From: raj@utkvx2.utk.edu (S. KANAKA RAJ)
Subject: Maayaa and Freedom
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: University of Tennessee Computing Center
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 01:24:00 GMT


	Taken from "The complete works of Swami Vivekananda", volume II


				MAAYAA AND FREEDOM
				------------------
	(Delivered in London by Swami Vivekanandha, 22nd October 1896)

"Trailing clouds of glory we come," says the poet. Not all of us come as
trailing clouds of glory however; some of us come as trailing black fogs;
there can be no question about that. But every one of us comes into this
world to fight, as on a battlefield. We come here weeping to fight our way,
as well as we can, and to make a path for ourselves through this infinite
ocean of life; forward we go, having long ages behind us and an immense
expanse beyond. So on we go, till death comes and takes us off the field -
victorious or defeated, we do not know. And this is Maayaa.

Hope is dominant in the heart of childhood. The whole world is a golden
vision to the opening eyes of the child; he thinks his will is supreme. As
he moves onward, at every step nature stands as an adamantine wall, barring
his future progress. He may hurl himself against it again and again, striving
to break through. The further he goes, the further recedes the ideal, till
death comes, and there is release, perhaps. And this is Maayaa.

A man of science rises, he is thirsting after knowledge. No sacrifice is too
great, no struggle too hopeless for him. He moves onward discovering secret
after secret of nature, searching out the secrets from her innermost heart,
and what for? What is it all for? Why should we give him glory? Why should he
acquire fame? Does not nature do infinitely more than any human being can do?
- and nature is dull, insentient. Why should it be glory to imitate the dull,
the insentient? Nature can hurl a thunderbolt of any magnitude to any
distance. If a man can do one small part as much, we praise him and laud him
to the skies. Why? Why should we praise him for imitating nature, imitating
death, imitating dullness, imitating insentience? The force of gravitation
can pull to pieces the biggest mass that ever existed; yet it is insentient.
What glory is there in imitating the insentient? Yet we are all struggling
that. And this is Maayaa.

The senses drag the human soul out. Man is seeking for pleasure and for
happiness where it can never be found. For countless ages we are all taught
that this is futile and vain, there is no happiness here. But we can not
learn; it is impossible for us to do so, except through our own experiences.
We try them, and a blow comes. Do we learn then? Not even then. Like moths
hurling themselves against the flame, we are hurling ourselves again and
again into sense-pleasures, hoping to find satisfaction there. We return
again and again with freshened energy; thus we go on, till crippled and
cheated we die. And this is Maayaa.

So with our intellect. In our desire to solve the mysteries of the universe,
we cannot stop our questioning, we feel we must know and cannot believe that
no knowledge is to be gained. A few steps, and there arises the wall of
beginningless and endless time which we cannot surmount. A few steps, and
there appears a wall of boundless space which cannot be surmounted, and the
whole is irrevocably bound in by the walls of cause and effect. We cannot
go beyond them. Yet we struggle, and still have to struggle. And this is
Maayaa.

With every breath, with every pulsation of the heart, with every one of our
movements, we think we are free, and the very same moment we are shown that
we are not. Bound slaves, nature's bond-slaves, in body, in mind, in all
our thoughts, in all our feelings. And this is Maayaa.

There was never a mother who did not think her child was a born genius, the
most extraordinary child that was ever born; she dotes upon her child. Her
whole soul is in the child. The child grows up, perhaps becomes a drunkard,
a brute, ill-treats the mother, and the more he ill-treats her, the more her
love increases. The world lauds it as the unselfish love of the mother,
little dreaming that the mother is a born slave, she cannot help it. She
would a thousand times rather throw off the burden, but she cannot. So she
covers it with a mass of flowers, which she calls wonderful love. And this
is Maayaa.

