Does Maya Really Exist?
Questioner: Acharya Ji, a good discussion happened yesterday in which many seekers participated and shared their understanding of Prakṛiti , Puruṣha and other things.
During the discussion, it was put that Prakṛiti , Puruṣha , Māyā , are mere concepts and that one is pure Ātman , never threatened and never disturbed. So, the question that remains is, are anger and violence also mere concepts of the mind? Is ego, too, merely a concept of the mind?
Acharya Prashant: The son is lazy, Tāmasik and he's sleeping in the closed room even when the sun is overhead. He has become accustomed to the boundaries and his laziness does not let him get up and move out. So, the father comes in. The father says, “Outside, son, there is a divine metaphysical mango. You would have never seen anything like it.
Let alone having tasted something like it. And that mango gives a joy that cannot be described and has a colour that cannot be seen, a fragrance that is beyond experience.”
That is the only way remaining for the father to somehow make the son, the lazy, clumsy son, move out of the boundaries. It is the only way left available to make him somehow quit the bed — a great flowery tempting description. So, the son gets up, goes out for a while, comes back and says, “I have eaten the mango and it is indeed juicy and divinely tasting”. The son says so and crashes on the bed again. Now, he's not only asleep, he is the divine eater of the blessed and rare mango who is asleep.
The little child is agitated, right? There is a little child who is agitated and being agitated, he won't go to sleep. Now, the mother comes in this time. And the mother puts the restless child in her lap and starts singing to him a sweet lullaby that talks of great fairies and demons and lands beautiful and far and away and events such as never happened. And she's singing of all these in a great song. And having sung the song for an hour, she still finds the child agitated and now he is even more agitated. The mother is befuddled and she asks, “What's the matter son?” He says, “I'm preparing to go to those divine lands, for now, I see that I really belong there. I am the clean, blemishless resident of the transcendental heaven”.
Will we ever gain some sense? Will we ever be honest enough to look at our lives? Our lives are nothing but a sorry tale of someone who has always been disturbed, displaced, vacillating and suffering. And that has continuously been happening. Not for a moment has one been restful. Even if one has found a little peace, it has only been relative to one’s otherwise deeply restive state. When disturbance drops a little, we celebrate it as stillness, peace and calmness. But we take not one moment in quickly proclaiming that ‘I am the untouched seer, I am the absolute self’.
To the lazy one, a great description beyond imagination was made so that he may come out of the room. The father wanted to rid the son of his current state of inertia, lethargy, and dumb torpor. To bring him out of his dumbness, the father says, “Come out son, there is a divine mango outside”. But look at the son’s prowess, he goes out, eats the mango, comes back and says, “Now I am the eater of the divine mango”, and goes off to sleep again.
Will we ever look at how we are living?
But then on closer inspection, it is no surprise either. It requires great intelligence to admit one’s madness. The mad one is usually going to be the last one to admit that he is mad. The mad one is much more likely to say, ‘I am the divine, blissful *Ātman*’.
Spirituality is not the art of mugging up stuff from here and there. It is, first of all, a deep cry to not remain as one currently is or has become. One says, Māyā is just a concept, ego is just a concept. I do not know whether they are a concept, what I know is that your face is the face of Māyā . Maybe you too are a concept. Maybe Ravi, Ramesh, Suresh, all are just concepts.
What is Māyā ? Your unmitigated suffering is Māyā . Do you want to deny that you live in total anarchy, disorder, chaos, psychological disbalance? That is Māyā .
There is no proof of anything except one’s own inner honesty. If you come and make a loud claim that you are contend, never disturbed, never threatened, fine. Your claim will be accepted.
If you come and say that you need not be cautious of Prakṛiti , Avidyā , Māyā , because you are the great Sākṣhī — beyond any disturbance, beyond any temptation, beyond any threat, beyond greed and fear — then wonderful, nothing like it. You have already arrived. Only you know where. There would be nobody to dispute your claims, but why do you want to deceive yourself? Why do you want to live in Ātmaprapañchana , gross self-deception?
