What is the mother of illusion?

Ah—Maya! Maya! thou mother of illusion, when shall we learn to rise above thy spell!

Those who play in the clay are besmeared by it and can see nothing finer and higher than its sticky substance. The scales of matter serve to blind the eyes of man so that he sees the real, as the unreal—

The higher in the scale of existence the soul rises, the more real are its experiences—

The nearer it approaches matter in its descent of the scale, the more unreal are its experiences.

—Yogi Ramacharaka