{"id":670,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:36","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=670"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:36","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:36","slug":"07-maya-the-energy-of-the-absolute-vol-12-the-upanishad-volume-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/12-the-upanishad-volume-12\/07-maya-the-energy-of-the-absolute-vol-12-the-upanishad-volume-12","title":{"rendered":"-07_Maya The Energy of The Absolute.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

FIVE <\/b><\/p>\n


\n
\nMaya: The Energy of The Absolute <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nM<\/span>AYA
\n<\/span><\/b>then is the fundamental fact in the Universe, her dualistic system of
\nbalanced pairs of opposites is a necessity of intellectual conception; but the
\npossibility of her existence as an inherent energy in the Absolute, outside
\nphenomena, has yet to be established. So long as Science is incomplete and Yoga
\na secret discipline for the few, the insistent questions of the metaphysician
\ncan never be ignored, nor his method grow obsolete. The confident and even
\narrogant attempt of experimental Science to monopolise the kingdom of mind, to
\nthe exclusion of the metaphysical and all other methods, was a rash and
\npremature aggression, \u2014 rash because premature; successful at first, its
\nvictorious usurping onrush is beginning to stagger and fail, even to lose hold
\non positions once thought to be permanently secured. The slow resurgence of
\nmetaphysics has already begun. Certainly, no metaphysics can be admissible which
\ndoes not take count of the standards and undoubted results of Science; but until
\nexperimental analysis has solved the whole mystery of the Universe, not by
\nspeculation through logic (a method stolen from metaphysics with which Science
\nhas no business) but by experimental proof and hypotheses checked and confirmed
\nby experimental proof, leaving no phenomenon unaccounted for and no fact
\nignored, \u2014 until then metaphysics must reign where analytic experiment leaves a
\nvoid. Vedanta, though it bases itself chiefly on the subjective experimental
\nmethods of Yoga, and admits no metaphysical hypothesis as valid which is not in
\nagreement with its results, is yet willing to submit its own conclusions to the
\ntests of metaphysical logic. The Vedantic Yogin shrinks at present, because of
\ncertain moral scruples, from divulging his arcana to the crowd, but he
\nrecognises that so long as he refuses, he has no right to evade the inquisition
\nof the metaphysical logician. Atharvan and Shwetashwatara<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 32<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

having
\nspoken, Shankara and Ramanuja must be allowed their arena of verbal discussion.<\/p>\n

\nThe metaphysical question involved turns upon the nature of Avidya, Nescience,
\nand its possibility in Parabrahman who is, after all, absolute, \u2014 Absolute
\nConsciousness and therefore Absolute Knowledge. It is not sound to say that
\nParabrahman envisaging Maya, becomes<\/i> capable of Avidya; for envisagement
\nof Maya is simply a metaphorical expression for Avidya itself. Neither can the
\nVedantist take refuge in the theologian’s evasion of reason by an appeal to
\nlawless Omnipotence, to the credo quia impossibile.<\/i> The Eternal is
\nundoubtedly in His own nature free and unlimited, but, as undoubtedly. He has
\ndeliberately bound Himself in His relation to phenomena by certain fundamental
\nprinciples; He has willed that certain things shall not and cannot be, and to
\nuse a human parallel He is like a King who having promulgated a certain code is
\nas much bound by His own laws as the meanest subject, or like a poet whose
\nimaginations, in themselves free, are limited by laws the moment they begin to
\ntake shape. We may say, theoretically, that God being Omnipotent can create
\nsomething out of nothing, but so long as no single clear instance can be given
\nof a something created out of nothing, the rule of ex nihilo nihil fit<\/i>
\nremains an universal and fundamental law and to suppose that God has based the
\nUniverse on a violation of a fundamental law of the Universe, is to kick Reason
\nout of the house and slam the door against her return. Similarly, if the
\ncoexistence of Avidya with Vidya in the same field and as it were
\ninterpenetrating each other is against the Law, it does by that very fact become
\nimpossible and the theory of Maya will then be proved an error; no appeal to
\nOmnipotence will save it.<\/p>\n