You say, “Things are just happening, there is no dance of Prakṛiti and there is no way the Puruṣha is being distracted or disturbed.” Is that coming from your life? Is that how you are living? You know what Prakṛiti is? All that is gross and subtle is Prakṛiti . All that you can think of or experience or speak of is Prakṛiti . Does that not stir you up? Does that not cast its bewildering shadow upon you? You are in a spell, bewitched, and yet you are talking as if you are untouched, uncorrupted.
No, we do not know what is the relation between Prakṛiti and Puruṣha . Keep that aside, totally aside, you tell me, what is the relation between you and money? What is the relation between you and sex?
What is the relation between you and greed? What is the relation between you and food? What is the relation between you and knowledge? You and ignorance? That would be a more useful answer, neither right nor wrong, just useful. Useful because it is coming straight from your life, from your honesty.
And if you will see that the markets indeed do tempt and distract you, that disease and old age and young age are indeed meaningful to you, that you do not like being scolded or that you are pleased when you are praised, and that there is a word called insult or humiliation in your vocabulary, that things hurt you, then you will know whether or not the Prakṛiti disturbs the Puruṣha .
Come from your life and answer honestly. And as long as you are the one who gets hurt and tempted and disappointed and elated and happy and sad and calls himself sometimes healthy and sometimes diseased, you better admit that that which has been defined as Prakṛiti is indeed a great force upon you.
And that is the reason why Saints, Seers and teachers through the ages have advised great caution. They have said, “So not take her as feeble, do not take her as ever defeated, and most of all, never ever think of her as imaginary.” Her very name is Māyā : that which is not, but surely appears to be. And it is not to the Buddha alone that she appears to be, most of all, she appears as real to us, the commoners.
This and that you take as very meaningful to you, what else is the import of the truism is that the peace of the Puruṣha is constantly under threat by Prakṛiti .
And yes, Māyā is concept, Prakṛiti is a concept.
There is no doubt about it, but then apply a little more intelligence and see that you too are a concept. Take your name and tell me, what is that? Is that not a concept? You will say, ‘No, I'm a fact because I can touch myself, experience myself’. If you are a fact, then when you are running towards the market, or towards glory or towards sexual gratification, then the fact that is you, is called Māyā . Now, Māyā too is a fact.
If you say that, ‘I’, let’s say your name is Ramesh, that ‘I Ramesh, am not a concept, I am a fact’, then this same Ramesh is also the proof of Māyā . Ramesh running blindly towards the market is proof of Māyā . The face of Ramesh, when he has been blinded by the promise of gratification is the face of Māyā . Now tell me is Māyā a living fact or not? The face of a woman when she knows nothing but attachment to her physical child is the face of Prakṛiti . Now tell me is Prakṛiti merely a concept or is the woman's face the face of Prakṛiti ?
These are surely pointers, but they point to something very, very definite and so that in language, they might be represented, they have been put across as words. If you want to say that Māyā and Prakṛiti are concepts, then tell me which word is not a concept? Because word in itself never is a living thing or is it? You say a camera, is a camera not a concept? You say grass, is grass not a concept? Is grass green? ‘G’ ‘R’ ‘A’ ‘S’ ‘S’ is ‘G’ R’ ‘A’ ‘S’ ‘S’ green? No, but nevertheless ‘G’ ‘R’ ‘A’ ‘S’ ‘S’ is a pointer towards something that is indeed there, not only there, but there to be experienced, lived and quite green.
Sorrow too is a concept. So what? Aren't you living in sorrow? And your sorrow is itself the proof of the stupidity of the argument that all this is just a concept. The day you are able to call your sorrow just a concept, then you would have earned the right to talk. But no, when sorrow is there, then you get swept away by it. Do you ever say that sorrow does not exist? No. But see how boldly you are asserting Māyā is no real thing. It's just a play of words, Māyā is just a play of words, but sorrow and suffering and humiliation and greed and arousal, those you would not call as play of words. You live in them, don't you?
