Maya and the tree

māya 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 

māya [illusion] 

are one and the same. 

But I do not 

really understand 

what māya is."

He often taught

by demonstration, 

so he said, 

"Tomorrow morning 

I will show you 

what māya is."

I could not sleep that night.

I thought, 

"Tomorrow morning 

I am going to meet māya."

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 māya 

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 māya."

<<

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!

<<

māya is not outside us and 

attacking us 

like a malevolent yakṣi. 

 

It is inherent 

to us, 

to our nature 

as hu-mans,

beings 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 

their illusoriness. 

 

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, outer reality, 

māya becomes ineffective and 

actively harmful (like a yakṣi!).

māya is simply 

the human tendency 

to hold onto things mentally 

while thinking that 

those things themselves 

are holding on to one. 

A little Sufi teaching 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.

In sum? Let go of illusory trees and rejoice - 

tena tyaktena bhuñjītha! [4]

 

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] From the Sahaj Marg prayer:  "... we are yet but slaves of wishes ..."

[4] īśavāsya upaniṣad 1.1

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.