Essay on Realization, Chapter 8 of Jnana Yoga by Swami Vivekananda

By Patrick Horn ("Rishi") 

Swami Vivekananda says, “Religion is not in books, and temples. It is an actual perception. Only the man who has actually perceived God and soul, has religion…. Mere intellectual assent does not make us religious.” He quotes from the Vivekachudamani (Crest Jewel of Discrimination) by Shakaracharya (788-820 AD). There are three rare advantages in Life: human birth and strength of body-mind-will, desire for freedom, and apprenticeship to an illumined Master. The teacher should be a perfect knower of Brahman, well-read in the scriptures, and free from lust and greed. The aspirant must be intelligent, learn’ed, and able to overcome doubt by reason. Through discrimination between the Real and the unreal, and non-attachment to sense pleasures and the results of actions, the seeker gains six treasures: peace, patience, perseverance, faith, wisdom, and mastery.

Shankaracharya teaches, “A clear vision of the Reality may be obtained only though our own eyes, when they have been opened by spiritual insight—never through the eyes of some other seer. Through our own eyes we learn what the moon looks like: how could we learn this through the eyes of others?” He shows how the gross body is made of the elements and slave to the senses, desire, and the three conditions of Maya (projecting, veiling, revealing). He describes four mental functions: emotions, identity-making, deliberation, and discrimination. Swami Prabhavananda’s translation states: “In the waking state of consciousness, man finds his fullest activity in the body…. The dream-state belongs pre-eminently to the subtle body…. The mental organ identifies itself with the organs of perception and of action, as well as with the physical body.” This is a false identity. “Through ignorance, man identifies the Atman with the body, taking the perishable for real. Therefore he nourishes this body, and anoints it, and guards it carefully…. When a man becomes illumined by knowledge, there arises within him perfect discrimination which clearly distinguishes the true Being, the Atman, from the external appearances.”

Essay on God in Everything, Chapter 7 of Jnana Yoga by Swami Vivekananda

By Patrick Horn ("Rishi")

Swami Vivekananda says, “this life in the five senses, life in the material world, is not all; it is only a small portion, and merely superficial…. The ideal of renunciation nowhere attains such a height as in the teachings of the Vedanta. But, at the same time, dry suicidal advice is not intended; it really means deification of the world—giving up the world as we think of it, as we know it, as it appears to us,—and to know what it really is. Deify it; it is God alone.” He quotes the Isha (Lord, Master, Chief) Upanishad. “Whatever exists in this universe is to be covered with the Lord.” The veil of maya is the manifestation of the Absolute, not something separate. It is sat-chit-ananda (existence-consciousness-bliss). Tat tvam asi (thou art that)!

Witness the Universe, and all that lives and moves on Earth, with the Vision of God. Ignore the temporal. Find joy in the Eternal. Purify your desires, and working without attachment, you may live a long life of freedom. Whomever denies Brahman will fall into a hell of despair and death. Without moving, Brahman is swifter than the mind and faster than you can run. The senses cannot perceive Brahman. Brahman moves yet Brahman moves not. Brahman is far and near. Brahman is within all, and beyond all. There is no fear in those who see Brahman as their own being and in all beings. What delusion and sorrow can harm the soul who perceives unity in diversity? Brahman fills all with radiance, beyond form and changes. Brahman is the witness and the thinker behind all thoughts. Brahman is omnipresent and transcendent. All things reveal Brahman and point to the Eternal.

Essay on The Absolute and Manifestation, Chapter 6 of Jnana Yoga by Swami Vivekananda

By Patrick Horn ("Rishi")

Swami Vivekananda says, “Time, space, and causation are like the glass through which the Absolute is seen, and when It is seen on the lower side It appears as the universe. Now we at once gather from this that in the Absolute, there is neither time, space nor causation.… The whole struggle is to get rid of this clinging on to time, space, and causation, which are always obstacles in our way.” The Absolute Reality is infinite, undivided, unchanging sat-chit-ananda (existence-consciousness-bliss), yet we experience it as a limited name-and-form (finite) bound by space (divided) and time (changing). Maya has two main aspects: samasti, the cosmic appearance and sensible world which is not a projection of the finite mind, and vyasti, the individual ignorance (avidya) which obstructs right discrimination.

If you throw a sheet over a chair, it takes on the shape of the chair and not something else. The relationship between maya and Brahman is the same; the Absolute Reality shows through the veil that hides It. According to John Dobson, author of Equations of Maya and The Moon is New, the infinite shows through in physics as the electromagnetism of the particles and atoms in the elemental realm, the undivided shows through as gravity which stops the scattering of the material universe, and the unchanging shows through as inertia, the tendency of matter to remain at rest. He further asserts that the infinite shows through in psyche as the quest for Freedom, the undivided shows through in our need for Love, and the unchanging shows through in the desire for Peace.

Essay on Maya and Illusion, Chapter 3 of Jnana Yoga by Swami Vivekananda

By Naomi Walden

Swami Vivekananda states that because we are satisfied with the sense objects and run after desires, reality is covered with a mist of ignorance obscuring truth.  The Maya of Vedanta states the world exists only in relation to the mind and a mixture of existence and non-existence.  We have to work in and through it.  Man cannot go beyond his intellect, but is aware of a power to go beyond which says unselfishness alone is good. 

