Maya and the tree

Maya is a complicated concept.

But there is a graphic and direct analogy from the Indian oral tradition that drives home the concept practically.

First, a lovely story. [1]

>>

One day I said to my master,

"Sir, I have been taught that 

avidya [ignorance] and 

maya [illusion] 

are one and the same. 

But I do not 

really understand 

what maya is."

He often taught

by demonstration, 

so he said, 

"Tomorrow morning 

I will show you 

what maya is."

I could not sleep that night.

I thought, 

"Tomorrow morning 

I am going to meet maya."

The next day we went 

for our morning ablutions as usual. 

Then we met again afterwards. 

We bathed in the Ganges.

Afterwards I did not feel like 

I could sit for meditation 

because I was so excited 

by the prospect of 

the mystery of maya 

being unveiled.

On our way back to the cave 

we came upon 

a tree with a big, dry trunk.

My master rushed up 

to the tree and 

wrapped himself around it.

I had never seen him 

run so fast before.

He called out, 

"Are you my disciple? 

Then help me!"

I said, 

"Huh? You have helped 

so many people, and 

today you need my help? 

What has happened to you?"

I was afraid of that tree.

I wouldn’t go near it 

because I feared 

it would trap me 

as well.

I thought, 

"If the tree traps me also, 

then who will help us both?"

He cried, 

"Help me! 

Take hold of my foot and 

try your best to pull me away."

I tried with all my might, but 

I could not separate him 

from the tree.

Then he said, 

"My body has been caught 

by this tree trunk."

I exhausted myself 

trying to pull him 

from the tree.

Finally I stopped to think and 

I said to him, 

"How is this possible?

The tree trunk 

has no power

to hold you. 

What are you doing?"

He laughed and said, 

"This is maya."

<<

Next, more pithily, from one of Babuji's letters: [2]

>>

We are not in a prison cell.

Instead, 

the human state 

is such that 

people themselves 

are holding onto 

a tree and 

shouting that 

the tree 

is not letting go 

of them!

<<

Maya is not outside us and attacking us like a malevolent yakshi. 

 

It is inherent to us, to our nature as hu-mans who do mananam, who think, conjecture, and imagine. 

 

The human brain can be fooled by, still consider as real, optical illusions even after it understands them as such. 

 

The world is uncertain and incompletely understood. Many, perhaps most, decisions are made without a full understanding or appreciation of the situation. When filling in the gaps becomes incoherent and inconsistent with objective reality, 

Maya becomes ineffective and wrong.

Maya is simply the human tendency to hold onto things mentally while thinking that those things are holding onto him. 

A little Sufi story expresses this precisely:

 

A rabbit escapes into her burrow from a fox. 

A safe distance inside, she turns around and asks, 

"Why do you constantly chase me?"

Replied the fox,  "Why are you so appetizing?"

 

Of course, hunger is more basic than obsessive liking and the fox may well starve if he doesn't catch the rabbit. 

 

For human beings, though, being "yet but slaves of wishes" [3] over and above meeting their basic needs make them go obsessively after the objects of their wishes or desires.

 

NOTES

 

[1]  Swami Rama. 1978.  Living with the Himalayan Masters, pp. 61-62. Ch: Maya the Cosmic Veil.

[2]  Ram Chandra (Babuji). 2025. Complete Works of Ram Chandra (Babuji) Vol. 7, p.91, Ch: Practical Wisdom.

[3] The Sahaj Marg prayer:  "... we are yet but slaves of wishes ..."

Wavicles and Bit-lets

Imagine you are made up of an incredibly large number of tiny, tiny particles.

Further imagine that each of those particles are actually not tiny spheres, but tiny wavicles, field-lets --little fields-- of energy.

Boggle your imagination even further and imagine that each wavicle, each field-let, is actually made up of teeny-tiny bit-lets of consciousness.

A few more boggles and your imagination can flop down gasping and panting :-)

The tiny wavicles are part of a universe of energy, a oneness of energy, but ranging from near-zero magnitude in empty space to  your daily living energy flows to raging infernos of tsunami-size waves inside billions of blazing stars.

Imagine consciousness bit-lets to be exactly like the energy wavicles - part of one single undivided universe, one wholeness, but immensely dense in many places or in many beings and near-zero in others.

The consciousness in or of your body and mind compared to beings of immense awareness, of immensely dense consciousness, is like the energy in your body versus the inferno in a living star.

Imagine consciousness bit-lets, now wavicles, become, manifest as, energy wavicles. 

Difficult? Impossible?

No more difficult or impossible to imagine than to understand that your body is made up of subatomic particles, in turn made up of energy wavicles. 

Congealed energy wavicles make up subatomic particles. 

Congealed consciousness wavicles make up energy wavicles.

Natural and man-made evolution

It is very easy to accept many seemingly contradictory historical facts or claims if a simple idea is understood - there is a continuous eternal natural flow which includes living and evolving.

On top of that natural flow is an artificial or man-made flow of living and evolving. 

Most man-made elements are less energy efficient, where not actively wasteful of energy, and more emotionally stressful and so detrimental for natural evolution. That flow also drastically and short-sightedly prioritises humans at the expense of Nature evolving as a whole. [1]

Evolution is defined as greater optimality and generality and simplicity, by any measure, of a system. Here, Nature herself is a system.

