Maya and Illusion

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Thus we find that Maya is not a theory for the explanation of the

world; it is simply a statement of facts as they exist, that the very

basis of our being is contradiction, that wherever there is good,

there must also be evil, and wherever there is evil, there must be

some good, wherever there is life, death must follow as its shadow,

and everyone who smiles will have to weep, and vice versa. Nor can

this state of things be remedied. We may verily imagine that there

will be a place where there will be only good and no evil, where we

shall only smile and never weep. This is impossible in the nature of

things; for the conditions will remain the same. Wherever there is

the power of producing a smile in us, there lurks the power of

producing tears. Wherever there is the power of producing happiness,

there lurks somewhere the power of making us miserable.

 

Thus the Vedanta philosophy is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It

voices both these views and takes things as they are. It admits that

this world is a mixture of good and evil, happiness and misery, and

that to increase the one, one must of necessity increase the other.

There will never be a perfectly good or bad world, because the very

idea is a contradiction in terms. The great secret revealed by this

analysis is that good and bad are not two cut-and-dried, separate

existences. There is not one thing in this world of ours which you

can label as good and good alone, and there is not one thing in the

universe which you can label as bad and bad alone. The very same

phenomenon which is appearing to be good now, may appear to be bad

tomorrow. The same thing which is producing misery in one, may

produce happiness in another. The fire that burns the child, may cook

a good meal for a starving man. The same nerves that carry the

sensations of misery carry also the sensations of happiness. The only

way to stop evil, therefore, is to stop good also; there is no other

way. To stop death, we shall have to stop life also. Life without

death and happiness without misery are contradictions, and neither

can be found alone, because each of them is but a different

manifestation of the same thing. What I thought to be good yesterday,

I do not think to be good now. When I look back upon my life and see

what were my ideals at different times, I find this to be so. At one

time my ideal was to drive a strong pair of horses; at another time I

thought, if I could make a certain kind of sweetmeat, I should be

perfectly happy; later I imagined that I should be entirely satisfied

if I had a wife and children and plenty of money. Today I laugh at

all these ideals as mere childish nonsense.

 

- Swami Vivekananda

 

.... to be continued