The Cosmic Mystery - 4. Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday, March 24, 2022. 06:00.

The Cosmic Mystery -4

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It is asked: How can Maya have a beginningless appearance if it stands eternally cancelled in Brahman? We see that the snake seen in a rope stands eternally cancelled, for a rope never becomes a snake nor is a snake ever transformed into a rope. Yet the perception of a snake in the rope becomes possible, as testified by common experience, and there is no beginning for the possibility of such an appearance. Suresvara describes Maya as Sarva-nyaya virodhini, the contradiction of every type of reasoning or logic.

The absolute cannot become what it is not; if it does not there is no world. But there is one seen. It must not be, therefore, different from the Absolute. This, again, means that there is no world but only the Absolute. But we do not see the Absolute; we see only the world!

The doctrine of Maya is not a theory of reality, but a symbolic representation of a phenomenon to be transcended, like an 'x' in a mathematical equation. When we take a symbol for truth, difficulties are bound to arise, for we assume here the reality of what was declared in the beginning itself to be something meant to be abandoned latter on, as a means of explanation and not anything real. And it is not true that the useful should always be real, ultimately. Maya is not a truth eternal but the baffling mystery of the descent of the One into the many. Maya cannot be known, for the one who aspires to know it is the Jiva whose very fibre is soaked in Maya. And the knowledge of Maya would mean a transcendence of individuality. Darkness cannot be seen with the help of a light.

The critics of the doctrine of Maya commit the initial error of taking it for granted that Maya is something real, and then complain that the introduction of this principle in an explanation of the world in relation to Brahman brings about a duality between the two. It should be reiterated that Maya does not mean any existence or being that would limit the infinitude of Brahman but denotes the inscrutable character of Brahman, by which a multifarious world becomes somehow possible in its unattached plenitude. The sages declare that Brahman alone is real, that the world is not different from Brahman in essence and that Brahman is verily the Atman. Other than this knowledge there is no way of overcoming the influence which Maya seems to have over us. Knowledge is the means to Moksha – in fact, it is Moksha, liberation.

It is objected that even if an appearance is not ultimately real in the sense of Brahman, it cannot but create a duality, for even appearance is, as long as it is experienced. In as much as appearances are facts felt and known, they have to be accredited with a certain amount of reality. And it will be clear that in the perception of a snake in a rope, the snake that is observed is real to its observer, and the rope-snake is not absolutely non-existent. It is experienced, and so has some amount of reality. But does this snake that is perceived cause any duality in the real? The supposed duality would be the one that might subsist between the snake that is seen and the rope which is its substratum. But we all know that what kind of duality there exists between this percept and its substratum. There is no duality at all, for there is only the rope. Even granting a kind of reality to the appearance of the snake, we find no duality that divides the snake from the rope. The being of the snake is at once the being of the rope. The world is a superimposition on Brahman, and the reality of the world is Brahman itself. Thus the principle of Maya does not introduce any duality between the world and Brahman. If the world were absolutely real, a real creation or manifestation of Brahman, it would have been impossible for anyone to escape from limitation, pain and death. That freedom eternal is somehow possible shows that bondage is in the end, unreal, and the changing universe has no reality of its own. This is why it is said that the universe is relative; it cannot contradict The Absolute, which alone is, and can be.

End.

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