\nThe objection to Avidya may be stated thus that Absolute Knowledge cannot at the
\nsame time not know, cannot imagine a thing to be real which is not real; for
\nsuch imagination involves an element of self-deception, and self-deception is
\nnot possible in the Absolute. But is it really a law of consciousness \u2014 for
\nthere lies the point \u2014 that things can in no sense be at the same time real and
\nunreal, that you cannot by any possibility imagine things to be real which at
\nthe same time<\/i> you know perfectly well<\/p>\n

\nPage – 33<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nto be unreal? The dualist objectors may contend that this
\nimpossibility is a law of consciousness. The Vedantin replies at once
\nnegatur,<\/i> your statement is refuted by a host of examples; it is inconsistent
\nwith Universal experience. The most utter and avowed unrealities can be and are
\nfirmly imaged as realities, seen as realities, sensed as realities, conceived as
\nrealities without the mind for a moment admitting that they are indeed real. The
\nmirage of the desert we know after a time to be unreal, but even then we see and
\nfirmly image it as a reality, admire the green beauty of those trees and pant
\nfor the cool shining delight of those waters. We see dreams and dreams are
\nunrealities, and yet some of them at least are at the same time not positive
\nunrealities, for they image, and sometimes very exactly, events which have
\nhappened, are happening or will happen in the future. We see the juggler throw a
\nrope in the air, climb up it, kill the boy who has preceded him and throw down
\nhis bleeding limbs piecemeal on the earth; every detail and circumstance of the
\nunreal event corresponding to the event as it would have been, were it real; we
\ndo not imagine it to be unreal while it lasts, and we cannot so imagine it; for
\nthe visualisation is too clear and consistent, the feelings it awakes in us are
\ntoo vivid, and yet all the time we perfectly well know that no such thing is
\nhappening. Instances of this sort are not easily numbered.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBut these are distant, unimmediate things and for some of
\nthem the evidence may not be considered ample. Let us come nearer to our daily
\nlife. <\/b>We see a stone and we note its properties of solidity and
\nimmobility, nor can we by any persuasion be induced to imagine it as anything
\nelse but solid and immobile; and we are right, for it is both: and yet we know
\nthat its immobility and solidity are not real, that it is, and to a vision
\nsensible of the infinitesimal would appear, a world of the most active motion,
\nof myriads of atoms with spaces between them.<\/i> Again, if there is one
\nthing that is real to me, it is this, that I am vertical and upright, whatever
\nthe people at the Antipodes may be and that I walk in all directions
\nhorizontally along the earth; and yet alas! I know that I am in reality not
\nvertical but nearer the horizontal, walking often vertically up and down the
\nearth like a fly on the wall. I know it perfectly, yet if I were constantly to
\ntranslate<\/span> <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nPage – 34<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nmy knowledge into imagination, a padded room in bedlam would
\nsoon be the only place for me. This is indeed the singular and amazing law of
\nour consciousness that it is perfectly capable of holding two contradictory
\nconceptions at the same time and with equal strength. We accept the knowledge
\nwhich Science places at our disposal, but we perpetually act upon the images
\nwhich Nescience creates. I know that the sun does not rise or set, does not move
\nround the earth, does not sail through the heavens marking the time of day as it
\nproceeds, but in my daily life I act precisely on the supposition that this
\nunreality really happens; I hourly and momently conceive it and firmly image it
\nas real and sometimes regulate on it my every movement. The eternal
\nbelligerents. Science and Nescience, have come in this matter of the sun’s
\nmotion, as in so many others, to a working compromise. To me as an untrammelled
\nWill to live who by the subtle intellectual part of me, can wander through
\nEternity and place myself as a spectator in the centre of the sun or even
\noutside the material Universe the better to observe its motions, the phenomenon
\nof the earth’s movement round the sun is the reality, and even Nescience
\nconsents that I shall work on it as an acknowledged fact in the operations of
\npure intellect; but to me as a trammelled body unable to leave the earth and
