an insight

Maya Samara
November 28, 1993

Maya mirrored (or reflecting on itself) = ayam or "I AM"


"Who is in my temple?
Who is in my temple?
All the doors open themselves.
All the lights light themselves.
Darkness like a dark bird Flies away, Oh flies away."


The Self, Maya, and the Heart:
The Fundamentals of Non-Dualism

Summary:
The concepts of the Self, Maya, and the Heart are the central themes or tenets of the Katha Upanishad and the Bhagavad Gita. Out of these and similar books (or scriptures) comes the philosophy of non-dualism or Vedanta.

Part I: Considering the concepts of Self, Maya, and Heart, as viewed from the sages

The Self:
According to the ancient sages of India, the Self is neither the body, thoughts, feelings, nor intellect, but rather all pervasive Being/Consciousness manifesting as the Heart in all beings, from which emanates the awareness of "I" and Knowledge of the Self, which includes the realization that all knowledge is in and from the subject-"I", the seer, not the object.

"The individual self, which is Brahman mistakenly identified with Maya, experiences the gunas* which proceed from Maya. He, who has experienced Brahman directly and known it to be other than Maya and the gunas, will not be reborn, no matter how he has lived his life." Bhagavad Gita, p. 103

"That in which the sun rises and in which it sets, that which is the source of all the powers of nature and of the senses, that which nothing can transcend - that is the immortal Self" Katha Upanishad, p. 21

"The Self-Existent made the senses turn outward. Accordingly, man looks toward what is without, and sees not what is within. Rare is he, longing for immortality, shuts his eyes to what is without and beholds the Self." Katha Upanishad, p. 20

Maya is the self-existent beginningless power of Brahman, the Self, which makes us imagine that the sense of "I" felt in the body and the related thoughts and feelings are the Self. In the Bhagavad Gita (P. 59), this imagining or delusion is stated like a dream:

"You dream you are the doer You dream the action bears fruit It is your ignorance It is the world's delusion That gives you those dreams."

"Every action is really performed by the gunas*. Man deluded by his egoism thinks 'I am the doer.' But he who has the true insight into the operations of the gunas and their various functions, knows that when the senses attach themselves to objects, gunas are merely attaching themselves to gunas, knowing this he does not become attached to his actions." Bhagavad Gita, p. 47

“Maya" - The deluding potency of the Self

What I was able to grasp from this is that, as long as the mind is turned outward, the Self, which is all pervasive, is sensed only as an "I"-awareness in and limited to the body with its thoughts and impressions revolving continuously around a perceived and separate world. But when the mind is purified or made to enquire where the source of seeing, which is to say, the subject "I", arises from, then the mind reflects the Self. The moment the Self is reflected in the mind at once the idea of subject-object and knowledge vanishes like a mirage. This vanishing is why the perceived world, the "I am the body" idea or "I am the doer" is called Maya, because the sense of being a doer in the world is apparently real to the outgoing mind, but when the Real Light of the mind is realized, the use of the mind has no more value, just as the use of the moon seen in the daylight sky of the risen sun, is of no value.

* gunas: The three gunas are: Sattva - purity; rajas - action; tamas - sloth or dullness