Maya

MAYA is an exclusively Vedantic term, often rendered as “universal illusion”, or “cosmic illusion”, but she is also “divine play”. She is the great theophany, the “unveiling” of God “in Himself and by Himself” as the Sufis would say. MAYA may be likened to a magic fabric woven from a warp that veils and a weft that unveils; she is a quasi-incomprehensible intermediary between the finite and the Infinite – at least from our point of view as creatures – and as such she has all the multi-coloured ambiguity appropriate to her part-cosmic, part-divine nature. (GTUFS: LightAW, MAYA)

It has been stated that from the standpoint of the Self there is no confrontation between a Principle and a manifestation, there is nothing but the Self alone, the pure and absolute Subject which is its own Object. But, it will be asked, what then becomes of the world that we still cannot help perceiving? . . . The world is Atma, the Self, in the guise of MAYA; more especially it is MAYA insofar as the latter is distinct from Atma, that goes without saying, for otherwise the verbal distinction would not exist; but while being MAYA, it is implicitly, and necessarily, Atma, in rather the same way that ice is water or is “not other” than water. In the Self, in the direct or absolute sense, there is no trace of MAYA, save the dimension of infinitude . . . from which MAYA indirectly proceeds, but at the degree of MAYA the latter is “not other” than the Self; . . . since the polarities are surpassed. MAYA is the reverberation of the Self in the direction of nothingness, or the totality of the reverberations of the Self; the innumerable relative subjects “are” the Self under the aspect of “Consciousness” (Chit), and the innumerable relative objects are once again the Self, but this time under the aspect of “Being” (Sat). Their reciprocal relationships, or their “common life,” constitute “Beatitude” (Ananda), in manifested mode, of course; this is made up of everything in the world which is expansion, enjoyment, or movement. (GTUFS: LogicT, The Servant and Union)

From a certain point of view, MAYA is the Shakti of Atma just as Infinitude is the complement of the Absolute, or as All-Possibility prolongs Necessary Being. From another point of view, MAYA is relativity or illusion, and is not “on the left” but “below.” As the universal archetype of femininity, MAYA is both Eve and Mary: “psychic” and seductive woman, and “pneumatic” and liberating woman; descendent or ascendant, alienating or reintegrating genius. MAYA projects souls in order to be able to free them, and projects evil in order to be able to overcome it; or again: on the one hand, She projects her veil in order to be able to manifest the potentialities of the Supreme Good; and, on the other, She veils good in order to be able to unveil it, and thus to manifest a further good: that of the prodigal son’s return, or of Deliverance. (GTUFS: SurveyME, Dimensions of Omnipotence)

Opposing and inverting differentiation is due to the dark pole of Relativity, of MAYA; this is the metaphysical basis of the “fall of the angels.” MAYA brings forth the world by “radiation of love” and by virtue of Divine Infinitude but also – through its other dimension – by centrifugal passion both dispersive and compressive; thus there is at the root of the world the luminous Logos on the one hand, and the tenebrous demiurge on the other hand; and the ultimate Cause of this second pole is, we repeat, that the Infinite cannot exclude what appears to be opposed to it, but which, in reality, contributes to its radiation. (GTUFS: DivineHuman, The Problem of Possibility)

The sun, not being God, must prostrate itself every evening before the throne of Allah; so it is said in Islam. Similarly MAYA, not being Atma, can only affirm herself intermittently; the worlds spring from the divine Word and return into it. Instability is the penalty of contingency; to ask how we can know why there will be an end of the world and a resurrection amounts to asking why a respiratory phase stops at a precise moment to be followed by the opposite phase, or why a wave withdraws from the shore after submerging it, or again, why the drops from a fountain fall back to the ground. We are divine possibilities projected into the night of existence, and diversified by reason of that very projection, as water scatters into drops when it is launched into space, and also as it is crystallized when it is captured by cold. The very notion of cosmic “manifestation” – or of “creation” – implies by way of consequence that of “reintegration”. (GTUFS: LightAW, MAYA)

