Getting back to the meaning of maya, it's not that the world or the physical universe is the illusion. The illusion is all that you have been taught in the social conditioning process by the use of words and being taken in by it as if it's real. All of social reality or maya is based on words, but we get confused and forget that social reality isn't real reality. Words are symbols for things, not the things themselves. The word "chair" is a word. The word is not the chair. The real chair is what you may be sitting on as you read this and if you're still reading this, you deserve credit.

Using words to communicate is the basis for dividing up a united universe into classifications of things and into categories. In turn, we become convinced that everything is separate and apart from everything else. Everything we know and do is based on this assumption and other assumptions that are all wrong. All socialization, social conditioning, social conventions, roles, mores, egos, divisions and separations is learned propaganda that has been thrown at you all your life. It is maya, illusion.

When using words, one can speak only one word at a time. You might talk fast, but it still comes out a word at a time. However, reality involves many many things going on simultaneously and no one can talk about all of those things at the same time. Words cannot keep up with the pace of reality. Words distort and narrow down consciousness, awareness and perception of reality.

If two people are talking on the street, their attention is on each other and their conversation and they are ignoring or blocking out everything else. Another person might walk by, unnoticed. Each of the two people conversing saw the other person walk by in the corner of their eye and it registered in each one's brain. In a given day, your brain is taking in all kinds of information that you aren't paying any attention to, but it's all stored in the brain. The brain is like a super computer that way.

So, the brain is taking everything in, but your conscious attention is taking in very little, only what you're paying attention to. We are taught to make the mistake of thinking that narrow, conscious attention, perception and awareness is all of reality instead of just a tiny part of it. If a person has never seen or heard of television, someone could turn on the set and the new viewer might think that the first channel seen on the TV is all that there is on television. It's not until the person is told that there are many other stations to pick from that they get the full picture of what TV is and has to offer.

Our society is like a bunch of people who think that there is only one channel on television. Modern day America is messed up because it's based on the confusion of thinking that a tiny part of reality is all of reality. If someone comes out and strongly says that there's infinitely more than meets the eye and that with LSD you can find that out and appreciate what it means, then that person is right, but is likely to be looked at as someone who might belong in a mental institution.

If you are going to try LSD, it's important to understand all of this because when someone is tripping and gets frightened, it's because they don't understand what's happening to them, they aren't properly prepared and also because the people there at the time don't know what's going on either. If you are getting scared on your trip, it's because your ego, your social identity or role and your whole concept of reality that has been drilled into you, is dying.

If you don't understand what is happening, you will think that you are going to die and that is as terrifying as anything can get. However, you are not at all dying. What is dying is all the propaganda that you have been fed by others about yourself and reality. Your brain is being washed clean of all that nonsense and it is a super psychological, intellectual, spiritual, philosophical and metaphysical insight to realize that your ego is just a tiny part of your full identity and that your full identity never dies. Your body and memory die one day, but YOU never die.