MAYA

The term "maya" in Vedanta generally means world illusion. But what does this mean more precisely? The root of the word is "matr," from which we get the modern words "measure," "meter," and "matrix." Maya is the world as measured, which is how the human brain sees it, in bits, as if a grid were placed over it. The world, however, is not bits, but is an entirety, so vast that the mind cannot grasp it in it's true state.

For example, this universe contains trillions and trillions of galaxies, within which are millions and billions of solar systems filled with innumerable planets. In one such solar system there is a planet called Earth. Upon that planet Earth, inhabited with close to seven billion humans, there are hundreds of countries. In one such country, America, there is a state called California, within which there is a city called Los Angeles. In this city, which has many hundreds of thousands of people, there is a street called Figueroa. On that street, there is living a man named John (or insert your own city, street name etc. here) whose mind, like all other minds, cannot grasp the true state of it all. He can understand it intellectually but cannot know it fully. This is maya.

Maya also means magic and play and in this way is the creative illusion, the illusory appearance, that the Divine (Brahman, godhead) generates. But it is not illusion in the sense of unreality but of cosmic play or cosmic sport. In Vedanta the world is a drama in which the Divine plays all the parts, and it is through us that it sees what it is doing. As part of the illusion, however, part of the game, it believes that the roles it is playing are real, until eventually it awakens from it and the world ends--until the Divine begins it again.

The ever-changing mirage-like aspect of life, where a piece of rope lying by the roadside will appear in twilight to be a snake, or a distant post a man, is also maya. Maya is described as that illusion of reality which is not Reality itself, even though it is embodied in that Reality.

Many everyday experiences are also maya. Something as usual as driving a car 65 miles an hour down a freeway and believing one is safe, to say nothing of flying 35,000 feet in the air in a jet plane going 500 miles an hour, and also feeling safe, is maya.

The Hindu model of the universe as a drama, an illusion, is contrasted with the model of Western religions that sees the universe as an artifact, something that is made, like a potter makes a pot. Here, for instance, God created a human out of clay, blowing the breath of life into its nostrils. The Chinese model found in Taoism, on the other hand, is an organic one. The universe is seen as an organism, with every part affecting every other part.

The inspiration for the Hindu model might well be the way in which we humans feel at times like we are playing roles. We have a public self, that is the self that meets and interacts with the world, and then we have a private, personal self. But there are lots of selves that we create throughout our lives depending on the circumstance, all of which we feel sooner or later to be an illusion. As it happens, our feeling this, our seeing it, is none other than the Divine itself waking from its play, albeit ever so briefly, before going back and playing at it some more.