the player and his mind exist. The world of name and form exists also, but it is perceived differently by every player’s mind from the place where he is vibrating at the moment.

This same world is a place of enjoyment for some and a hell for oth­ers. Each mind receives the world in its own way and attaches importance to objects according to its own karmas. Real knowledge is to understand reality without assigning value judgments. Real knowledge is nonattachment to the objects of sense perception, which are always changing, temporary, and therefore not reality.

If the player only keeps track of his inner sound — the sound of his self, his being — he will not fall prey to his own mind. Mind is like a tiger dwelling in the forest of desires, surrounded by a reality full of prey. Only by following his inner sound can the player escape the tiger and escape the fall back to the sensual plane. Otherwise he must start anew, finally to pass through the arrow of right knowledge.

Ignorance has rightly been placed in the fifth chakra, the fifth row of the game. Only where wisdom (gyana) is possible can ignorance exist. Ignorance accepts as the sole reality that which is only written on the page. So it is only when the player comes into the realm of knowledge and wisdom that ignorance can exist.