Maya – The Grand Illusion

Maya – The Grand Illusion

If you go an elderly person ask what is life? They will just say that life is just a farce, they will say that things happen and we can control few and most of the other things are out of our control. We just ride the wave of what is happening to us with little or no control.

Though we feel that we have control on what we are doing or deciding, this control is conditioned by our surrounding, the way we are brought up and the habits/tendencies that we have acquired. It is these factors which have very high influence on our life which takes away our freedom and act based on the limitations that we are put into.

So these limitations that we are put into is nothing but Maya, to be precise the joy, sorrow, money, planets, talk, thought are all considered as Maya in Advaita Vedanta. To put in simple terms anything that can felt, seen, felt, understood or perceived is Maya. All that is physical is Maya.

Now this point creates lot of disturbance to people who are engaged in this world thoroughly and have difficult time agree with this point.

So why the yogi’s of the past and present say that the world and all the apparent things around is Maya, in fact Krishna say’s that world appears out of his Yoga Maya, or it arises from his yogic powers. This gives us a hint now that Maya is the power of the Brahman. This power arises out of Brahman and goes back into it. Meaning the apparent world arises out of Nirguna Brahman and goes back into the same, so one thing that remains always is Brahman and what comes and goes as a world is just nothing but a wave in the ocean of Brahman.

Now let us dwell more into this, the point here is that there is an underlying string which is the cause of all and this underlying factor gives rise to all that is. Now when there is something which is the source for the apparent world then how can the world be true existence? Its existence is completely dependent on Brahman. So now point becomes clear that world is a manifestation of Brahman.

Now people will come up with an argument that, the world is a manifestation of the God and hence there is God and from the God this world has come into being this existence and hence this existence is true as it is a manifestation from the Lord.

But Advaita goes even further to say that the world does not exist at all this world is just an appearance in the consciousness of the Brahman. This is where things get tricky. How and why do they say that this world does not exist at all?

It’s like this when a man dresses up like a women , the perceiving eye gets confused and misidentifies man to a women. Now we know that he is a man but his outer covering and dressing is making him to look like a woman but reality he is not. So man in this case is the absolute truth and looking like women is the Maya. The Man here has transformed himself to a women even though this has deceived others. Does it change the fact that he is man? No absolutely not.

Similarly the consciousness projects itself upon itself this world and assumes itself as this limited world, but this is wrong as it’s true nature is the absolute (Brahman) and the world is the projection in its consciousness. So for example if a person imagines himself to have four hands and now if he gets confused between reality and imagination and considers himself to have four hands. Does it change the fact that he has four hands? Absolutely not, so it is his mental projection (A mental image viewed as reality) which is giving raise such delusion.

This way it is quite clear that the apparent world and us are nothing but the projections in the Consciousness. It’s like we are in a child’s game where one day he build a castle and the next movement breaks it apart, similarly we are born in this projection (appear in the consciousness) and die in the same, but in reality there is no birth or death as everything is one reality i.e. Brahman. We have just put on this dress of body and discard it which is of no relevance to us as there is just Brahman.