Joseph Campbell on Māyā, an Ever-Rippling Pond

“Māyā is the world of that rippling pond we spoke of, the fractured, sparkling image of reality that is no reality but only its broken surface…. It is when the inner light—the ultimate light that is no light, that is—Brahman-ātman—comes into manifestation that this māyā veil is passed. I once saw a kitten that found itself reflected in a mirror… and thought it was another…. It went at it and at it—and then, suddenly, it got past the mirror and there was no other animal there…. It had lost its object; it didn’t even think of itself really as a subject. And I thought, Well, good gosh, this is an image of māyā exactly.” (Campbell, Myths of Light, pp. 48-49).