UNDERSTANDING MAYA

UNDERSTANDING MAYA 

As explained by Peter Bonnici ji, a distinguished disciple of swAmini AtmaprakAshAnanda ji>

First start with mAyA.

1. What is it? Is it ‘illusion’, ‘magic’, ‘the magician’, as often described? Our lineage of the tradition side-steps all these and describes mAyA as Brahman’s potential (or power/shakti) for manifestation, like the sun’s ‘potential’ for illumination or fire’s ‘potential’ to heat. Without its power to illumine the sun is not the sun. Without its power to heat fire would not be fire. Without Brahman’s potential for manifestation all our questions would be pointless as there would be no ‘I’ to ask and no ‘vastu’ to ask about.

2. For there to be manifestation there needs to be material and intelligence. Everything we see is amazingly put together, starting with the atom that moves from simplicity (one nucleus and one electron whizzing round it, Hydrogen) to the build up of protons, neutrons and electrons (till we reach Ununoctium with an atomic weight of 294). But here’s the intelligence: nature don’t just keep heaping on electrons till we reach bigger and bigger particles, instead electron whizz around in different orbits (called shells), increasing in radius and with very strict rules of what they can and cannot contain. The smallest shell can only contain two electrons. By adding one more electron, a different orbit shell is started – this second one can take up to 8 electrons. Add one more electron and a third orbit shell is created, capable of taking up to 18 electrons. And so on the shells keep getting larger and accommodating more electrons in them – 32, 50, 72 to complete our sequence. This much any schoolboy or girl would know from chemistry class. There is not a single atom in the entire cosmos with three atoms in its first shell! Why? Is there value in this law for how the intelligent universe is made up? Or is it totally random as some would contend?

3. The repository for all the countless laws to which the universe is subject is called mAyA. In addition to this power of total knowledge, mAyA is comprised of the power to change and the power of inertia. These three shakti of mAya are called jñAna shakti, krIya shakti and dravya shakti respectively. One more key aspect of these powers is that they are totally balanced, no one is stronger than the others. Totally balanced means they are undifferentiated. (An illustration of the concept of the variegated in a single undifferentiated state we have a seed which holds the potential for roots, branches, trunk, leaves, fruit, flowers, etc as well as the power of osmosis, photosynthesis, etc. Yet however powerful your microscope, you will not find even the hint of a leaf in a seed. Not only does the seed contain the ‘what’ of the tree which we can observe once the tree has emerged, but also the laws related to the ‘why’ which we can never really understand: Why this shade of green? Why this number of petals in the flower? Why this colour, this perfume? Why do the fruit have this taste and grow only to this size? Etc) The intelligence in the law and order of the cosmos is truly awesome! The law of everything from how the amoeba reproduces to how a rock expands and contracts in heat and cold, from geology to genetics, phoenetics to psychology, harmony to hereditary, all pre-exists in an unmanifest form. Being undifferentiated means they’re unmanifest.

4. Something that is not manifest is not known. The word for absence of knowledge is ‘ignorance’ in English, ‘avidyA’ in Sanskrit. This cosmic unmanifest knowledge – i.e. cosmic ignorance – is called mAyA. When the balance of mAyA shakti gets disturbed (due to universal prArabdha) the powers differentiate and combine in varying proportions as guNas to give us the jagat. Jagat is the name for mAyA manifest. Unmanifest jagat is called mAyA. So it’s inaccurate to look around and say: this is all mAyA. Why? Because all you can see is jagat and mAyA is unmanifest. In the state of mAyA nothing would be manifest, and thus nothing to point at and nothing to point with – no ‘pointer’ in fact. Just as darkness and light cannot co-exist, so too mAyA and jagat do not co-exist.

5. It must be clear at this point that mAyA is totally dependent for its existence on Brahman, as wave is totally dependent for its existence on water. Without water, there is no thing called wave; without Brahman, there is no thing called mAyA. Brahman is expressed through mAya modified as jagat; the expression of water – through the disturbed stillness of water – are waves, ripples, torrents, tsunamis, etc. With this caveat – namely that mAyA is incapable of independent anything – we can continue...

6. So mAyA manifest is jagat which comprises every single gross or subtle object, i.e. all things available for sense perception and those available for thought perception. The sum total of everything – things perceived through the senses (sthUla prapañca) and those perceivable by thought (sUkShma prapañca) – is the jagat. Their unmanifest causal form is mAyA.

7. The human being’s body, being available for sense perception is essentially no different from anything available for sense perception – just put together differently to function differently. But the atoms and elements that make up a human body are common building blocks that can be found throughout the universe. Similarly the subtle matter that makes up a human subtle body is identical to the subtle matter that makes up the cosmos (though, being subtle, this is less easy to verify). In fact the human being is that part of the jagat that we choose to identify with.

(To explain why the human manifestation is so special will take a bit more explanation and break the flow of this line of enquiry. Maybe another time.)

8. So too, the human being’s causal body is identical with the causal prapañca, mAyA. As we saw above, being unmanifest is being not available for perception, and is thus called avidyA which is translated as ‘not-knowing/ignorance/nescience’. So the term avidyA is retained in order to distinguish the human causal body from the universal causal body termed mAyA – just as the term ‘AtmA’ is used to distinguish the individual Self from ‘Brahman’, the term to designate the universal/cosmic Self.

9. Brahman (satyam-jñAnam-anantam) + mAyA = jagat

this is the universal equivalent of

Atman (sat-cit-Ananda) + avidyA = body-mind complex.

(Why not use the term ‘jiva’ instead of ‘body-mind complex’? Because jiva has a precise meaning of ‘Atman identified with the body’.)

10. Thus we identify ‘avidyA’ (not-knowing/ignorance/nescience) as that unmanifest aspect of the individual kAraAa sharIram that moves into manifestation as the body-mind complex.