Somewhere it means an illusion that bewilders our knowledge or distorts our knowledge. It may mean the executive force of the Divine which has created the world. Kindly clarify.
All begins with our conception of the Divine or the origin and the purpose of creation. According to the experience of Vedic Rishis, the Divine Origin of creation is an infinite existence, infinite consciousness, infinite delight, Sacchidananda. Being Infinite, it is Timeless and Spaceless.
Now this one Sacchidananda willed to be Many, so that the Delight inherent within it can be multiplied. This is possible only is there can be many, many, finite forms that are stable enough to remain distinct, each manifesting some aspect or the other of the delight or the Ananda inherent in the Divine. Maya is the power of the Lord that creates these countless finite forms, each with some unique aspect of the One Sacchidananda.
It is the Maya of the Lord, as Sri Krishna says in the Gita. It has a twofold action, one in which the infinite sees the finite as part and parcel of itself. It is somewhat like a man sees his body, his hands and legs, etc not as something separate from himself but as parts of himself, each serving a purpose to express something within him. This is called Vidyamayi Maya, where the One is fully conscious of the Many, each as a portion of oneself.
But the other aspect of this same Maya is when the finite forgets its Oneness. It takes itself to be separate and independent. This is Avidyamayi Maya. Here the finger does not know that it belongs to the person even though all its power of action comes from the same Source. Here the finite forgets that it is part of the Infinite. It is this that gives rise to conflict and strife when the sense of separativeness and forgetfulness of the whole is complete. It is this that leads to delusion and distortion. This does not mean that there is nothing and we are simply imagining or hallucinating, – the common misunderstanding of the word. It simply means that the deeper Truth gets distorted and gives rise to various forms of pleasure and pain.
However, the solution is not getting rid of Maya, if that were even possible, since it is the Maya of the Lord Himself. The solution is to connect with the Vidyamayi Maya and live thereby as the Lord lives, conscious of the Oneness while playing with finite forms and aspects of the One as the Many.
This is most beautifully described in the Isha Upanishad.
Maya therefore is not a creator of unreal illusory forms that somehow seem real to us. It is rather a power that limits the Infinite and thereby creates forms that are limited and finite. The forms are real because they come out of the Real and are representations of the Real. However, when the forms itself experiences itself as cut off and separate from the Infinite, then a certain degree of distortion is introduced in the play, which becomes itself disorderly. But as soon as the consciousness of the individual contained in the forms joins with the Infinite, the distortions begins to be replaced with order and alignment.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