\nbound down in my daily life to the ministry of my senses, the phenomenon of the
\nsun’s movement round the earth is the reality and to translate my intellectual
\nknowledge into the stuff of my daily imaginations would be intolerably
\ninconvenient; it would take my secure resting-place, the earth, from under my
\nfeet and make havoc of my life in sensation; even Science therefore consents
\nthat I shall work on the evidence of my senses as an acknowledged fact in my
\nmaterial life of earth-bounded existence. In this duplicity of standpoint we see
\nas in a glass darkly some image of the manner in which the Absolute wills to be
\nphenomenally conditioned; at once knows perfectly what is, yet chooses to image
\nwhat is not, having infinite Science, yet makes room for self-limiting
\nNescience. It is not necessary to labour the point, or to range through all
\nscientific knowledge for instances; in the light of modern knowledge the
\nobjection to the co\u00adexistence of Vidya and Avidya cannot stand; it is a
\nperpetual<\/span> <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nPage – 35<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nfact in the daily economy of Consciousness.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nYes, it may be argued, but this does not establish it as
\nanything more than a possibility in regard to the Absolute. A state of things
\ntrue throughout the range of phenomenal existence, may cease to operate at the
\npoint where phenomena themselves cease. The possibility, however, once granted,
\nVedanta is entitled to put forward Maya as the one successful explanation yet
\nadvanced of this manifold existence; first, because Maya does explain the whole
\nof existence metaphysically and is at the same time a universal, scientifically
\nobservable fact ranging through the whole Universe and fundamentally present in
\nevery operation of Consciousness; secondly, because it does transcend phenomena
\nas well as inform them, it has its absolute as well as its conditioned state and
\nis therefore not only possible in the Absolute but must be the Absolute Himself
\nin manifestation; and thirdly, because no other possible explanation can
\nlogically contain both <\/i>the truth of sheer transcendent Absoluteness of
\nthe Brahman and the palpable, imperative existence of the phenomenal Universe.1
\n<\/sup>Illogical theories, theories which part company with reason, theories
\nwhich, instead of basing themselves in observed laws, take their stand in the
\nvoid, may be had in plenty. Maya is no theory but a fact; no mere result of
\nlogic or speculation, but of careful observation and yet unassailable by logic,
\nand unsurpassable by speculation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nOne of the most remarkable manifestations of Avidya in human
\nconsciousness, presenting in its nature and laws of working a close analogy to
\nits parent is the power of imagination, \u2014 the power of bodying forth images
\nwhich may either be reabsorbed into the individual consciousness which gave them
\nforth or outlast it. Of the latter kind poetical creation is a salient example.
\nAt a certain time in a certain country one named Shakespeare created a new world
\nby the force of his Avidya, his faculty of imagining what is not. That world is
\nas real and unreal today as it was when Shakespeare created it or in more
\naccurate Vedantic language asṛjata,<\/i> loosed it forth, from the causal<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00b9 Of course I am not prepared, in
\nthese limits, to develop the final argument, that would imply a detailed
\nexamination of all metaphysical systems, which would be in itself the labour of
\na life-time.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 36<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nworld within him. Within the limits of that world, Iago is
\nreal to Othello, Othello to Desdemona, and all are real to any and every
\nconsciousness which can for a time abstract itself from this world, its
\nself-created surroundings and enter the world of Shakespeare. We are aware of
\nthem, observe them, grow in knowledge about them, see them act, hear them speak,
\nfeel for their griefs and sorrows; and even when we return to our own world,
\nthey do not always leave us, but sometimes come with us and influence our
\nactions. The astonishing power of poetical creation towards moulding life and
\nhistory, has not yet been sufficiently observed; yet it was after all Achilles,
\nthe swift-footed son of Peleus, who thundered through Asia at the head of his
\nlegions, dragged Batis at his chariot-wheels and hurled the Iranian to his fall,
