Bhagavad Gita: Maya

Hard it is
To pierce that veil divine of various shows
Which hideth Me; yet they who worship Me
Pierce it and pass beyond.
Verse 14 Ch VII

Maya and Illusion
The word Maya is generally used to denote the divine veil. But the theory of Maya forms one of the pillars of the Gita. It means it has no absolute existence. It exists only in relation to my mind, to your mind and to the mind of everyone else. With every breath, every impulse of our heart asks us to be selfish. At the same time, there is some power beyond us which says that it is unselfishness alone which is good.

Then there is the tremendous fact of death. All our progress, our vanities, our reforms, our luxuries, our wealth, our knowledge, has that one end – death. Cities come and go, empires rise and fall, and planets break into pieces and crumble into dust. Thus it has been going on from time without beginning. Saints die and sinners die. They are all going to death, and yet this tenacious clinging on to life exists. Somehow, we do not know why, we cling to life; we cannot give it up. No wonder when a voice had asked Yudhishtir: ‘Of the entire world’s wonders, which is the most wonderful?’ the celebrated reply was: ‘that no man, though he sees others dying all around him, believes that he himself will die’. This is Maya.

Since the actual self, the soul, is indestructible, why have we built an entire civilization around the temporary material body? This is called ignorance. And because we have ignorantly constructed an entire world civilization, therefore no one is happy here. Everyone is in anxiety. The rich are in anxiety. The poor are in anxiety. The middle class is in anxiety. Everyone is bewildered because they are basing their happiness on the satisfaction of the perishable material body. This is Maya.

Animals live upon plants, men upon animals and worst of all, upon one another, the strong upon weak. This is going on everywhere. This is Maya.

We who are progressing know that the more we progress, the more avenues are opened to pain as well pleasure. And this is Maya which is everywhere. It is terrible. Yet, we have to work through it.

Those who devote themselves to God alone shall cross over their subjective delusion, which has created for man the objective worlds of sorrow and imperfections. With single-pointed mind, to contemplate upon the Self is the direct path; and in order to walk this narrow-way, the mind is to be made steady and concentrated, through Karma Yoga.

Maya as shown by Krishna
A legend tells how once Narada said to Krishna, “Lord show me Maya.” After a few days Krishna asked Narada to make a trip with him towards a desert. After walking several miles Krishna asked Narada to fetch some drinking water. Narada entered a nearby village and knocked at a door which was opened by an extremely beautiful young girl. At the sight of her Narada forgot everything and began talking with the girl. That talk ripened into love; he asked the girl’s father for the daughter; they were married, lived there and had three children. After twelve years his father-in-law died and Narada inherited his property. He lived, as he seemed to think, a very happy life with his wife and children, his fields and his cattle, and so forth.

Then came a flood. One night the river rose until it overflowed its banks and flooded the whole village. Houses fell, men and animals were swept away and drowned and every thing was floating in the rush of the stream. Narada had to escape. With one hand he held his wife, and with the other two of his children; another child was on his shoulders and he was trying to ford this tremendous flood. After some time the child on his shoulders fell and was swept away by the current of the water. In trying to save that child, Narada lost his grasp of the other children who were also lost. At last his wife was also torn away from his tight clasp and Narada was thrown on the bank, weeping and wailing in bitter lamentation.

Behind him came a gentle voice, “My child, where is the water? You went to fetch a pitcher of water for me, and I have been waiting for you; you have been gone for quite half-an-hour.” Half-an-hour!” Narada exclaimed. Twelve whole years had passed through his mind; but all these scenes had happened in half-an-hour. And this is Maya.

These days many intellectuals tell us, “Don’t bother your heads about such nonsense as religion and metaphysics. Live here; this is a very bad world indeed, but make the best of it.” This idea of practicality had appeared before Buddha too when he was meditating at Bodh Gaya. When the temptation came to him to give up his search after truth, to go back to the world and live the old life of fraud, he, the giant, conquered it and said, “Death is better than a vegetating ignorant life; it is better to die on the battlefield than to live a life of defeat.” When a man takes this stand, he is on the way to find the truth; he is on the way to God. Maya shows him he is bound but some inner voice tells him that he is free.