Consider also that purity = directness.

Thus, one's silent inner meditation or attention with eyes closed 

is more simple and general and directly beneficial than 

other religious or spiritual practices such as

audible prayer in groups in a specific, usually little-understood, language with open eyes and 

expensive rituals conducted by other(s).

This silent inner meditation or focus is the highest level of practice in all religions. 

All, bar none.

Intermediaries of any religion who claim otherwise do so only to exert control over the adherents.

This self-directed silent inner attention is where Heartfulness/Sahaj Marg starts and ends. This is why it is simple, pure, and light.

With one's own inner focus or attention comes understanding of, and cessation of, those parts of one's man-made flow that are out of sync with the natural flow. Those parts neither extend nor support the natural flow, and in fact, they actively disrupt that flow where they do not reverse it.

All religions and spiritual paths only strive to return to the natural flow of living and evolving. But they have varying degrees of success in teasing out only those in-sync man-made elements and applying them simply, directly, lightly. [2, 3]

In particular, they have failed to understand, accept, or welcome an even simpler idea and rule - each and every one of their adherents, bar none, must evolve naturally through natural+in-sync living if natural evolution is to occur! 

This natural and effective evolution can occur only if each one lets go of out-of-sync elements through their daily, nay, moment-by-moment, living.

Natural evolution + in-sync man-made evolutionary activities - simple in practice, but ridiculously complicated in theory. 

Learning is natural and simple - babies are the best learners! At the other end of intellectual maturity are the self-realised, again with little ego. They also learn incessantly and daily.

Societal, cultural, and school education is complex - the vast majority of students fail to remember what they are forced to memorise in school.

Experience, facts, and memory are simple. Putting facts into, and taking them out of, a man-made conceptual framework is complex and partially, where not totally, wrong. And, of course, partially right.

Humans are mentally flailing around uselessly and counterproductively most of the time. That leads inevitably to physical activities out of sync with natural evolution.

"Let go and rejoice", says the Isha Upanishad. Nature herself will take care of your evolution!

But then, which son listens to his mother?! Especially a silent, and seemingly ever-forgiving, Mother Nature?

In sum, regain the natural living flow first. Then, carefully, cheerfully, and respectfully, infuse your own man-made flow - light, simple, direct - into it.

NOTES

[1] Extending the prioritisation further leads to a specific group or groups of humans evolving at the expense of other humans. And finally, only if others do not evolve.

[2] The Sufis claim, e.g., that each person's practice must be prescribed by a Sufi according to the contexts of time, place, and people.

[3]  J. Krishnamurti states that each person's life must be a unique and unprescribed flow through individual understanding and acting. This, his "Truth is a pathless land."

Brahman and Atman made simple

TL;DR: Brahman outside the body == Atman inside the body.

Everything manifests from Brahman or Bhuma, and unmanifests, dissolves back into it.

Everything is real or existent.

But, the time duration of existence and non-existence of things varies.

Thus, a planet, say Earth, exists longer than a mosquito on Earth.

Non-existence precedes an individual existence and

non-existence again follows that existence. [0]

 

Space is an ill-defined and ill-definable substance or field.

Per science, space is unaffected [1] by matter - that which occupies space.

Unaffected by or unchanged by both the existence and non-existence of matter.

Matter is similarly unaffected by space.

Brahman is like space with respect to manifestation.

It is not affected by  its own manifestations.

It stays the same every-where and every-when because

space and time themselves manifest from Brahman.

And since it is the ultimate cause by definition, it is itself uncaused. [2] 

The space-matter relationship is bidirectional, i.e., space to matter and

matter to space relations.

But, neither is a cause-effect relation.

Matter does not do anything to or affect space in any way. [3]

Neither does space do anything to matter.

Consider:

1. Brahman or Bhuma is the subtlest or finest cause.

2. The gross or dense body (schoola shareera) is 

a gross or dense effect.

3. Brahman that is encapsulated or infused into, or 

Brahman that has manifested

grosser/denser bodies either 

directly - causal body or kaaraNa shareera, or 

indirectly - subtle body or sookSHma shareera,

is now termed aatma or jeeva-aatma.

Is the manifested or encapsulated (in-carne-ated, emln-fleshed) Brahman,

the jeeva, the effect, different from the cause?

Yes.

But is there any transfer in the opposite direction?

No.

NOTES

[0] Something unaffected by time, that exists independent of time, may be called eternal -

existing for every given value of time in the past, present, or future.

There may also be something existing from some particular time onwards, but

never becoming non-existent thereafter.

E.g., an extremely subtle idea or concept.

Its converse may also occur - something may have existed from the beginning of time,

but stops existing.

[1] At normal human-perceivable dimensions - neither cosmically huge nor

subatomically small, quantum.

[2] Or, trying to posit a cause leads logically to infinite regression:

Brahman manifests from Brahman Zero - B0.

B0 manifests from B-1.

B-1 manifests from B-2.

And so on.

What is the difference between Brahman and B0? 

Or B0 and B-1?

Nothing intrinsic. 

There is only a supposed or assumed cause-effect relation. 

So this infinite regression is without any benefit by way of greater simplicity or abstraction.

[3] Again, in dimensions as in [1]. Gravitational waves and

the uncertainty principle work at exponentially different scales.