\n\u2014 Achilles, the son of Peleus, who never lived except as an image, \u2014 nay, does
\nnot omniscient learning tell us, that even his creator never lived, or was only
\na haphazard assortment of poets who somehow got themselves collectively
\nnicknamed Homer ? Yet these images, which we envisage as real and confess by our
\nwords, thoughts, feelings, and sometimes even by our actions to be real, are all
\nthe time and we know them perfectly well to be as mythical as the dream, the
\nmirage and the juggler on his rope. There is no Othello, no Iago, no Desdemona
\nbut all these are merely varieties of name and form, not of Shakespeare, but in
\nwhich Shakespeare is immanent and which still exist merely because Shakespeare
\nis immanent in them. Nevertheless he who best succeeds in imaging forth these
\nchildren of illusion, this strange harmonic Maya, is ever adjudged by us to be
\nthe best poet. Creator or Maker, even though others may link words more sweetly
\ntogether or dovetail incidents more deftly. The parallel between this work of
\nimagination and the creation of phenomena and no less between the relation of
\nthe author to his creatures and the relation of the Conditioned Brahman to His
\ncreatures is astonishingly close in most of their details no less than in their
\ngeneral nature. Observe, for instance, that in all that multitude of figures
\nvicious and virtuous, wise and foolish, he their creator who gave them forth,
\ntheir Self and reality without whom they cannot exist, is unaffected by their
\ncrimes and virtues, irresponsible and free. The Lord…. What then ? Is this
\nanalogy anything<\/span> <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nPage – 37<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nmore than poetic fancy, or is not after all, the whole idea
\nof Brahman and Maya itself a mere poetic fancy? Perhaps, but not more fanciful
\nor unreal, in that case, than the Universe itself and its motions; for the
\nprinciple and working of the two are identical.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nLet us ask ourselves, what it is that has happened when a
\ngreat work of creation takes place and how it is that Shakes\u00adpeare’s creatures
\nare still living to us, now that Shakespeare himself is dead and turned to clay.
\nSingular indeed that Shakes-pear’s creations should be immortal and Shakespeare
\nhimself a mere short-lived conglomeration of protoplasmic cells! We notice first
\nthat Shakespeare’s dramatic creatures are only a selection or anthology from
\namong the teeming images which peopled that wonderful mind; there were thousands
\nof pictures in that gallery which were never produced for the admiration of the
\nages. This is a truth to which every creator whether he use stone or colour or
\nwords for his thought-symbols will bear emphatic testimony. There was therefore
\na subtler and vaster world in Shakespeare than the world we know him to have
\nbodied forth into tangible material of literature. Secondly we note that all
\nthese imaginations already existed in Shakespeare unmanifested and unformed
\nbefore they took shape and body; for certainly they did not come from outside.
\nShakespeare took his materials from this legend or that play, this chronicle or
\nthat history? His framework possibly, but not his creations; Hamlet did not come
\nfrom the legend or the play, nor Cassius or King Henry from the history or the
\nchronicle. No, Shakespeare contained in himself all his creatures, and therefore
\ntranscended and exceeded them; he was and is more than they or even than their
\nsum and total; for they are merely limited manifestations of him under the
\nconditions of time and space, and he would have been the same Shakespeare, even
\nif we had not a scene or a line of him to know him by; only the world of
\nimagination would have remained latent in him instead of manifest, avyakta<\/i>
\ninstead of vyakta.<\/i> Once manifest, his creatures are preserved immortally,
\nnot by print or manuscript, for the Veda has survived thousands of years without
\nprint or manuscript, \u2014 but, by words, shall we say? no, for words or sounds are
\nonly the physical<\/span> <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nPage – 38<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nsubstance, the atoms out of which their shapes are built, and
\ncan be entirely rearranged, \u2014 by translation, for example, \u2014 without our losing
\nOthello and Desdemona, just as the indwelling soul can take a new body without
\nbeing necessarily changed by the transmigration. Othello and Desdemona are
\nembodied in sounds or words, but thought is their finer and immortal substance.
