Plan 44. Ignorance (avidya)
A player who enters the field of ignorance forgets about the illusory nature of being and becomes attached to certain emotional states or sensory perceptions. The energy of the player, stung by the snake of ignorance, descends to the level of the first chakra and the plane of sensuality. Loss of understanding of the nature of maya (illusion) leads to clouding of his intellect and leads to identification with certain states.
Vidya means "knowledge, knowledge", and is a negation prefix. Lack of knowledge is ignorance. Knowledge is the understanding by the player of his role in the game, wherever he is at the moment. The concept of avidya refers to the level of the mind; outside the mental sphere, no ignorance exists. Our perception of reality is only a reflection of our own personality. Nothing exists outside of the mind, but this does not mean that there is nothing else besides the player and his mind. The world of names and forms also exists, but how the player perceives this world depends on the state of his mind, which, in turn, is determined by his position on the playing board.
For some this world is a place of pleasure, for others it is hell. Each mind perceives the surrounding world in its own way, considering some objects more and others less important, in accordance with the accumulated karma of the player. Real knowledge implies an understanding of reality, free from value judgments and attachment to objects of sense perception, which are constantly changing, transient and therefore unreal.
Only if the player manages to constantly follow his own sound, the sound of his "I", his being, only then he will not become a victim of his mind. The mind is a tiger living in the forest of desire, surrounded by a reality full of prey. Only by following his inner sound, the player can avoid falling into the clutches of the tiger and avoid falling back to the sensual plane. Otherwise, he will have to start all over again in order to finally rise up with the arrow of right knowledge. The field of ignorance is rightfully located at the level of the fifth chakra, in the fifth row of the playing board. Here is the field of wisdom (jnana), and only here can its opposite, ignorance, be found. In ignorance, the player tends to regard as the only reality what is written on a blank page of jnana (see commentary on field 37, "jnana"). Thus, only with the ascent to the level where real knowledge and wisdom are possible, does ignorance become possible.