Somebody shows you a big cheque, you start running after him. Somebody humiliates you a little, you show the middle finger to him. Now you do not say that all these things are just unreal. Why am I reacting to them? It is a great subconscious ploy to call Māyā unreal so that you can continue wallowing in Māyā .
When one is totally consumed by her, then one starts denying her very existence. Because denying her existence would then be a big responsibility, the responsibility would be to then break free of her. Why put in so much effort? Take a dirty shortcut. Just say, “Māyā does not exist.” It's a dirty shortcut, indeed.
Don't try that and never ever must you call yourself as the untouched, unblemished, eternal, infinite Ātman because you are not that. A hundred times I have repeated to you. You are the one greatly identified with Prakṛti . You are the one greatly identified with your body, your clothes, your conditioning, your girlfriend, your society, your profession. Aren't you that one? How then do you muster the ignorance to call yourselves as the Ātman or the Sākṣhī ? Really, are you Sākṣhī ?
The Sākṣhī to you is the mango. The fathers, the great fathers talked of the mango to you so that you may leave your bed and your sordid sleep and come out of your enclosure and breathe in the open skies. The mango is not there to be eaten, it is not there at all. The Ātman has no existence and that is why it is called to be beyond existence. But the son is indeed wonderful. He eats the mango, the mango has been eaten and digested and he is back to his sombre sleep.
There are just too many eaters of the mango, all of them claim that the mango was very juicy, supple and sweet, yellow, brighter than bright, and who are we? The ones who laid our hands on that Mango. That mango is a metaphor. That mango is a trope.
If you say Ātman does not exist, Māyā exists, you are just accurate and that is what you should say. No Ātman exists, only Māyā exists because that is your honest description of your condition. No Ātman exists for you, only Māyā , only Māyā ! But indeed, and instead, you turn around the whole thing and say, ‘No, only the Ātman exists, and I am the Ātman and Māyā , she's nearly a concept’.
You are living Māyā , you are eating Māyā , you are running Māyā , you are breathing Māyā , you are seeing Māyā , you are thinking Māyā , you are nothing but Māyā personified and you are saying it is a concept, and then you are saying, ‘What is the proof of Māyā ?’ You are the proof of Māyā . Look at your face in the mirror. That face is the proof of Māyā .
You call your face as your face, right? The face that stares back at you, you are quick to label that as ‘My face,’ that is the proof that Prakṛiti has ensnared you, trapped you. That face is just material and you are identified with that material. Why do you call that face as your face? The very naming of you as Ramesh or Suresh is proof enough that Māyā is now all over the Puruṣha , that Prakṛiti has totally ensnared the Puruṣha . Otherwise, why would you call that face as ‘My face’? Because Ātman has no face! Why do you call that face as your face? Ātman has no face. Sākṣī has no face but you want to live in stories. Stories about the divine far-off lands, and the charismatic mangoes. The fathers are totally bewildered, the mango trick has returned to haunt them. In fact, they are now confused. They are wondering whether it is probable that such a mango really exists. The deeply assured ones have been put into doubt by the son, by the adventurous and dumb and assertive son.
There are so many roaming around who talk of Māyā as if she is something distant. And there are so many roaming around who talk of Ātman as if it is something intimate. I repeat, to you Māyā is intimate and Ātman is just a concept because Ātman that really is, cannot be talked of, the moment you talk of Ātman you have reduced it to a concept. So, if there is something that is a concept, you better not call yourself as the Truth or Brahm or Ātman or the pure Self. The moment you talk of Ātman , you're talking has reduced Ātman to a concept, but Māyā , you can surely talk of because it is always Māyā that is doing the talking.
Māyā is real. Māyā is what you are living as and living in. Kindly do not deny her existence; the proof of her existence is your confusion, your sorrow, your conflicts. Come on and claim that you are not experiencing any conflicts. Come on and claim that you don't have nightmares, that you are not addicted to this or that, that is Māyā . Your addictions are Māyā , your obsessions are Māyā . When we walk, she walks. She walks and says, ‘I am not’. And it's a great fad!
