The mind sees reality through the lens of māyā. That is, it sees things as fundamentally separate and differentiated because its primary function is to produce discursive thought-forms, or vikalpas. Vikalpas are mental constructs or interpretive filters that divide up the world into discrete chunks for analysis (e.g., “Dangerous to me or not?” “Source of food or not?” “Potential mate or not?”). This function of the mind was very useful and important in our evolution, but has led to a problematic situation in which our interpretive lenses are constantly interposed between awareness and the rest of reality, such that it’s very easy to mistake the lens for reality. To be more precise, we take the modified image that appears in the lens or filter as being accurate, when in fact it’s distorted to an unknown degree, until you learn how to remove the lens, at least temporarily. This is one definition of the ‘unawake’ state or dreamstate. We often translate vikalpa as differential thought-construct, which indicates two things: first, the fabricated nature of vikalpas, which after all are not reflections but interpretations of reality, and second, the fact that all vikalpas are based in perception of difference and articulated in terms of difference with the most basic difference being self versus other. By its very nature, the mind is a perceiver of differentiation, not unity. Pleasant versus unpleasant, good versus bad, the way things should be versus the way things are. That's no fault of the mind. Its function is to see difference, without which we couldn't survive. But to what extent has that function come to dominate? The price we have paid is the increasing loss of the ability to see the greater unity which subsumes all difference. The mind is, in its natural state, a useful tool, not a locus of selfhood. A servant, not a master. And certainly not the aspect of our being that has the last word on what is ultimately real, and ultimately significant.