We are all like this in the world. A legend tells how once Naaradha said to
Krishna, "Lord, show me Maayaa." A few days passed away, and Krishna asked
Naaradha to make a trip with him towards a desert, and after walking for
several miles, Krishna said, "Naaradha, I am thirsty; can you fetch some
water for me?" "I will go at once, sir, and get you water." So Naaradha went.
At a little distance there was a village; he entered the village in search
of water and knocked at a door, which was opened by a most beautiful young
girl. At the sight of her he immediately forgot that his Master was waiting
for water, perhaps dying for the want of it. He forgot everything and began
to talk with the girl. All that day he did not return to his Master. The
next day, he was again at the house, talking to the girl. That talk ripened
into love; he asked the father for the daughter, and they were married and
lived there and had children. Thus twelve years passed. His father-in-law
died, he inherited his property. He lived, as he seemed to think, a very
happy life with his wife and children, his fields and his cattle, and so
forth. Then came a flood. One night the river rose until it overflowed its
banks and flooded the whole village. Houses fell, men and animals were swept
away and drowned, and everything was floating in the rush of the stream.
Naaradha had to escape. With one hand he held his wife, and with the other
two of his children; another child was on his shoulders, and he was trying
to ford this tremendous flood. After a few steps he found the current was too
strong, and the child on his shoulders fell and was borne away. A cry of
despair came from Naaradha. In trying to save that child, he lost his grasp
upon one of the others, and it also was lost. At last his wife, whom he
clasped with all his might, was torn away by the current, and he was thrown
on the bank, weeping and wailing in bitter lamentation. Behind him there
came a gentle voice, "My child, where is the water? You went to fetch a
pitcher of water, and I am waiting for you; you have been gone for quite
half an hour." "Half an hour!" Naaradha exclaimed. Twelve whole years had
passed through his mind, and all these scenes had happened in half an hour!
And this is Maayaa.

In one form or another, we are all in it. It is a most difficult and
intricate state of things to understand. It has been preached in every
country, taught everywhere, but only believed in by a few, because until we
get the experiences ourselves we cannot believe in it. What does it show?
Something very terrible. For it is all futile. Time, the avenger of
everything, comes, and nothing is left. He swallows up the saint and the
sinner, the king and the peasant, the beautiful and the ugly; he leaves
nothing. Everything is rushing towards that one goal, destruction. Our
knowledge, our arts, our sciences, everything is rushing towards it. None can
stem the tide, none can hold it back for a minute. We may try to forget it,
in the same way that persons in a plague-stricken city try to create oblivion
by drinking, dancing, and other vain attempts, and so becoming paralysed.
So we are trying to forget, trying to create oblivion by all sorts of
sense-pleasures. And this is Maayaa.

Two ways have been proposed. One method, which everyone knows, is very
common, and that is: "It may be very true, but do not think of it. 'Make
hay while the sun shines,' as the proverb says. It is all true, it is a
fact, but do not mind it. Seize the few pleasures you can, do what little
you can, do not look at the dark side of the picture, but always towards
the hopeful, the positive side." There is some truth in this, but there is
also a danger. The truth is that it is a good motive power. Hope and a
positive ideal are very good motive powers for our lives, but there is a
certain danger in them. The danger lies in our giving up the struggle in
despair. Such is the case with those who preach, "Take the world as it is;
sit down as calmly and comfortably as you can and be contented with all
these miseries. When you receive blows, say they are not blows but flowers;
and when you are driven about like slaves, say that you are free. Day and
night tell lies to others and to your own souls, because that is the only
way to live happily." This is what is called practical wisdom, and never
was it more prevalent in the world than in this nineteenth century; because
never were harder blows hit than at the present time, never was competition
keener, never were men so cruel to their fellow-men as now; and, therefore,
must this consolation be offered. It is put forward in the strongest way at
the present time; but it fails, as it always must fail. We cannot hide a
carrion with roses; it is impossible. It would not avail long; for soon the
roses would fade, and the carrion would be worse than ever before. So with
our lives. We may try to cover our old and festering sores with cloth of
gold, but there comes a day when the cloth of gold is removed, and the sore
in all its ugliness is revealed.

Is there no hope then? True it is that we are all slaves of Maayaa, born in
Maayaa, and live in Maayaa. Is there then no way out, no hope? That we are
all miserable, that this world is really a prison, that even our so-called
trailing beauty is but a prison-house, and that even our intellects and
minds are prison-houses, have been known for ages upon ages. There has never
been a man, there has never been a human soul, who has not felt this sometime
or other, however he may talk. And the old people feel it most, because in
them is the accumulated experience of a whole life, because they cannot be
easily cheated by the lies of nature. Is there no way out? We find that with
all this, with this terrible fact before us, in the midst of sorrow and
suffering, even in this world where life and death are synonymous, even here,
there is still a small voice that is ringing through all ages, through every
country, and in every heart: "This My Maayaa is divine, made up of qualities,
and very difficult to cross. Yet those that come unto Me, cross the river of
life." "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest." This is the voice that is leading us forward. Man has heard it,
and is hearing it all through ages. This voice comes to men when everything
seems to be lost and hope has fled, when man's dependence on his own strength
has been crushed down, and everything seems to melt away between his fingers,
and life is a hopeless ruin. Then he hears it. This is called Religion.

