mAyA

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[The following is a condensed excerpt from Sri K.A. Krishnaswamy Iyer's

treatment of mAyA in his book - vEdAnta or the Science of Reality, AdhyAtma

Prakasha Karyalaya, Holnarasipur, Karnataka, 1930 and 1965. The publication

is distinct in that it treats advaita in logical terms based on the three

states of waking, dream and sleep, without heavily invoking scriptural

authentication, yet staying within the Shankara's doctrine of Advaita

philosophy].

 

 

 

The phenomenal world (jagat) is the manifestation of the absolute Reality

limited by time and space and is essentially identical with Reality. Though

the jagat judging from its appearance is unreal, is however also a reality,

since it is not independent of Reality. Reality or Brahman has the power

without undergoing any modification, of taking an existentialism form -

jagat. This power and its effect is called mAyA. mAyA is thus inscrutable,

for it presents to the human mind Reality broken up into subject and object.

This division or breaking up is unreal. The human mind works only as an

organ of differentiation, it cannot disclose truth which is ever one and

undivided.

 

As much as we believe we exist in a real jagat, which is common to all, yet,

there is a vast difference in how we understand and function in this jagat.

How or why the jagat came to be what it is, what is to be its goal, we shall

never be able to explain, for the simple reason that the external view is

not the total view, that the waking state does not include the other states

of the jIva and that the intellect will confine us for ever, within the

limits of time and space. Hence no explanation offered from points of view

restricted to waking life can transcend it or include the great truth that

lies at the back of life, at the back of all phenomena. mAyA implies all

this and more. Every one who has endeavored to account for the empirical

world has been confronted by ignorance at every step, and has been obliged

to confess that human wit could go only so far and no farther.

 

vEdAnta treats all manifestations as mAyA or ignorance. Now, ignorance can

be removed by knowledge, but no amount of knowledge could remove

contradictions if they were real. Thus the doctrine of ignorance makes the

world intelligible by appealing to fact. Where in lies the inability to

derive the manifold from the one Reality, vEdAnta shows how the nature of

the problem makes the question illegitimate. That is the real value of the

theory of mAyA.

 

mAyA is a power associated with God (read Brahman) by which He creates or

manifests Himself as the phenomenal world. It cannot be a real power, in

which case, it has to be exercised over a world as real as God. That again

diminishes the glory of God, for He cannot be the creator of a world equally

real with Himself, unless with the help of materials co-eternal with

Himself. This would be to deny the supremacy of God and to reduce Him to the

rank of a multitude of things with equal claims to reality. This undesirable

conception makes one to admit that God created the world by a mere fiat

(will). In that case, the world - His creation - can pretend only to a

subordinate degree of reality. Thus God cannot have any relation to the

world created by Him, unless He is supposed to enter it and manifest Himself

as it. An individual soul has relation to the world for he lives in it. God,

as such, can have none. Consequently, mAyA is a power associated with God by

the human intellect, but not sharing His reality.

 

mAyA supports vEdAnta, in that Brahman is immutable, eternal, bliss and

consciousness, still manifests Himself as the world through mAyA. mAyA says

the world is none other than Reality under a disguise. That the Reality is

second-less can be logically proved, but how the Reality puts on the guise

of the world - with its perceivers, perceptions and percepts, actors and

action, enjoyers and enjoyments, joys and sorrows - cannot be explained by

reason, but must be accepted as mAyA. Its strength lies in the fact that it

tends to justify the notion that the world beset with countless ills is an

appearance passing for reality. Its weakness consists in its ability to

explain itself, which perhaps is really a virtue - mAyA should not be

self-explicable, it is not real.

 

The doctrine of mAyA, while explains the empirical life as mAyA, also

regards mAyA as the positive principle of creation. This is its defect. mAyA

is only an explanation of the duality given in our experience. In the

instance of rope-snake, correct knowledge removes the appearance of the

illusory snake. In the case of the dual world, on the contrary, knowledge of

its Brahmic nature will not cause the disappearance of the world in the

empirical sense. The snake is not of the empirical kind, but our

consciousness is. Hence when knowledge arises, the snake, illusory in

empirical life must disappear, where as both the world we perceive and the

knowledge that arises are of the empirical order, and it stands to reason

that such a knowledge cannot destroy such a world. The intuition of pure

consciousness, however, enables us to destroy the world from a

transcendental view which takes us beyond empirical. From this point of

view, there is not, there never was, there never will be a world existing as

second to the only Reality, the Pure Consciousness. With the disappearance

of the world, avidyA disappears too.

 

The term ONE applied to the Reality cannot have the same significance as in

an empirical life, where the one cannot be perceived without a manifold.

This confusion between the two ones has led to profound philosophical

errors. How to deduce the many from the One has always been an insoluble

problem. vEdAnta rightly looks upon the problem as due to an illusion.

vEdAnta contemplates life from a higher point of view and shows that the

Unity that all seek, and seek in vain, can only be realized through

intuition, in Pure Consciousness, altogether beyond the waking intellect.

 

Wherever there are name and form, know that mAyA is there. This is not a

fanciful theory or a mere dogma. It is a brief and concise expression of our

deepest experience. Science links up one empirical fact with another by

means of a concept or a law, which does not enable us to transcend the

sphere of phenomena, nor explain itself. Hence the truth of life is beyond

the reach of science. Ethics that gives us a general notion of right and

wrong cannot furnish an absolute standard of conduct or reveal the goal of

life or creation. Religion acquaints us with methods of worship and prayer

to God, who lives by our faith in Him, and whose presence otherwise is

neither missed nor desired as an indispensable element of life. The prayers

of the good are un-answered and the caprices of the wicked are gratified.

Knowledge is often prostituted to vile purposes to the promotion of vice and

to the persecution of virtue or innocence. Promising youths, the very hopes

of their families, die premature deaths, while the old without any means

live on till they are felt as a burden to themselves and the society. The

sweetness of love is often marred by disappointment or desertion. Dumb

nature with its stellar systems, oceans, mountains, rivers and forests is

indeed ever wrapped in ineffable beauty. But what are her charms to the

stricken heart or the bereaved soul? One human feeling outweighs in

importance, all the stars that spangle the sky. Practical life is a standing

enigma to science as well as to religion. What then is the solution of

life's mystery, this contrasting work of good and evil, of beauty and

perfidy? vEdAnta briefly replies, "mAyA".