\nIt is the subtler world of thought in Shakespeare from which they have been
\nselected and bodied forth in sounds, and into the world of thought they
\noriginally proceeded from a reservoir of life deeper than thought itself, from
\nan ocean of being which our analysis has not yet fathomed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nNow, let us translate these facts into the conceptions of
\nVedanta. Parabrahman self-limited in the name and form of Shakespeare, dwells
\ndeepest in him invisible to consciousness as the unmanifest world of that
\nsomething more elemental than thought (may it not be causal, elemental Will?),
\nin which Shakespeare’s imaginations lie as yet unformed and undifferentiated;
\nthen he comes to a surface of consciousness visible to Shakespeare as the
\ninwardly manifest world of subtle matter or thought in which those imaginations
\ntake subtle thought-shapes and throng; finally, he rises to a surface of
\nconsciousness visible to others besides Shakespeare as the outwardly manifest
\nworld, manifest in sound, in which a select number of these imaginations are
\nrevealed to universal view. These mighty images live immortally in our minds
\nbecause Parabrahman in Shakespeare is the same as Parabrahman in ourselves; and
\nbecause, Shakespeare’s thought is, therefore, water of the same etheric ocean as
\nthat which flows through our brains; thought, in fact, is one, although to be
\nrevealed to us, it has to be bodied forth and take separate shapes in sound
\nforms which we are accustomed to perceive and understand. Brahman-Brahma as
\nThought-Creative in Shakespeare brings them forth, Brahman-Vishnu as
\nThought-Preservative in us maintains them, Brahman-Rudra as Thought-Destructive
\nor Oblivion will one day destroy them; but in all these operations Brahman is
\none, Thought is one, even as all the Oceans are one. Shakespeare’s world is in
\nevery way a parable of ours. There is however a distinction\u2014 Shakespeare could
\nnot body forth his images into forms palpable<\/span> <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nPage – 39<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nin gross matter either because, as other religions believe,
\nthat power is denied to man, or because, as Vedantism suggests, mankind has not
\nrisen as yet to that pitch of creative force.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThere is one class of phenomena however in which this defect
\nof identity between individual Imagination and universal Avidya seems to be
\nfilled up. The mind can create under certain circumstances images surviving its
\nown dissolution or departure, which do take some kind of form in gross matter or
\nat least matter palpable to the gross senses. For the phenomena of apparitions
\nthere is an accumulating mass of evidence. Orthodox Science prefers to ignore
\nthe evidence, declines to believe that a prima facie<\/i> case has been made
\nout for investigation and shuts the gate on farther knowledge with a triple
\npolysyllabic key, mysticism, coincidence, hallucination. Nevertheless,
\ninvestigated or not, the phenomena persist in occurring. Hauntings, for example,
\nfor which there are only scattered indications in Europe, are in India owing to
\nthe more strenuous psychical force and more subtle psychical sensitiveness of
\nour physical organisation, fairly common. In these hauntings we have a signal
\ninstance of the triumph of imagination. In the majority of cases they are images
\ncreated by dying or doomed men in their agony which survive the creator, some of
\nthem visible, some audible, some both visible and audible, and in rare cases in
\nan unearthly, insufficient, but by no means inefficient manner, palpable. The
\nprocess of their creation is in essence the same as attends the creation of
\npoetry or the creation of the world; it is tapas<\/i> or tapasya, \u2014<\/i> not
\npenance as English scholars will strangely insist on translating it, but HEAT,
\nand tremendous concentration of will, which sets the whole being in a flame,
\nmasses all the faculties in closed ranks and hurls them furiously on a single
\nobjective. By tapas<\/i> the world was created; by tapas,<\/i> says the
\nMoondaca, creative Brahman is piled up, cīyate,<\/i> gathered and intensified;
\nby tapas<\/i> the rush of inspiration is effected. This tapas<\/i> may be on
\nthe material plane associated with purpose or entirely dissociated from purpose.