On the one side, therefore, is the bold assertion that this is all nonsense,
that this is Maayaa, but along with it, there is the most hopeful assertion
that beyond Maayaa, there is a way out. On the other hand, practical men
tell us, "Don't bother your heads about such nonsense as religion and
metaphysics. Live here; this is a very world indeed, but make the best of
it." Which put in plain language means, live a hypocritical, lying life, a
life of continuous fraud, covering all sores in the best way you can. Go on
putting patch after patch, until everything is lost, and you are a mass of
patchwork. This is what is called practical life. Those that are satisfied
with this patchwork will never come to religion. Religion begins with a
tremendous dissatisfaction with the present state of things, with our lives,
and a hatred, an intense hatred, for this patching up of life, an unbounded
disgust for fraud and lies. He alone can be religious who dares say, as the
mighty Buddha once said under Bo-tree, when this idea of practicality
appeared before him and he saw that it was nonsense, and yet could not find
a way out. When the temptation came to him to give up his search after truth,
to go back to the world and live the old life of fraud, calling things by
wrong names, telling lies to oneself and to everybody, he, the giant,
conquered it and said, "Death is better than a vegetating ignorant life; it
is better to die on the battlefield than to live a life of defeat." This is
the basis of religion. When a man takes this stand, he is on the way to find
the truth, he is on the way to God. That determination must be the first
impulse towards becoming religious. I will hew out a way for myself. I will
know the truth or give up my life in the attempt. For on this side it is
nothing, it is gone, it is vanishing every day. The beautiful, hopeful, young
person of today is the veteran of tomorrow. Hopes and joys and pleasures will
die like blossoms with tomorrow's frost. That is one side; on the other,
there are the great charms of conquest, victories over all the ills of life,
victory over life itself, the conquest of the universe. On that side men
can stand. Those who dare, therefore, to struggle for victory, for truth, for
religion, are in the right way; and that is what the Vedhas preach: Be not
in despair; the way is very difficult, like walking on the edge of a razor;
yet despair not, arise, awake, and find the ideal, the goal.

Now all these various manifestations of religion, in whatever shape and form
they have come to mankind, have this one common central basis. It is the
preaching of freedom, the way out of this world. They never came to
reconcile the world and religion, but to cut the Gordian knot, to establish
religion in its own ideal, and not to compromise with the world. That is
what every religion preaches, and the duty of the Vedhantha is to harmonise
all these aspirations, to make manifest the common ground between all the
religions of the world, the highest as well as the lowest. What we call the
most arrant superstition and the highest philosophy really have a common aim
in that they both try to show the way out of the same difficulty, and in most
cases this way is through the help of someone who is not himself bound by the
laws of nature, in one word, someone who is free. In spite of all the
difficulties and differences of opinion about the nature of the one free
agent, whether he is a Personal God, or a sentient being like man, whether
masculine, feminine, or neuter - and the discussions have been endless - the
fundamental idea is the same. In spite of the almost hopeless contradictions
of the different systems, we find the golden thread of unity running through
them all, and in this philosophy, this golden thread has been traced,
revealed little by little to our view, and the first step to this revelation
is the common ground that all are advancing towards freedom.

Our curious fact present in the midst of all our joys and sorrows,
difficulties and struggles, is that we are surely journeying towards freedom.
The question was practically this: "What is this universe? From what does it
arise? Into what does it go?" And the answer was: "In freedom it rises, in
freedom it rests, and into freedom it melts away." This idea of freedom you
cannot relinquish. Your actions, your very lives will be lost without it.
Every moment nature is proving us to be slaves and not free. Yet,
simultaneously rises the other idea, that still we are free. At every step
we are knocked down, as it were, by Maayaa, and shown that we are bound; and
yet at the same moment, together with this blow, together with this feeling
that we are bound, comes the other feeling that we are free. Some inner voice
tells us that we are free. But if we attempt to realise that freedom, to
make it manifest, we find the difficulties almost insuperable. Yet, in spite
of that it insists on asserting itself inwardly, "I am free, I am free." And
if you study all the various religions of the world you will find this idea
expressed. Not only religion - you must not take this word in its narrow
sense - but the whole life of society is the assertion of that one principle
of freedom. All movements are the assertion of that one freedom. That voice
has been heard by everyone, whether he knows it or not, that voice which
declares, "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden." It may not
be in the same language or the same form of speech, but in some form or
other, that voice calling for freedom has been with us. Yes, we are born here
on account of that voice; every one of our movements is for that. We are all
rushing towards freedom, we are all following that voice, whether we know it
or not; as the children of village were attracted by the music of the flute-
player, so we are all following the music of the voice without knowing it.

