On a micro scale, this is related to the restlessness of having to do something and the force of action, the kriyā śakti of a person. As in heaven, so on earth. Every force of īśvara, has its repercussions in the jīva.

Through vikṣepa śakti, the objects that are made of the material quality tamas, (related to the concealing force āvaraṇa-śakti) come into motion, and project a reality into or onto ātmā. This is called superposition (adhyāropa) and leads to falsely (adhyāsa) attributing validity to my body and mind and things in the world.

Haha, here it comes: Objects outside the body only appear when the senses and mind are active, and feelings and thoughts are only experienced when the mind is active. Since consciousness is not space, ‘everything is always and everywhere’, so infinitely present in potential. Therefore, mithyā has a relationship of substance to satya, not of quantity or anything like that, see mithyā. This means mithyā is satya, together they are sat only.

Because the sense instruments, organs, and the brain, and the mind are active, the object is taken for what it is not (ignorance, avidyā). By the laws of tuned karma of the jīvas, a coherent happening emanates from consciousness. But in principle, or better in potential, everything is possible at the same time. That is what Arjuna saw when Kṛṣṇa-īśvara showed Himself in His total unmanifested form viśvarūpa in chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gītā. Arjuna briefly received a divine eye there (divya cakṣu, this is not a third eye, because that means the cognitive wheel of knowledge, ajña cakra).

In life, the alignment of karma-appearance is sometimes spontaneously disturbed or expanded. Think of certain mental disorders such as psychosis or schizophrenia, spiritual epiphany, or paranormal abilities. This can also be consciously sought with drugs. Think of hallucinations and cosmic experiences when using Ayahuasca. These kinds of experiences are a tip of the veil of the possibilities, but nothing special. It all falls into the category of experience. The singularity and synchronicity of īśvara explains why consciousness is non-dual. It carries infinite possibilities for projection in its pure intelligence. In this way, it can effortlessly project a cosmos in or on itself in one go.

The funny thing is that physics also speaks in these kinds of terms. Examples: Big Bang singularity: ‘This is the moment at which the universe began from ‘a state of infinite density’ and temperature according to the theory of the Big Bang’.

Or gravitational singularity: ‘At the centre of a black hole there is a gravitational singularity, a point where the curvature of space-time ‘becomes infinite and the known laws of nature, such as those of the theory of relativity, collapse’.

I do not know if the dear reader has ever heard of Schrödinger’s cat. That confirms the role that the observer plays in determining an object. The physicist Schrödinger had the following, gruesome thought experiment. A cat in a closed box, in which a device has been installed to poison the cat. As long as the box remains closed, according to Schrödinger the cat can be dead and alive at the same time. Only when the lid of the box is removed, and there is an observer, is it determined whether the cat is dead (poisoned) or alive. He wanted to show the absurdity of the behaviour of quantum particles.

That particles really do behave like this is increasingly demonstrated in modern physics. What it all boils down to is that a particle does not necessarily have a specific location within quantum mechanics. This is explained as follows: As long as you do not observe where a particle is, there is only a probability distribution: you have a certain percentage chance that it is in location A, a certain percentage chance that it is in location B, and so on. In physics terms, it is in a superposition (!), a combination of multiple possible positions. If you then observe the particle, that superposition immediately changes into a single position.

If you extend that idea of the particle world to the world around us, you get Schrödinger's cat story. Vedānta extends the results of these sciences to reconcile the infinity of consciousness via māyā with our life. It states that perception manifests objects: dṛṣṭi (the seer) sṛṣṭi (creates). Sṛṣṭi is of course not a real creation, it is an apparent projection, caused by the apparent force vikṣepa.

The perception of an object therefore means that as soon as I start to experience or perceive something, there is so much obscuring force (āvaraṇa) present that what I have to deal with becomes a manageable chunk. Why? Well, in ignorance there seems to be an endless cyclical happening, called saṁsāra. The source of this power is previous karmic pressure of fears and cravings. The funny thing is that it is apparently set in motion. Jīvas, out of their ignorance, cherish desires for objects or fears of objects, which are also cyclically caused by previous concealment and projection. And so īśvara keeps facilitating them. The only way out of this is the knowledge that projection is appearance, not real creation, or evolution. Creation and evolution do not contradict each other either. They are both not really true, but if we call projection or appearance creation, then the creation of saṁsāra proceeds according to īśvara's biological laws of evolution, among other laws.

Vikṣepa śakti is the means (not the cause, the apparent cause of every apparent effect is consciousness) through which thoughts arise in the mind.

Vikṣepa-śakti is threefold:

• jñāna śakti – the power to know

• icchā śakti – the power to desire

• kriya śakti - the power to act

From consciousness-māyā (māyā cannot be separated from consciousness) all objects have their basis in knowledge (jñāna). When this power is reflected in the mind of an individual, it gives the power of knowledge. The power that I can know something about things in the world, but also the ability to understand the truth through knowledge, and thus the power to remove ignorance.

If I know something about an object, I can desire it (icchā śakti). This reflected icchā śakti can even give rise to a desire for freedom (mumukṣutva) and a desire for knowledge (jijñāsu). Anyone who wants to know what this life really is, will gradually discover that only knowledge can bring freedom, through a desire to understand these kinds of dynamics. Rajas, the guṇa 'behind or under' vikṣepa, is then used beneficially to sublimate my desire for worldly matters into a desire for truth and freedom.

This desire can lead to the activation of the capacity for action (kriya śakti). With this I enter into relationships in the world, and this dynamic keeps the mind of the individual extrovert. With all the psychological projecting tendencies that entails. This projection will over-actively focus on external concerns, desires, and emotions. Existential agitation is the result.

Vikṣepa thus manifests itself in the excitement, distraction, inattention, and disconnected thoughts that arise from the manifesting, scattering, and tossing activity of macro vikṣepa śakti. All sorts of things are superimposed on the mind, causing me to talk myself into all sorts of problems, while in fact I have 0% to do with the world.

Born from the rajas of māyā, vikṣepa is also one of the four hindrances to meditation – the others being: kaṣāya (latent emotional problems), laya (sleep, lethargy) and rasāsvāda (attachment to the nice feeling, the silence of meditation, which causes one to remain there).