People come and say that they want to experience Sākṣhītva . People come and say that they want to achieve the Ātman .
Now this son, the sleeping enthusiast, at another hour, is found crawling on the ground. He's found crawling on the ground. Now, the father again, in his compassion comes to him. The mango trick has failed, but the father is indefatigable and redoubtable, both. The father's compassion is unending. So he comes to this crawling son, and says, “Son, there, up in the skies is a great sky lotus”. What is there up in the skies? A great sky lotus! “And if you can have it, then you will have everlasting bliss.”
The father says that so that the son may just get up and stop crawling. The father says that so that the son may at least stretch his limbs. There is neither any sky lotus nor any possibility of the attainment of sky lotus. But when you talk of the sky lotus, then that temptation will make the son stand up on his two legs and jump a little. He would not only leave his pitiable crawling state but also get a little exercise, because he will try to jump and touch the sky lotus.
That is why the scriptures are full of mentions of two things: Your despicable crawling state — the fact of our lives. They would talk of all kinds of sufferings and Tritāpa . And the second thing that the scriptures talk of is the great Ātman , the sky lotus. These are the two things that the scriptures would talk of. They would say, Ātman is the only liberator from suffering. Sky lotus is the only liberator from the crawling state.
The intention is not that you attain the sky lotus, the intention is that you get up and start walking on the earth like a man, not like a reptile, not like a crawler or a rodent. But instead, the son gets up, takes one lazy leap and says, “Here the sky lotus is in my hands and now I'm again lying down to crawl.” Please understand, your crawling is real, and that is Māyā .
You are always in her control and arrest and the sky lotuses that you keep talking of — enlightenment, liberation, Puruṣa , Ātman — are beyond reach but they are useful tricks. They are useful tricks! They will help you reach there.
Now the question arises, is Ātman then not existent? No, even not so. Even that is not right to say.
Why? Because the sky lotus cannot be attained, True, but equally True is that without the sky lotus, you won't have risen up. The absolute cannot be attained but without the blessings of the absolute, how did relative progress happen? Even your relative progress is proof enough that the absolute does exist. That does not mean that one day you will be able to rise up to the absolute and capture it. The proof of the absolute is your relative progress.
Now, I leave it to your subtle intelligence to appreciate whether the Ātman exists or not. The way you and I exist, the way this chair exists, the way these rain droplets falling upon us now exist, Ātman does not exist.
Ātman and Māyā are different dimensions, very different dimensions. And I say that Māyā exists and Ātman does not, in your context, because you do not exist in any dimension other than the dimension of Māyā . In your dimension, there is no Ātman . In your dimension, there is only Māyā and that Māyā , is making you claim that Māyā does not exist and you are Ātman . Look at the Māyāvi game.
Be a little humble and be a little honest. Live in the constant acknowledgement that one is being fooled, and fooled again, by Prakṛiti , by body, by mind, by this apparent universe. Yes, when you admit that you are being fooled again, then you will have to admit that because the Ātman cannot be fooled, so, you are not the Ātman . The moment you admit that you are constantly being fooled, you will also have to admit that you are not living as the Ātman because the Ātman never can be fooled.
Yes, but the power and fearlessness and honesty behind this acknowledgement comes from a source beyond you. That source beyond you has no direct proof. And that source beyond you is called Ātman .
Does Ātman exist? Depends on you. If you can live in humility and honesty, Ātman exists for you, and if you live in denial and deception and arrogance and self-defence, then Ātman does not exist for you and Māyā exists for you. It all depends on your location, your situation, your life, so, you decide!
A question has come forth. I'll read the question aloud and then you decide who has sent the question, is it springing forth from the great and subtle and silent centre called Ātman , or is it coming from Māyā ? I'll read the question: “Won't life be lifeless if we realize Māyā ? What would be left to achieve then? What anyone knows about Ātman one can’t even talk of?” Meaning that Ātman is anyway not useful. “Why not do one’s duty, eat and relax? Why not live peacefully with Māyā ?”