Death is the end of everything, yet we cling to life – this is Maya.  The animal man lives in the senses.  As he emerges, horizons of both happiness and suffering grow.  We must work for lessening world’s misery, the only way to make ourselves happy and out of this life of contradiction.  This realization comes to all eventually.  The Absolute tries to express itself in the finite, when man discovers that it is impossible, renunciation results, the real beginning of religion.  Knowing that both good and evil are bound together, one then works with patience toward the great ideal, toward perfection, and beyond nature.  

Essay on Maya and Freedom, Chapter 5 of Jnana Yoga by Swami Vivekananda

By Patrick Horn ("Rishi")

Swami Vivekananda says, “Those who dare, therefore, to struggle for victory, for truth, for religion, are in the right way, and that is what the Vedas preach. ‘Be not in despair; the way is very difficult, like walking on the blade of a razor. Yet, despair not, arise, awake, and find the ideal, the goal.’” He quotes from the Katha (speech, story, legend; also, suffering) Upanishad (secret teaching at the feet of a Master), the meeting between a young boy Nachiketa (non-decay, non-defeat) and Yama, god of Death. The text is divided into two chapters of three sections each. First, the tale of how Nachiketa was cursed by his selfish and proud father to death, then how Nachiketa won three boons from Yama: release from death and a path to Freedom from suffering. Yama hesitates when asked to tell the nature of the soul and the law of rebirth. He teaches the difference between the good and the pleasant, the quest for Truth and knowledge of God, and exposes the Tree of Life. He reveals a Spiritual Hierarchy and shows a need for right speech and the control of desires. He warns that yoga can be both beneficial and injurious. 

His most famous teaching is the analogy of the Horse and Chariot. “Know that the Atman (soul) is the Master of the chariot, and the body is the chariot. Know that the buddhi is the Charioteer, and manas (mind) is the reigns [bridle]. The senses are called the horses, the objects of the senses their paths” (1.3.3 – 1.3.4). The soul is the enjoyer of the mind, the body, and senses. If the buddhi becomes distracted and loses its discrimination in will and desire, as a charioteer loses control of the reigns, the horses will run wild to disaster. A variation of the story appears in Plato’s Phaedrus dialogue. In this version, the chariot is pulled by two winged horses. The Charioteer is the intellect which guides the soul to Truth. The white horse is right discrimination which follows the gods towards enlightenment, and some souls see the world of forms in all its glory. The black horse is lust and greed which causes the soul to reincarnate in descending order of witness to Truth: philosophers and lovers, civic leaders, politicians and businessmen, physicians, priests, poets, craftsmen and farmers, sophists and demagogues, and tyrants.

Essay on Maya and the Evolution of the Conception of God, Chapter 4 of Jnana Yoga by Swami Vivekananda

By Patrick Horn ("Rishi")

Swami Vivekananda says, “coming to our philosophers, we find that this word Maya has been manipulated in various fashions, until we come to the great Shankaracharya.” The infinite, undivided, unchanging sat-chit-ananda (existence-consciousness-bliss) is the only Reality. The empirical world (vyavaharika) is an appearance due to ignorance (avidya); it is not unreal but it is not what it appears to be. Erroneous perception mistakes Brahman as finite, divided, and changing. Shankaracharya famously uses the analogy of the rope and the snake. If you mistake a rope for a snake, you didn’t see the rope and there is no snake. Though seemingly affected by space, time, and causality in manifold names and forms, Brahman remains the same, and Thou Art That – tat tvam asi. It is due to lack of discrimination that the self is entangled with external objects and conditions and falsely identified with a limited body and its various mental states and moods.

Swamiji teaches, “the theory of Maya was manipulated a little by the Buddhists too, but in the hands of the Buddhists it became very much like what is called Idealism, and that is the meaning that is now generally given to the word Maya.” Idealism asserts that reality is immaterial and doubts the possibility of knowing anything beyond the mind. According to Buddhists, the world is “empty,” but this is not a nihilistic void. It means that forms have no independent existence. The goal of nirvana is liberation from the apparent cycle of death and rebirth (samsara) and suffering caused by desire and attachments. The Buddha, son of Queen Maya, taught an eightfold path to freedom: wisdom through Right View (inquiry and aesthetic) and Right Intention (sincerity and correct aim), virtue though Right Speech (mastery of thought and word) and Right Action (skillful means) and Right Lifestyle (ethical conduct), and Right Effort (discipline and renunciation), Right Concentration (correct practice and context), and Right Mindfulness in meditation.

Essay on Maya and Illusion, Chapter 3 of Jnana Yoga by Swami Vivekananda

By  Patrick Horn ("Rishi") 

Swami Vivekananda asserts that the word māyā is generally used incorrectly to mean illusion or delusion. Great patience is required for right understanding. Swamiji admits that “delusion” is an early and partial definition; “delusion” arrives in late Middle English from the Latin deludere (mock) whilst the related word “illusion” is an Old French variation of the Latin word illudere (deception). Both words are derived from the Latin root ludo (play, game).

One possible construction of māyā from the Sanskrit roots is mā (not) yā (that); in other words, what seems-to-be to our limited perception and cognition is not what-is. Other meanings can be constructed from mā (creation, effect), may- (intoxicate, confuse), and māy- (hide, absence). In Myth and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization (edited by Joseph Campbell), Heinrich Zimmer suggests that the noun māyā is related etymologically to “measure” (a specific quantity or point of reference); māyā can also mean diplomatic cunning or a political hoax. Zimmer writes that māyā sometimes means trick, fraud, sorcery, or witchcraft. Swamiji says there are passages where māyā means something like magic, or the divine power of manifestation and exhibition of forms.