As soon as you know the voice and understand what it is the whole scene changes. The same world which was ghastly battlefield of Maya is now changed into something good and beautiful. We no longer curse nature, the idea of soul which is superior to nature also expands until we come to what we call monotheism, which holds that there is Maya (nature), and then there is some Being who is the ruler of this Maya. And that Being is in our own hearts.

Maya Pointed Out
This finite, mortal, ever-changing world that we see around us is born out of Maya alone. Due to the non-apprehension of Reality, man recognizes the world of objects, emotions and thoughts. Through the body, mind and intellect he contacts the world and creates more and more vasanas. These vasanas make one act more and more, and in the end, man becomes cocooned in them and gains permanently for himself the sense of a separate individuality. All these are created by avidya, non-apprehension of reality. The avidya of all individuals put together is called Maya. God is the cause of it and the world the effect.

Maya is also called a delusion, and a delusion can never be explained. You suffer on account of avidya. Adi Shankaracharya said that when avidya is removed, the jiva becomes one with the Atman, the pure consciousness. By realization of the pure, non-dual Brahman, Maya can be destroyed, just as the illusion of the snake is removed by the discriminative knowledge of the rope. Its gunas are Rajas, Tamas and Sattwa, distinguished by their respective functions.

Rajogun, Tamogun and Sattwagun
Rajogun creates agitations in the mind. Due to these mental agitations, objectively we act in the world and subjectively we experience desires, passions, lust and consequently, joys and sorrows. Our association with objects and beings creates more and more attachment. We see a possibility – until it becomes an agitation. Then desires and passions arise in the mind. To satisfy them, man has to act which gives rise to various attitudes in the mind. Thus the mind gains its experiences of joys and sorrows. Rajas is therefore cause of bondage in life.

Maya, in its Tamogun nature, acts in our personality as the ‘power of veiling’ by which Reality is veiled from our cognition, and things are observed as something other than they actually are. Ignorance, laziness, dullness, sleep, inadvertence, stupidity etc are the attributes of Tamas. One tied up with these cannot comprehend anything, but remains like one asleep.

So Maya plays in two ways – through her veiling power and through her projecting power.

When there is pure Sattwa, the intellect works steadily. There is no veiling and there are no agitations. The mind then becomes steady in utter meditation. It is face to face with divinity, with Reality. The characteristics of pure sattwa are cheerfulness, the experience of one’s own Self, supreme peace, contentment, bliss and constant devotion to the Supreme Self, by which the aspirant comes to enjoy everlasting bliss.

We might think that we can figure out how to get out of illusion on our own. But some one who is in illusion cannot know the way out of illusion. This is the nature of being in illusion. We can only be guided out of illusion by someone who is free from illusion.

Freedom from Maya
As we find ourselves moved to take up creative pursuits by our joy, pain, or passion, we discover that we are in possession of a deep reservoir of imagination we can draw upon when in need of inspiration. Simultaneously, we are empowered to make constructive use of our feelings regardless of the nature of the circumstances unfolding around us. You will cease to feel bound when you acknowledge that the path you tread is yours to determine.

This is amazing information because it uproots the threefold miseries of material existence. We suffer pains of the mind and the body. Then we face anxieties caused by other living beings. And there are also the miseries caused by natural influences such as the change of the seasons and natural disasters. All this suffering can immediately be mitigated by the simple understanding that I am not this body, that I am pure spirit soul in quality one with God.

You will realize that freedom is your nature, and this Maya never bound you. Then and then alone, will all difficulties vanish, then will all the perplexities of the heart be smoothed away, all crookedness made straight, then will vanish the delusion of manifoldness and nature, and Maya, instead of being a horrible, hopeless dream, as it is now, will become beautiful, and this earth, instead of being a prison-house, will become our playground; and even dangers and difficulties, even all sufferings, will become defied and show us their real nature, will show us that behind everything, as the substance of everything, He is standing, and that He is the one real Self.

There needs to be now a system in place all over the world to simply educate everyone to the understanding that we are all eternal spirit-souls, part and parcel of God. This will bring about peace and happiness in this world. We can only pray and do our bit to spread this knowledge throughout the entire world.