Maya, Fully Explained
Questioner: Acharya Ji, the concept of Maya, or the idea that the whole universe is an illusion, is at the core of Advait Vedant . However, Maya as a concept is unfathomable to many of us. So, how can your book help the general audience, who do not having deep knowledge of Vedant understand this concept? And are there any learnings in this book, specifically, for students like us?
Acharya Prashant: Namaste everyone. See, you said Maya is a concept that states that the universe is an illusion. The concept, actually, is that there is nothing called ‘the’ universe. This universe that you and I perceive is a purely subjective entity. The subjectivity exists at two levels: at the level of meaning, and at the level of the fact.
Take for example, a building that you perceive. This building can be taken as symbolizing the universe. The universe consists of objects. Let the building represent them. Now, nobody looks at a building without assigning a meaning to the building, and the meanings that we assign to anything we see, or experience, or think of, or imagine are purely subjective. There is nothing absolute about them, and that much is obviously very simple to see.
Then comes the more austere part. Even the fact that the building is, is actually subjective. The three-dimensional shape that the building appears as - the height, the width, the entire spatial geometry - all that is a function of the way your brain is configured to look at things. So, it is not as if the building exists objectively or absolutely by itself, independent of the perceiving subject. Not at all. If your own personal configuration changes, the building will no more remain the same.
Even among the different subjects that perceive the same object, we find a great difference in perception. There are sentient beings that are able to hear particular wavelengths that you and I just cannot experience - let’s say, beyond 20,000 Hertz. For us, there would be nothing to perceive, whereas for them there would exist a reality and that reality, they would call as objective; that is ego; to think of one’s own perceptions and projections as absolute, that is ego.
So, when you look at a building, first of all, you attribute a meaning. Nobody looks at a building without assigning a meaning. Someone is looking at a building out of jealousy, somebody out of curiosity, somebody wants to study the building, somebody wants to steal the building, somebody wants to own the building, somebody wants to rent the building, somebody has just some memories associated with the building, and somebody might be just scared of building.
So, there is that meaning part, and that meaning, obviously, is purely subjective. Because there is such a heavy component of subjectivity - in fact, because there is 100% of subjectivity – therefore, Acharya Shankar said that the world is not how you perceive it to be. Mithya does not mean nonexistent. When he said Jagat is Mithya he didn’t mean that the world or the universe does not exist at all. What he meant was, it does not exist in the way you think it does.
Then what is the reality of the universe? That he called Brahm . And Brahm , you cannot think of. It is truly unfathomable. Therefore, the solution lies in just negating the subjective part. And that subjectivity, we said, is ego. Maya is another name for that. So, the more you get rid of Maya, the more you dissolve, and the more what remains is the absolute. You can call that as the Aatman or Brahm or Truth. It is an absence of the personal self, the subjective experiencer.
So, there is not much complication in the concept of Maya because we all know that things are not as they appear to be. And the proof of that are our daily frustrations. Have things in your life or my life turned out as they promised to be? Why do we often feel deceived then? Why do we get setbacks? Why do we then say “Oh, I misinterpreted?” The thing is, it’s only sometimes that we admit that we misinterpreted. Misinterpretation is happening all the time because the interpreter itself is illusory. The interpreter is called the ego. ‘I’ am the interpreter, ‘I’ am the ego. And because I am interpreting, so I am bound to misinterpret. This is Maya. So, Maya really does not principally, or primarily, have to do with the world as such.
Before we set out to inquire or negate the external world, it is more important to investigate why we are in illusion with respect to the external world. It is because Maya resides within. The experiencer himself is subject to greed, desire, fear, and many other such tendencies due to which his entire perception is skewed, biased, and distorted. He sees things where none exist, and that which exists, he definitely fails to see - this is Maya.
Maya is said to have two aspects: Aavaran and Vikshep . The first one is about your failure to see the reality, and the latter is about seeing, projecting, and imagining stuff that does not really exist. It should be obvious by now that this Maya which resides within, fundamentally, is at the root of all human misery. If you do not see a pothole where it exists, you will receive a rude jolt. At the same time, if you are driving down a highway and you suddenly start imagining that a deer has leaped in front of your car, then again you will receive a huge jolt. You might actually slam the brakes so hard that you might just hit your head against the windscreen. You don’t require an object outside the car to hit you. You will hit the car from inside and suffer. That’s how we usually suffer - hurting and hitting ourselves from the inside when actually there is nothing outside to hurt us. That’s Maya.
But I would rather hear from you, what you think about it, and converse.
Questioner: Thank you Acharya Ji for clarifying about Maya and ego. I recently read a quote from you that read, “The madman is the last to admit that he’s a mad person.” I think the quote resonates with what we are speaking about ego, and I think that a mad person is very close to his ego, which is why he is not admitting that he is mad. So, my question is in two levels: First, I want to understand how as a human being, how we can remove the biases or prejudices that we have, and become less mad, and less of an ego? Second, how do we deal with people who are very prejudiced, and who do not change their perception easily?
