# Leela Square 2: Illusion (maya) Meaning

Square 2 in Leela is Illusion, maya in Sanskrit. It is the veiling power through which the One appears as many, and the spell of the game itself. Players reach it only by falling: the snake of Darkness on square 63 drops them here. It asks what in your situation might turn out to be an illusion.

## Meaning

For Harish Johari, maya is Maya Shakti, the power that veils unity and makes the world look divided and endlessly varied. It is also the fascination of play: the absorbing quality that makes a game feel real while it lasts. Maya is not a mistake to be blamed on the player. It is the medium in which the whole board exists.

Johari notes that two is the number of maya, because illusion begins the moment there is duality: self and other, mine and yours, like and dislike. Square 2 follows Genesis directly, as if to say that the first thing birth brings is a divided view.

Illusion sits in row 1, The Fundamentals of Being, linked with Muladhara, the root chakra, and the earth element. The link with the board's high end matters. The snake that lands here starts on square 63, Darkness, near the top of the board, so a player can travel almost all the way up and still be returned to the beginning of perception. The square teaches humility about certainty: what looks solid may be a pattern of the mind, and seeing it as such is already a step.

In practice, landing on Illusion is rarely dramatic in the moment; it shows itself afterwards, when a plan or a belief turns out to rest on less than it seemed. The square invites a slower look. Ask what you have been taking for granted, and what remains true once the colour and excitement fade.

## On the board

Square 2 is reached by a snake, not by an ordinary throw. The snake of Darkness on square 63 carries a player from the seventh row straight down to Illusion. Since the entering six lands on square 6, a forward count never stops on 2. Square 2 has no arrow or snake of its own: from here the player simply moves on through row 1, The Fundamentals of Being, by the next throws.

Gita 7.14 describes maya as woven from the gunas and hard to cross, yet seen through by whoever takes refuge in the Highest. The Maya Sabha, the hall of illusions in the Mahabharata, is its image: a palace where floors look like water and water looks like floor.

## Questions

- What in my situation might turn out to be an illusion?
- Which certainty of mine have I never tested against what is actually happening?
- Where am I taking a difference on the surface for a real separation?

**How do you land on square 2 in Leela?**
Only through the snake of Darkness. A player who lands on square 63, near the top of the board, slides down to square 2, Illusion. Because play starts on square 6 and moves forward, no normal throw ever stops on 2. Arriving here means a long fall, which many players read as an invitation to look again at what they took for real.

**What does maya mean in Leela?**
Maya is the power of illusion by which unity appears as multiplicity. In Leela it names square 2 and also describes the game as a whole: the board is a play of appearances. Johari ties it to the number two, the first duality. Seeing maya clearly is not rejecting the world but recognising how the mind builds its picture.

**Is falling to square 2 a bad sign?**
Leela does not judge or predict. A fall from 63 to 2 is part of the game's pattern, and the player keeps moving forward from here like anyone else. The square simply invites reflection: after a phase of darkness or heaviness, which assumptions have to be loosened before the next climb can begin?