Swami Vivekananda

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MAYA AND FREEDOM

Posted by: " bhakta_dhruva "

 

MAYA AND FREEDOM

 

In one form or another, we are all in it. It is a most difficult and intricate

state of things to understand. It has been preached in every country, taught

everywhere, but only believed in by a few, because until we get the experiences

ourselves we cannot believe in it. What does it show? Something very terrible.

For it is all futile. Time, the avenger of everything, comes, and nothing is

left. He swallows up the saint and the sinner, the king and the peasant, the

beautiful and the ugly; he leaves nothing. Everything is rushing towards that

one goal destruction. Our knowledge, our arts, our sciences, everything is

rushing towards it. None can stem the tide, none can hold it back for a minute.

We may try to forget it, in the same way that persons in a plague-striker city

try to create oblivion by drinking, dancing, and other vain attempts, and so

becoming paralysed. So we are trying to forget, trying to create oblivion by all

sorts of sense-pleasures. And this is Maya.

 

Two ways have been proposed. One method, which everyone knows, is very common,

and that is: " It may be very true, but do not think of it. 'Make hay while the

sun shines,' as the proverb says. It is all true, it is a fact, but do not mind

it. Seize the few pleasures you can, do what little you can, do not look at tile

dark side of the picture, but always towards the hopeful, the positive side. "

There is some truth in this, but there is also a danger. The truth is that it is

a good motive power. Hope and a positive ideal are very good motive powers for

our lives, but there is a certain danger in them. The danger lies in our giving

up the struggle in despair. Such is the case with those who preach, " Take the

world as it is, sit down as calmly and comfortably as you can and be contented

with all these miseries. When you receive blows, say they are not blows but

flowers; and when you are driven about like slaves, say that you are free. Day

and night tell lies to others and to your own souls, because that is the only

way to live happily. " This is what is called practical wisdom, and never was it

more prevalent in the world than in this nineteenth century; because never were

harder blows hit than at the present time, never was competition keener, never

were men so cruel to their fellow-men as now; and, therefore, must this

consolation be offered. It is put forward in the strongest way at the present

time; but it fails, as it always must fail. We cannot hide a carrion with roses;

it is impossible. It would not avail long; for soon the roses would fade, and

the carrion would be worse than ever before. So with our lives. We may try to

cover our old and festering sores with cloth of gold, but there comes a day when

the cloth of gold is removed, and the sore in all its ugliness is revealed.

 

Is there no hope then? True it is that we are all slaves of Maya, born in Maya,

and live in Maya. Is there then no way out, no hope? That we are all miserable,

that this world is really a prison, that even our so-called trailing beauty is

but a prison-house, and that even our intellects and minds are prison-houses,

have been known for ages upon ages. There has never been a man, there has never

been a human soul, who has not felt this sometime or other, however he may talk.

And the old people feel it most, because in them is the accumulated experience

of a whole life, because they cannot be easily cheated by the lies of nature. Is

there no way out? We find that with all this, with this terrible fact before

us, in the midst of sorrow and suffering, even in this world where life and

death are synonymous, even here, there is a still small voice that is ringing

through all ages, through every country, and in every heart: " This My Maya is

divine, made up of qualities, and very difficult to cross. Yet those that come

unto Me, cross the river of life. " " Come unto Me all ye that labour and are

heavy laden and I will give you rest. " This is the voice that is leading us

forward. Man has heard it, and is hearing it all through the ages. This voice

comes to men when everything seems to be lost and hope has fled, when man's

dependence on his own strength has been crushed down and everything seems to

melt away between his fingers, and life is a hopeless ruin. Then he hears it.

This is called religion.

 

-Swami Vivekananda (From Jnana-Yoga Complete Works Vol.2)