The question has to be turned back upon the questioner, otherwise, there can be no solution. I can give an answer but that won't solve the situation. You are saying, “Why not live peacefully with Māyā ?” Māyā , by definition, is your lack of peace.
But, first of all, you have to be loving and sensitive enough towards yourself and honest enough to acknowledge that you are living in a great lack of peace. And if you have still not come to the point where you can acknowledge that life is hell, then spirituality has not begun for you and you do not need any spiritual sessions. Spirituality is only for those who have, first of all, realized that they are stuck and are saying that they are now fed up. They want to break away and break out and then spirituality begins. If you are someone who is saying, I want to live peacefully with Māyā , please go ahead. Please go ahead!
It's like saying, “Why can't I live peacefully with a self-imposed headache?” It’s like saying, “Why can’t I peacefully torture myself? Go ahead! If that is your definition of peace and if that is something you think is possible, do go ahead.
“Why not do one’s duty, eat and relax?” You aren't doing your duty. You are doing *Māyā*’s duty. You are her servant. What do you mean by your duty? Who told you your duty? Were you born with that duty? How do you know your duty? How do you know your duty? How do you know what you are really responsible for? Who told you that?
But you will not care to inquire within the self and ask, “How did I come to accept these duties as my duties? How did it happen that I started identifying with these roles and responsibilities? You will not inquire into that. Instead, you are saying, “Let me do my duty.” You have been tutored to take these actions as your duty.
Krishna teaches Arjun. He says, “Leave all your duties and come straight to me.” That is the very basis of surrender, that is the very basis of wisdom and that is where liberation begins — when one is prepared to leave the duties.
सर्वधर्मान्परित्यज्य मामेकं शरणं व्रज । sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śharaṇaṁ vraja
Leave all your duties and responsibilities because they are fake and false. And here you are saying, “Why not do one's duty, eat and relax?” because you won't be able to really relax along with these so-called duties.
Relaxation is not possible unless and until you have moved into Krishna, shunning all these duties. You are demanding the impossible, you are asking, “How can I live peacefully with Māyā ?”. You are saying, “Let me do my duty and relax”, unless you are doing Krishna’s duty, relaxation won't happen. Unless you have seen and done away with Māyā , peace won't come. But you are asking for the impossible.
Then, you are saying, “Won't it be lifeless if we realize Māyā ? What will we achieve then?” Who told you that you must achieve this or that? Who indoctrinated you into believing that life is a sheer waste without achievement? And even if something is to be achieved, how do you know what is the right object to be achieved? Who sets your targets? But you don't want to inquire into that because that would be painful, and that would demand from you courage and conviction and rebellion. So, you want to take an easy way out. That's what I call as a dirty shortcut. You want to deny the very fact that you are trapped. You want to decorate your prison. You are saying, “In the prison, let me eat, make merry and relax”. It's a very, very dirty trick against yourself. Don't try it, please!
Now, there is an accompanying question, a rejoinder of sorts. It says, “I am stuck. Parents keep insisting about doing one's duty, parents keep telling me to get settled, etc.” Getting married is what they harp upon. Parents, right? Parents or Krishna? And are parents Krishna?
They want you to get married, do get married and you too would become a parent very soon. Now, you are so full of respect for parents, be equally full of respect for yourself and tell your kid, the newborn one, that you are an able substitute for Krishna.
Would you listen to the wise ones? To the compassionate ones? To the Buddhas and Krishnas and Kabirs? And Ashtavakras? Or would you listen to your parents?
Look at their lives and ask them, “Do you want me to lead the same kind of life as you did?” And if they really love you, they will say, “Daughter, we are letting you go, fly free”. And as I end this question, it has started raining quite heavily. So, I think we'll have to wrap up. Good old Prakṛiti again, bye!