Acharya Prashant: The answer to the second part is contained in the first part. In the second part you asked, how do we deal with people who are prejudiced, biased, and pretty stubborn about their perceptions or opinions. If you can deal with yourself first, you will know how to deal with all such people, because every single person, including the questioner and this speaker, is bound to be biased and prejudiced. So, if we can know how to figure out our own biases and prejudices, it’ll become very easy to spot the same thing in others, and help them out of those.
You see, we have a stake in living in fancies and imaginations, and that stake offers us comforts. That’s the reason most people prefer imaginations over reality. We are born deluded. The newborn has no faculty for clear perception; yet the newborn is taken care of in several ways, and the newborn has Prakritik - I mean, physical nature or biology -systems in place to help her navigate through the initial months and years; and that works. Without any deep understanding of consciousness, kids of all species manage to live through their initial years in a healthy way. That tendency continues.
In animals, the continuation of the tendency is not a problem because their consciousness anyway has no urge towards Liberation. But in human beings, there does exist that urge. But if you have to be liberated off your tendencies - the same tendencies that are referred to as internal bondages, the same internal bondages that result in several external bondages - then you have to pay the price for it.
Paying price is a tough choice. Most people do not want to make that choice. So, you asked me, how to do it? I said, “Choose to do it.” The answer is so simple. The answer is frustratingly simple. How to drop your biases? Choose to drop your biases, because it’s not that you do not know you are biased. I’ll tell you why it is impossible to not know you're biased. ** start from here**
Life has no regard for your opinions or fancies. If you live in imaginations, you will keep struggling and hitting against events, and you will stumble and fall so many times in so many places. So, life has an inbuilt mechanism to communicate to you that you are not living in facts, let alone the Truth.
So, we know. We are being delivered the message again and again. The diagnosis of our condition is not a secret. It is being displayed to us almost daily. Even when external situations do not display that, our internal climate is ample proof. If one were living rightly, why would one be so scared? Why would one be jealous, or insecure, or temperamental? There would be no need. So, all these things clearly tell you that you are not living in a real world. You are living in your head.
But then, as I said, one has to make efforts to break out of the jail and one has to pay the price. The thing with our biological conditioning is that we are luxury-loving people. Inertia applies not only to insentient objects, but much more to human beings. If you have been living in a certain way and you’re used to it, then you grow a thousand inner arguments against challenging the status quo.
So we don’t want to pay the price, that’s all. Ignorance is actually nothing. Let nobody say that he or she is not making the right choices in life because she does not know. We all know. We prefer to suppress the inner knowledge. It’s an inner conspiracy against ourselves just because we want to continue enjoying certain privileges in life; certain physical privileges, material privileges, or monetary privileges.
And if you want to just test whether people are living in ignorance or self-deception, there is a simple test. Go and declare something to them that takes them towards the Truth; declare loudly. Had they just been ignorant, they would have at least shown curiosity, if not welcome (22:04). But you will find that the moment you show the mirror to people, the moment you want to bring the Truth to people, they actually, actively, balk away. They might even feel offended. What does that tell? They know very well in advance that they were living in the false. They knew. That’s the reason why the moment the Truth was shown, they became scared and defensive.
Ignorance is just an ugly ploy against oneself. Nobody is really ignorant. We just don’t choose to live rightly, to know the Truth, or to drop our biases. We have a stake there. Little, petty benefits we keep getting. And those petty benefits are enough to keep making us side with the false.
Questioner: You said that whatever universe we perceive is our subjective experience, and the only absolute truth is the Aatman or the Truth. And this is at the core of Advait Vedant. However, if you look at other devotional practices where they worship a particular deity, essentially they’re considering the deity to be higher than themselves - be it in Bhakti Marg or other traditions. So, does that mean they are worshipping themselves when they are worshipping God?
Acharya Prashant: That’s obvious. As an intelligent young man, it must be obvious to you. You go to sleep, can you still conceptualize a deity? You cannot. So, the deity is obviously a product of the waking state of your consciousness. The deity is a product of your thinking mind.
The moment your state changes, the moment your thought changes, all those fancy stories about God and so many other things - they just vanish.
But Truth, or Aatma , or Brahm , they are not concepts. They are not products of imagination; they are not products of mind at all. Therefore, their very definition is that they are inaccessible to the mind. So, whatever happens to the mind, the Truth remains. But if the mind changes, then contents in the mind will no longer remain.
You have to ask yourself whether your God is beyond the mind or within the mind. If your so-called God is within the mind, then your God is obviously smaller than the mind. Your God is then just a slave to the mind. A thing cannot be bigger than the vessel it is contained in. If God is contained in your mind, how can it be bigger than the mind?
Brahm or Truth are not really the contents of mind. Therefore, they are not amenable to a lot of discussion. One approaches them only via the negativa; you negate what is false and then, slowly, the Truth shines.
