Do Not Worry About Maya

Sri Annamalai Swami

Q: I am always thinking and believing that there is only the Self but somehow there is still a feeling that I want or need something more.

AS: Who is it that wants? If you can find the answer to that question there will be no one to want anything.

Q: Children are born without egos. As they begin to grow up, how do their egos arise and cover the Self?

AS: A young child may appear to have no ego but its ego and all the latent vasanas that go with it are there in seed form. As the child's body grows bigger, the ego also grows bigger. The ego is produced by the power of maya (illusion), which is one of the saktis (powers) of the Self.

Q: How does maya operate? How does it originate? Since nothing exists except the Self, how does the Self manage to conceal its own nature from itself?

AS: The Self, which is infinite power and the source of all power is indivisible. Yet within this indivisible Self there are five saktis or powers, with varying functions, which operate simultaneously. The five saktis are creation, preservation, destruction, veiling (which is the maya sakti) and grace. The fifth sakti, grace, counteracts and removes the fourth sakti, which is maya.

When maya is totally inactive, that is, when the identity with the body and the mind has been dropped, there is an awareness of consciousness, of being. When one is established in that state there is no body, no mind and no world. These three things are just ideas which are brought into an apparent existence when mays is present and active.

When maya is active, the sole effective way to dissolve it is the path shown by Bhagavan: one must do self-enquiry and discriminate what is real and what is unreal. It is the power of maya which makes us believe in the reality of things which have no reality outside our imagination. If you ask, "What are these imaginary things?" the answer is, "Everything that is not the formless Self". The Self alone is real; everything else is a figment of our imagination.

It is not helpful to enquire why there is maya and how it operates. If you are in a  boat which is leaking, you don't waste time asking whether the hole was made by an Italian, a Frenchman or an Indian. You just plug the leak. Don't worry about where maya comes from. Put all your energy into escaping from its effects. If you try to investigate the origin of maya with your mind you are doomed to fail because any answer you come up with will be a maya answer. If you want to understand how maya operates and originates you should establish yourself in the Self, the one place where you can be free of it, and then watch how it takes you over each time you fail to keep your attention there.