Illusions of the Age
A clear-eyed look at the cultural mirages shaping modern life—consumerism, anti-intellectualism, celebrity worship, and more. Explore essays that expose the collective delusions of our time.
Every civilization builds its own dream and then forgets that it’s dreaming. Our age is no different. Its stage is the global marketplace; its script, the pursuit of validation. Politics, celebrity, ideology, and progress all play their parts, but the plot remains unchanged: the Self hidden behind the masks of desire and fear. Illusions of the Age looks behind those masks. These essays are not about villains or victims, but about the unseen current of maya that moves through every headline and human drama—how ignorance dresses itself as conviction, and how the eternal hides in plain sight.
To see through illusion is not cynicism; it is compassion. For only when the mirage is known as mirage can the desert be seen as infinite.
American-isms: The Many Masks of Maya
America’s decline is not just political or economic—it is spiritual. A host of –isms have seduced the nation: consumerism, nationalism, narcissism, exceptionalism, and more. Each promised freedom, but delivered illusion. Vedanta reveals them for what they are: masks of maya, binding us to appearances while hiding the truth.
The Puppet Kings: How Maya Rules the Rulers
They may sit on thrones and command armies, but they are not free. Trump, Putin, the billionaires and manipulators of the modern world — these are not sovereign beings, but puppets of maya. Caught in illusion, driven by compulsion, they are ruled by what they cannot see. This essay explores the deeper truth behind worldly power, contrasting the false sovereignty of rulers with the quiet clarity of the liberated.
The Golden Cage: Celebrity and the Cruelest Illusion
Celebrity promises freedom but delivers captivity. The golden cage of fame dazzles the world, yet suffocates those inside it. The door stands open, but few ever walk through, because society itself demands that the illusion remain intact. In the end, the cage is not only theirs—it is ours.
The Parable of the Shaken Jar: A Puranic allegory on conflict, illusion, and the unshaken Self
When the jar is shaken, the ants turn on one another, forgetting that the true cause lies unseen. So too in human society, maya stirs the gunas, and we mistake neighbor for enemy. Vedanta reminds us to look deeper: not at who we fight, but at who is never shaken.
A meditative reflection on the burning house as a metaphor for our world—where joy and destruction coexist, and wisdom means seeing both without being consumed.
The World and Its Eight Billion Stories
We like to think we share one reality. In truth, there are eight billion private worlds, each framed by beliefs, fears, and desires. This collective patchwork feels like consensus but is only maya’s theater — fragile illusions mistaken for truth. Vedanta calls us back to the question: Who is the “I” at the center of the story?
Do Not Mistake Smoke for Sky - An Imagined Interview with Shankaracharya on the Fall of a Nation
An imagined interview with Shankara on a once-powerful nation in decline. His timeless Vedantic insights reveal why societies collapse and why the Self remains untouched.
Misguided Hunger and the Search for Wholeness
A portrait of a civilization starving for love but mistaking validation for truth. From the tyrant’s need to be adored to the crowd’s longing for belonging, Misguided Hunger and the Search for Wholeness reveals how the world’s power struggles are born from the same unmet spiritual need — and how only inner stillness can end the cycle.
A seeker watches America unravel and turns to a teacher for understanding. Their dialogue explores the forces of maya, karma, and the gunas that drive society’s confusion—and how dharma quietly restores itself through clarity, not conflict.
Humanity dreams of escaping to Mars, but the real crisis isn’t environmental—it’s spiritual. Escape to the Red Planet argues that no frontier can save us from the unconscious mind that created our problems on Earth.
The Wealthy and Their Avidya: The Egos That Inherited the Earth
We tend to idolize the wealthy, imagining that their power or success reflects inner mastery. Vedanta sees something very different: an amplified version of the same avidya that conditions all of humanity. This essay examines how wealth magnifies egoic tendencies, obscures self-knowledge, and ultimately becomes a sophisticated form of bondage.
Why No One Is Coming to Save Us
We often imagine that a wiser, more advanced species might someday arrive to rescue humanity from its confusion. But this belief rests on the false assumption that intelligence naturally leads to wisdom. A reflective essay on why no advanced species is coming to save humanity—and why wisdom remains one of the rarest phenomena in the universe.