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Correct me if I'm still hearing this wrong. Are you saying that the material world is an illusion, or that what we believe the material world to be as somehow separate from the divine is the illusion? Is the illusion our perception of this physical world, or is the illusion the material world itself, that the material world is not really real, that Brahman (Nirguna) alone is real?
That puzzles me. If Saguna Brahman is God manifesting, why would that be deemphasized and not instead embraced as a pathway to the Divine? Wouldn't that be like a child who craves his mother's love, but refuses her arms when she embraces him?
So there is nothing actually there? No formation of anything, even if how we perceive it can change, there is nothing there at all? There is no world of form? Form does not exist in any real sense of the word?
This sounds like something borrowed from the reductionist camp which tries to invalidate consciousness as anything real, that all of this, including love are "nothing more than electrical signals" or a bunch of chemicals.
Of course it's real to the dream state. It's a relative reality. That does not mean you didn't dream, that dreaming isn't real. Dreaming really happens, in really real reality. You really real dream. Dreaming is not an illusion. The content and experience of it however, is relative truth, as opposed to absolute truth.
You see, and this is that subtle dualism in play. Yes, once you are Awake, then you Live. And the world is Real, beyond the illusion. The world is Brahman. Brahman alone is real. Brahman is the world.
It was only ourselves denying it to ourselves. It's was ours all along, and it's never been otherwise. And that to me is what the actual "illusion" is all about!
So there is nothing actually there? No formation of anything, even if how we perceive it can change, there is nothing there at all? There is no world of form? Form does not exist in any real sense of the word?
Personally, I think this is taking valid principles about the illusory nature of reality, due to perception, and literalizing it to the point of an illusion itself. While there is a clear difference between the Absolute and the relative, the relative is pointing to something that is actually there. What the mind "thinks" or perceives it as, is in fact a relative reality. To believe that relative reality reflects the actuality with a degree a "certainty", that what we think it is, really is its truth, that is what is the illusion. Not that matter has no form or reality. To assume that, is a misapplication of that truth between the relative and the Absolute.
The Indian sage Shankara put it perfectly in this paradoxical statement:
The world is an illusion
Brahman alone is real
Brahman is the world
You can see the first two lines are what both you and I would agree with. But don't stop there. Add the the truth of the statement Brahman alone is real to the actual world we actually live in which actually exists. "Brahman is the world". In other words, if we remove, or transcend the illusion of the mind in its relative realities, then we see the world, which is really real, as it Truthfully is. Brahman, in form. Form really exists. It's Brahman.
To put that in more relatable terms; While I have a body, I am not my body; While I have thoughts, I am not my thoughts. However, to recognize these are an illusion of the mind, to assume because I have this body that means that is who I truly am, does not then therefore translates into meaning the body is not real. Of course it is. You wouldn't be thinking anything at all, if it were not. You couldn't form thoughts into anything to state in sentences about anything at all. Overcoming the illusion of the mind, which amounts really to a simple "misidentification", a category error of sorts, means we can overcome the limitations that that perception, or misperception as it were, places upon us.
This sounds like something borrowed from the reductionist camp which tries to invalidate consciousness as anything real, that all of this, including love are "nothing more than electrical signals" or a bunch of chemicals.
Reality is comprised of perceptions. All of it is perceptions. Perceptions themselves are a real thing. The content of them however, is relative. Relative, does not mean false, or unreal, or non-existent, or invalid. The elephant actually exists, while each blind man touching it and trying to understand its reality has a relative position about its Truth. Perception is the eyes and hands and ears and noses that sense their way out of that blindness to try to apprehend Truth beyond the limits of partial perspectives.
Of course it's real to the dream state. It's a relative reality. That does not mean you didn't dream, that dreaming isn't real. Dreaming really happens, in really real reality. You really real dream. Dreaming is not an illusion. The content and experience of it however, is relative truth, as opposed to absolute truth.
You see, and this is that subtle dualism in play. Yes, once you are Awake, then you Live. And the world is Real, beyond the illusion. The world is Brahman. Brahman alone is real. Brahman is the world.
As far as a "pathway", that is necessarily as we are finding ourselves moving into the Realization of the Divine. But I should clarify what I see is an illusion in the minds of many an aspirant on their path out of Maya (the illusion of the mind about the real world). They assume that Enlightenment is some "endpoint", that once you experience that Liberation, that's it! You're home! You've arrived! Everything is all bliss and joy endlessly! I think that's kind of an escapist mindset.
I had an Enlightenment experience when I was 18. I experienced Truth, Absolute, Full, Complete, Infinite in Love, Being, Awareness. There was no time. It was "outside" of time. All of what I thought was reality became evident to be an illusion of the separate mind, the world inside our heads. It was boundless Freedom, completeness and joy. Of course, then as it turns out, that was only the beginning of what became a decades long path to come Home to that Realization. I've known its Reality my whole life, but I have not lived within that as who I am in this body and mind. I've not been an "Enlightened" person in that sense of the word, despite having fully experienced and Realized Truth as it is.
The pathway is not to have the experience. That's the easy part. The pathway is to integrate it, to be transformed by it from within. And that is what the pathway is. Some have that experience much later on down the path they've been on, and when it happens it takes the work that was done all those many years and brings them together. In other cases, such as my own, it begins with that Realization, and then we begin the path to do all the work in order to be able to hold that experience again within the body, this very real body which is Brahman.
There's validity and truth and value to any of these paths to God, pluses and minuses. For myself, in a real sense it benefitted me by undeniably presenting the Truth right at the outset, before any path at all had begun, let alone even considered. But then the ensuing years of blindly feeling in the dark to find a path Home to that, frankly constitutes what mystics refer to as the Dark Night of the Soul.
To have tasted that Absolute Freedom, and then end up back in that tangled mess of a mind and body in this world, creates a certain constant tension between hope and despair. It's like that carrot at the end of the stick you have gotten to actually taste, but then spending the rest of your life, 40 years worth in my case, trying to "attain" again. The funny thing about that though is, that it's really just our own arm that's holding the Carrot out there, while all we need to do is "let go" of the stick and just pick it up and eat it.
Without the experience, or rather with the experience still yet ahead for someone on their chosen path, it would naturally be different. It's what I would say is the nature of "Faith", in the religious sense of the word. Not faith as a "belief" in some truth about this or that, but that Good, or God, or Truth, or the Absolute can be fore-tasted, sampled in glimpses here and there, moments of the Sun cracking through the clouds. It is "faith" that it exists and is real, that draws them towards the Carrot on that stick they too are holding an arm's length out ahead of them (which illusion sees a miles away). That's perfectly valid and real as well.
So which is better? Neither I guess. I think it's relative to the person in their relative, but real bodies and minds. It's the nature of Reality. The One is Real. And so is the Many.