A Red Indian, speaking of the “Great Spirit”, very rightly called attention to the fact that “all that the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The Heavens are round . . . even the seasons form a great circle in their succession, and they always come back to their point of departure”. Thus it is that all that exists proceeds by way of gyratory movements, everything springs from the Absolute and returns to the Absolute; it is because the relative cannot be conceived otherwise than as a “circular emergence” – therefore transitory because returning to its source – from the Absolute . . . relativity is a circle, and the first of all circles; MAYA can be described symbolically as a great circular movement and also as a spherical state . . . According to the degree of its conformity to its Origin, the creature will be retained or rejected by the Creator; and Existence in its totality will finally return, with Being itself, into the infinity of the Self. MAYA returns to Atma, although strictly speaking nothing can be taken away from Atma nor consequently return thereto . . . Atma became MAYA so that MAYA might become Atma. (GTUFS: LightAW, MAYA)

MAYA includes not only the whole of manifestation, she is also affirmed already a fortiori “within” the Principle; the divine Principle “desiring to be known” – or “desiring to know” – stoops to the unfolding of its inward infinity, an unfolding at first potential and afterwards outward or cosmic. The relationship “God-world”, “Creator-creature”, “Principle-manifestation”, would be inconceivable if it were not prefigured in God, independently of any question of creation. (GTUFS: LightAW, MAYA)

And let us recall that MAYA does not coincide purely and simply with the manifested Universe, since – beyond the Universe – it encompasses Being itself, that is to say that the discernment between “God” and the “world” is metaphysically less rigorous and less fundamental than that between Atma and MAYA, “Reality” and “illusion.” (GTUFS: RootsHC, Pillars of Wisdom)

The protagonists of Vishnuism, whose sanctity is obviously no more in dispute than that of the great spokesman of kalam, see fit to assert against the MAYA of Shankara that souls, like the physical world, are real – something that Shankara never denied, for the notion of MAYA does not contradict relative reality, but simply annuls it at the level of Absolute Reality; now it is precisely this spirit of alternatives, this inability to reconcile apparent antinomies on a higher plane, as well as the failure to understand relativity and absoluteness, which are common to Semitic exoterism and Hindu bhaktism. (GTUFS: ChristIslam, Dilemmas of Moslem Scholasticism)

For the Vedantists, MAYA is in a sense more mysterious, or less obvious than Atma. (GTUFS: LogicT, The Servant and Union)

If there were no MAYA, Atma would not be Atma. (GTUFS: SurveyME, Creation as a Divine Quality)

As for MAYA, it proceeds necessarily from the very nature of Atma – on pain of being a pure impossibility – and proves the Infinitude, All-Possibility and Radiation of Atma; MAYA exteriorizes and unfolds the innumerable potentialities of Atma. MAYA cannot not be, and to deny it is to be unaware of the nature of the supreme Self. (GTUFS: HaveCenter, Primacy of Intellection)

Cosmic MAYA, and with all the more reason, evil, is in the final analysis the possibility of Being not to be. All-Possibility must, by definition and on pain of contradiction, include its own impossibility; the Infinite must realize the finite on pain of not being the Infinite. (GTUFS: ChristIslam, On the Divine Will)

There is a MAYA which is divine and attracts to God, another which is satanic and takes away from God, and an intermediary one which a priori is innocently passional and seeks only to be itself, so that it remains provisionally neutral in relation to the other two qualities. (GTUFS: SurveyME, Creation as a Divine Quality)

An essential distinction must be made between the MAYA that is divine (= Ishvara), another that is celestial (= Buddhi and Svarga), and a third that humanly speaking is “earthly” but which, in reality, encompasses the whole domain of transmigration (Samsara), the round of births and deaths. One can likewise distinguish in MAYA an objective mode, which refers to the universe surrounding us and partly transcending us, and a subjective mode which refers to the experiences of our ego; in principle, man can act upon the magic of the world by dominating the magic of his soul. Some near synonyms of the term MAYA – which roughly signifies “magic power” – are lila, “play,” and moha, “illusion”; Maha-Moha is the “Great Illusion,” namely Manifestation in its full extension, metacosmic as well as cosmic. (GTUFS: SurveyME, Dimensions of Omnipotence)

Atma became MAYA so that MAYA might become Atma. (GTUFS: LightAW, MAYA)