\nIn the case of intense horror or grief, fierce agony or terrible excitement on
\nthe verge of death it is totally dissociated from any material purpose, it is
\nwhat would be ordinarily called involuntary, but it receives from its origin an
\nintensity so unparalleled as to create <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nliving images of itself which remain and act long after the
\nsource has been dissolved or stilled by death. Such is the ultimate power of
\nimagination, though at present it cannot be fully used on the material plane
\nexcept in a random, fortuitous and totally unpurposed manner.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn the manner of its working, then. Imagination is a
\ncarefully executed replica of Avidya; and if other marks of her essential
\nidentity with Avidya are needed, they can be found. Both are, for instance,
\npreponderatingly purposeless. The workings of Imagination are often totally
\ndissociated, on the material plane at least, from any intelligible purpose and
\nthough it is quite possible that the latent part of our consciousness which
\nworks below the surface, may have sometimes a purpose of which the superficial
\npart is not aware, yet in the most ordinary workings of Imagination, an absolute
\npurposelessness is surely evident. Certainly, if not purposelessness there is
\ncolossal waste. A few hundreds of images were selected from Shakespeare’s mind
\nfor a definite artistic purpose, but the thousands that never found verbal
\nexpression, many of them with as splendid potentialities as those which did
\nmaterialise in Hamlet<\/i> and Macbeth <\/i>seem to have risen and perished
\nwithout any useful purpose. The same wastefulness is shown by Nature in her
\nworks; how many millions of lives does she not shower forth that a few may be
\nselected for the purposes of evolution! Yet when she chooses to work
\neconomically and with set purpose, she like Imagination can become a scrupulous
\nmiser of effort and show herself possessed of a magical swiftness and sureness
\nin shaping the means to the end. Neither Nature nor Imagination, therefore, can
\nbe supposed to be blind, random energies proceeding from an ungoverned force and
\nteleological only by accident. Their operations are obviously guided by an
\nIntelligence as perfectly capable, when it so wills, of purposing, planning,
\nfitting its means to its ends, economising its materials and labour as any
\nintelligent and careful workman in these days of science and method. We need
\ntherefore some explanation why this great universal Intelligence should not be,
\nas a careful workman, always, not occasionally, economical of its materials and
\nlabour. Is not the truth this that Nature is not universally and in all her
\nworks teleological, that <\/span><\/p>\n

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\npurpose is only one minor part of existence more concentrated
\nthan most and therefore more intense and triumphant, while for the greater part
\nof her universal operation we must find another explanation than the
\nteleological ? or rather will at once contain and exceed the teleological? If it
\nhad only been Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Edison, Beethoven, Napoleon,
\nSchopenhauer, the creators in poetry, art, science, music, life or thought, who
\npossessed imagination, we might then have found an use for their unused
\nimaginations in the greater preparatory richness they gave to the soil from
\nwhich a few exquisite flowers were to spring. The explanation might not be a
\ngood one, little more indeed than a poetical fancy, but it could have passed for
\nwant of a better. But every human being possesses the divine faculty, more or
\nless developed; every mind is a teeming world of imaginations; and indeed,
\nimagination, for imagination the opium-smoker’s is more vivid, fertile and
\ngorgeous than Shakespeare’s. Yet hardly in one case out of a thousand are these
\nimaginations of use to the world or anything but a practical hindrance or at
\nbest a purposeless pastime, to the dreamer. Imagination is a fundamental energy
\nof consciousness, and this marvellous, indomitable energy works on without
\ncaring whether she is put to use or misuse or no use at all; she exists merely
\nfor the sake of delight in her own existence. Here I think we touch bottom.