We are ethical when we follow that voice. Not only the human soul, but all
creatures from the lowest to the highest have heard the voice and are
rushing towards it; and in the struggle are either combining with each other
or pushing each other out of the way. Thus come competition, joys, struggles,
life, pleasure, and death, and the whole universe is nothing but the result
of this mad struggle to reach the voice. This is the manifestation of nature.

What happens then? The scene begins to shift. As soon as you know the voice
and understand what it is, the whole scene changes. The same world which was
the ghastly battlefield of Maayaa is now changed into something good and
beautiful. We no longer curse nature, nor say that the world is horrible and
that it is all vain; we need no longer weep and wail. As soon as we
understand the voice, we see the reason why this struggle should be here,
this fight, this competition, this difficulty, this cruelty, these little
pleasures and joys; we see that they are in the nature of things, because
without them there would be no going towards the voice, to attain which we
are destined, whether we know it or not. All human life, all nature,
therefore, is struggling to attain to freedom. The sun is moving towards the
goal, so is the earth in circling round the sun, so is the moon in circling
round the earth. To that goal the planet is moving, and the air is blowing.
Everything is struggling towards that. The saint is going towards that voice
- he cannot help it, it is no glory to him. So is the sinner. The charitable
man is going straight towards that voice, and cannot be hindered; the miser
is also going towards the same destination; the greatest worker of good hears
the same voice within, and he cannot resist it, he must go towards the voice;
so with the most arrant idler. One stumbles more than another, and him who
stumbles more we call bad, him who stumbles less we call good. Good and bad
are never two different things, they are one and the same; the difference is
not one of kind, but of degree.

Now, if the manifestation of this power of freedom is really governing the
whole universe - applying that to religion, our special study - we find this
idea has been the one assertion throughout. Take the lowest form of religion
where there is the worship of departed ancestors or certain powerful and
cruel gods; what is the prominent idea about the gods or departed ancestors?
That they are superior to nature, not bound by its restrictions. The
worshipper has, no doubt, very limited ideas of nature. He himself cannot
pass through a wall, nor fly up into the skies, but the gods whom he worships
can do these things. What is meant by that, philosophically? That the
assertion of freedom is there, that the gods whom he worships are superior
to nature as he knows it. So with those who worship still higher beings. As
the idea of nature expands, the idea of the soul which is superior to nature
also expands, until we come to what we call monotheism, which holds that
there is Maayaa (nature), and that there is some Being who is the Ruler of
this Maayaa.

Here Vedhantha begins, where these monotheistic ideas first appear. But the
Vedhantha philosophy wants further explanation. This explanation - that there
is a Being beyond all these manifestations of Maayaa, who is superior to and
independent of Maayaa, and who is attraction us towards Himself, and that we
are all going towards Him - is very good, says the Vedhantha, but yet the
perception is not clear, the vision is dim and hazy, although it does not
directly contradict reason. Just as in your hymn it is said, "Nearer my God
to Thee," the same hymn would be very good to the Vedhanthin, only he would
change a word, and make it, "Nearer my God to me." The idea that the goal is
far off, far beyond nature, attracting us all towards it, has to be brought
nearer and nearer, without degrading and degenerating it. The God of heaven
becomes the God in nature, and the God in nature becomes the God who is
nature, and the God who is nature becomes the God within this temple of the
body, and the God dwelling in the temple of the body at last becomes the
temple itself, becomes the soul and man - and there it reaches the last
words it can teach. He whom the sages have been seeking in all these places
is in our own hearts; the voice that you heard was right, says the Vedhantha,
but the direction you gave to the voice was wrong. That ideal of freedom that
you perceived was correct, but you projected it outside yourself, and that
was your mistake. Bring it nearer and nearer, until you find that it was all
the time within you, it was the Self of your own self. That freedom was your
own nature, and this Maayaa never bound you. Nature never has power over you.
Like a frightened child you were dreaming that it was throttling you, and
the release from this fear is the goal; not only to see it intellectually,
but to perceive it, actualise it, much more definitely than we perceive this
world. Then we shall know that we are free. Then, and then alone, will all
difficulties vanish, then will all the perplexities of heart be smoothed
away, all crookedness made straight, then will vanish the delusion of
manifoldness and nature; and Maayaa, instead of being a horrible, hopeless
dream, as it is now, will become beautiful, and this earth, instead of being
a prison-house, will become our playground; and even dangers and difficulties,
even all sufferings, will become deified and show us their real nature, will
show us that behind everything, as the substance of everything, He is
standing, and that He is the one real Self.