The Moksha Gita: by Swami Sivananda: Commentary by Swami Krishnananda: 3.3.
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Sunday 11, May 2025, 11:10.
The Moksha Gita: by Swami Sivananda: Commentary: 3.2. by Swami Krishnananda.\
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Chapter 3: The Nature of Maya-3.
Swami Krishnananda.
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Maya is centred in the individual consciousness in the form of mind. Whatever Maya does, that the mind also does. Mind is miniature-Maya. The veiling and distracting activity of Maya is undertaken by the mind in the form of nonscience and egoism. Nascence is seated in the innermost sheath or the Anandamaya kosha of the soul and the ego is seated in the intellect. The mind projects the physical body even as Maya projects the cosmos. The activity of the universe is going on in the human body too. The Chandogya Upanishad says that the space within the heart contains the earth and the heaven, the sun, moon, stars, lightning, clouds, wind, fire, etc., in the same way as the outer space contains. Whatever is found in the external universe is found exactly in the miniature cosmos or the human body. Jiva is therefore a degraded copy of Ishwara. And Atman, therefore, is Brahman.
There are different degrees in the manifestation of Maya or illusion. The power of disfiguring Reality is not of the same degree everywhere. Maya is more manifest and works more powerfully in inanimate beings than animate, more in brute nature than in refined, more in Tamas and Rajas than in Sattwa, more in the uncivilised than in the civilised, more on earth than in heaven, more in man than in the celestial, more in an aspirant than in a saint, more in the sleeping and dreaming states than in the waking, more in gross forms than in subtle. Maya is manifest in a progressive evolutionary basis on one hand and as a steady concealing of Reality on the other hand. In other words, the whole process of appearance is in the domain of Maya.
Maya pervades in every quarter and cranny. There is nothing on earth or in heaven which is not controlled by the play of Maya. The universal change drags together with it the entirety of the individuals also and each individual is compelled by the cosmic change to change itself in the same manner befitting the cosmic process of Maya. Nothing here, not even a piece of straw, can be excluded from the operation of the law of Mayaic evolution. Maya is the ruling power which borrows its strength from Brahman.
When the mind is destroyed, Maya also is swept away from the vision of the individual. When the eyesight is corrected, the appearance of two moons vanishes. When sun sets, there is no more the dance of the mirage. The whole universe is the perception by the mind of the Absolute Brahman in varieties of forms due to the fluctuations caused by desire for objective gain. Hence, the destruction of the mind is the brushing aside of the entire phenomena and that ends in the experience of the light of the Self.
11. This mind which ever hankers after sensual objects is the seed of Maya. If the mind is annihilated Maya will vanish. You will attain the state of quiescence. Brahma-Jnana will dawn in you.
The seed of Maya is the mind which sends forth branches of its objectifying force through the channels of the organs of sensing. The mind hankers after the objects of the senses, including the intellect and the ego. The craving for objects is the effect of the desire of the individual consciousness to flow with the process of self-multiplication and self-preservation as laid in the scheme of the workings of Maya. The very meaning of phenomenal existence is preservation of the egoistic individuality and reproducing oneself into manifold forms. The senses are projected by the mind of the individual in order to affect this process of Maya. The functions of the mind day and night are in accordance with Maya's law of diversification and preservation of the diversified forms through attachment to such forms and further through an additional external urge to reproduce oneself and strive to maintain individual life. This whole mad process of the mind constitutes the life of man on earth.
When these functions of the mind are inhibited through the force of conscious effort on the part of the discriminative consciousness, the play of phenomenal existence is stopped its further progress, and when the seed of the mind is burnt by spiritual knowledge, the tree of Samsara is cut off root and branch!
The restlessness of the individual is caused by the projecting forth of mental forces for purposes of acquiring objects of sense. So long as the objects are not obtained there is the reign of agitation and irritation everywhere. There is only a temporary peace when the objects required are acquired, but the next moment the mind darts upon some other source of objective gratification and keeps the restlessness in continuity. Perfect quiescence comes only when the functioning of the imaginative mind is restrained and put an end to through meditation and Self-Knowledge. Only Brahma-Jnana can dispel the mental ignorance completely.
When true wisdom dawns, the mind realises its nature of Self-sufficiency and turns back to the Atma or the Source of Consciousness and rests as one with it in peace. This is the salvation of the individual, where the individual merges itself into the Infinite Consciousness and exists as the Absolute.
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Next
Chapter 4: The Nature of Avidya
Continued
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