\nImagination is outside purpose, sometimes above, sometimes below it, sometimes
\nunited with it, because she is an inherent energy not of some great teleological
\nMaster-Workman, but of Ananda, the Bliss of existence or Will to live; and
\nbeyond this delight in existence she has no reason for being. In the same way
\nMaya, the infinite creative energy which peoples the phenomenal Universe, is
\nreally some force inherent in the infinite Will to be; and it is for this reason
\nthat her operations seem so wasteful from the standpoint of utilitarian economy;
\nfor she cares nothing about utilitarianism or economy and is only obeying her
\nfundamental impulse towards phenomenal existence, consciousness, and the
\npleasure of conscious existence. So far as she has a purpose, it is this, and
\nall the teleologic element in Nature has simply this end, to find more perfect
\nsurroundings or more exquisite means or wider opportunities or a grander gust
\nand scope for the pleasure of <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nconscious phenomenal existence. Yet the deepest bliss is
\nafter all that which she left and to which she will return, not the broken and
\npain-bounded bliss of finite life, but the perfect and infinite Bliss of
\ntranscendent undivided and illimitable consciousness. She seeks for a while to
\nfind that perfect bliss by finite means and in finite things, the heaven of the
\nsocialist or anarchist, the heaven of the artist, the heaven of knowledge, the
\nheaven of thought, or a heaven in some other world; but one day she realises
\nthat great truth, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you", and to that after all
\nshe returns. This is<\/i> Maya.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nOne metaphysical test remains to be satisfied before we can
\nbe sure that Avidya and Vidya, the outcurve and incurve of Maya, go back to
\nsomething eternally existent in the Absolute and are not created by phenomenal
\ncauses. If inherent in the Absolute, Maya must culminate in conceptions that are
\nthemselves absolute, infinite and unconditioned. Vidya tapers off into infinity
\nin the conceptions, sat<\/i> or Pure Existence, cit<\/i> or Pure
\nConsciousness, ānanda<\/i> or Pure Bliss; Avidya rises at her apex into
\nasat.<\/i> Nothingness, acetanam.<\/i> Non-sentience, nirānandam,<\/i>
\nBlisslessness or Misery. Nothingness and Non-sentience are certainly absolute
\nconceptions, infinite and unconditioned ; but the third term of the negative
\nTrinity gives us pause. Absolute pain, blank infinite unconditioned and
\nunrelieved Misery is a conception which Reason shies at and Consciousness
\nrefuses, violently refuses to admit as a possibility. A cypher if you like to
\nmake metaphysical calculations with, but by itself sheer nought, nowhere
\ndiscoverable as existing or capable of existence. Yet if infinite misery could
\nbe, it would in the very act of being merge into Nothingness, it would lose its
\nname in the very moment of becoming absolute. As a metaphysical conception we
\nmay then admit Absolute Blisslessness as a valid third term of the negative
\nTrinity, not as a real or possible state, for no one of the three is a real or
\npossible state. The unreality comes home to us most in the third term, just as
\nreality comes home to us most in the third term of the positive Trinity, because
\nBliss and its negative blisslessness appeal to us on the material plane vividly
\nand sensibly; the others touch us more indirectly, on the psychic and causal
\nplanes. Yet the nothingness<\/span> <\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\nPage – 43<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nof nothingness is taught us by Science, and the unreality of
\nnon-sentience will become clear when the nature of sentience is better
\nunderstood.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIt will be said that the escape from pleasure as well as pain
\nis after all the common goal of Buddhism and Vedanta. True, escape from limited
\npleasure which involves pain, escape from pain which is nothing but the
\nlimitation of pleasure. Both really seek absolute absence of limitation which is
\nnot a negative condition, but a positive infinity and its unspeakable, unmixed
\nbliss; their escape from individuality does not lead them into nothingness, but
\ninto infinite existence, their escape from sensation does not purpose the
\nannihilation of sentience but pure absolute consciousness as its goal. Not
\nasat, acetanam, nirānandam,<\/i> but saccidānandam<\/i> is the great Reality to
\nwhich Jivatman rises to envisage, the tat<\/i> or sole Thing-in-itself to whom
\nby the force of Vidya he tends ever to return. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 44<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FIVE Maya: The Energy of The Absolute   MAYA then is the fundamental fact in the Universe, her dualistic system of balanced pairs of opposites…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-12-the-upanishad-volume-12","wpcat-14-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}