If we could trace where a desire arises from – and the Upanishads do, repeatedly – we would find that in most cases something – a thought, an external event – has stirred up some wisp of the vague sense of incompleteness we harbor beneath the floor of surface consciousness as long as we are not identified with our Self. We immediately misinterpret this stirring as a desire for something outside us. This is maya: misinterpreting the longing for union within as a call from something outside the Self.
