over it, play for a moment, then vanish. It is the same eternal blue." Why do we see wickedness? There was a stump of a tree in the dark at night. A thief came that way and said, "That is a policeman." A young man waiting for his beloved came that way and thought that was his sweetheart. A child who had been told ghost stories came out and began to shriek that it was a ghost. But it was the stump of a tree. We see the world as we are. Put on the table a bag of gold and let a baby be here. Let a thief come and take the gold. Would the baby know it was stolen? That which we have inside we see outside. The baby has no thief inside and sees no thief outside. So with all knowledge. Do not talk of the wickedness of the world and all its sins. Weep that you are bound to see wickedness yet. Weep that you are bound to see sin everywhere, and if you want to help the world do not condemn it. Do not weaken it all the more. For what is sin and what is misery, and what are all these, but the results of weakness? The world has been made weaker and weaker every day by such teachings. Men are taught from childhood that they are weak and are sinners. Teach them that they are all glorious children of immortality, even those who are the weakest in manifestation. Let positive, strong, helpful thought, enter into their brains from very childhood and not weakening and paralyzing thought. Lay yourselves open to those thoughts. Tell your own minds *T am He, I am He." Let it ring day and night in your minds like a song, and at the point of death declare: "I am He." That is the truth, the infinite strength of the world is yours. Drive out the super- 50 JNANA YOGA stition that has covered your minds. Let us be brave. Know the truth and practise the truth. The goal may be distant, but awake, arise, and stop not till that goal is reached.
MAYA AND ILLUSION MAYA AND ILLUSION Almost all of you have heard of the word Maya- Generally it is used, though I am afraid very wrongly, to denote illusion, or delusion, or some such thing, but as the theory of Maya forms, as it were, one of the pillars upon which the Vedanta rests, it is neces- sary that it should be properly understood, and I ask a little patience of you, for there is great danger of being misunderstood in expounding the theory of mdyd. The oldest idea of mdyd that we can find in Vedic literature is where this word is used in the sense of delusion, but then the real theory had not been reached. We find such passages as "Indra through his mdyd assumed various forms." Here it is true the word mdyd means something like magic. So we find various other passages, always taking the same meaning. The word mdyd then drops out of sight altogether. In the meanwhile the idea is devel- oping. Later the question is raised, why cannot we know the secret of the Universe, and the answer given is very significant. "Because we talk in vain, and^ because we are satisfied with the things of the senses, and because we are running after desires; therefore we, as it were, cover this reality with a mist." Here the word mdyd is not used at all, but we get one idea, 51 52 JNANA YOGA that the cause of our ignorance is a kind of mist that has come between us and the truth. Much later on, in one of the latest Upanishads, we find the word maya, reappearing, but by this time a good deal of transformation has been worked upon it, a mass of new meaning has by this time attached itself to the word. Theories have been propounded and repeated; others have been taken up, until at last the idea of mdyd has become a fixed quantity. We read in the Svetas'vatara Upanishad ''Know nature to be mdyd and the mind, the ruler of this mdyd is the Lord Himself." Coming to our philosophers, we find that this word mdyd has been manipulated in various fashions, until we come to the great S'ankaracharya. The theory of mdyd was manipulated a little by the Buddhists, too, but in their hands it became very much like what is caled Idealism, and that is the meaning that is now generally given to the word mdyd. When the Hindu says the world is mdyd, at once people get the idea that the world is an illusion. This interpretation has some basis, as coming through the Buddhistic philosophers, because there was one section of them who did not believe in the external world at all. But the mdyd of the Vedanta, in its last developed form, is neither idealism nor realism, nor is it theory. It is a simple statement of facts — what we are, and what we see around us. As I have told you before, the minds of the people from whom the Vedas came were intent upon following principles, discovering principles. They had no time to work upon details, or to wait for them; they wanted to go deep into the heart of things. Something MAYA AND ILLUSION 53 beyond was calling them, as it were, and they could not wait. We find that, scattered all through the Upanishads and other books the details of subjects which we now call modern sciences, are often very erroneous, but, at the same time, their principles are correct. For instance, the idea of ether, which is one of the latest theories of modern science, is to be found in our ancient literature in forms much more devel- oped than is the modern scientific theory of ether to-day; but it was in principle; when they tried to demonstrate the workings of that principle, they made many mistakes. The theory of the all-pervading life principle, of which all life in this universe is but a differing manifestation, was understood in Vedic times; it is found in the Brahmanas. There is a long hymn in the Samhita in praise of Prana, of which all life is but a manifestation. By the bye, it may interest some of you to know that there are in the Vedic phil- osophy theories about the origin of life on this earth very similar to those which have been advanced by some modern European scientists. You, of course, all know that there is a theory that life came from other planets. It is a settled doctrine with some Vedic philosophers that life comes in this way from the moon.
Coming to the principles, we find these Vedic thinkers very courageous and wonderfully bold in pro- pounding large and generalized theories. The answer which they gave as a solution of the mystery of this Universe from the external world was a general one. The detailed workings of modern science do not bring the question one step nearer to solution, because the 54 J NANA YOGA principles have failed. If the theory of ether failed in ancient times to give a solution of the mystery of the Universe, working out the details of that ether theory will not bring us much nearer to the truth. If the theory of all-pervading life failed as a theory of this Universe, it would not mean anything more if worked out in detail, for the details do not change the prin- ciple of the Universe. What I mean is, that in their inquiry into the principle, the Hindu thinkers were as bold, and in some cases much bolder, than the moderns. They made some of the grandest general- izations that have yet been reached, and some still remain in India as theories, which modern science has yet to get even as theories. For instance, they not only arrived at the ether theory, but went beyond and classified mind also, as a still more rarefied ether. Beyond that they found a still more rarefied ether. Yet there is no solution, it does not answer the prob- lem. No amount of knowledge of the external world would answer the problem. We find here we were just beginning to know a little; wait a few thousand years and we shall get the solution. '*No," says the Vedantist, for he has proved beyond all doubt that the mind is limited; that it cannot go beyond certain limits; we cannot go beyond time, space and the law of causation., As no man can jump out of his own self, so no man can go beyond the limits that have been put upon us by the laws of time and space. Every attempt to solve the law of causation, time and space, will be futile, because the very attempt would have to be made by taking for granted the existence of these three. It cannot be. What form does the MAYA AND ILLUSION 55 statement of the existence of the world take then? "This world has no existence." What is meant thereby? That it has no existence-absolute. It exists only as relative to my mind, to yours, and to the minds of everybody else. We see this world with the five senses. If we had another sense, we would see in it something else. If we had still another sense, it would appear as something yet different. It has, therefore, no real existence; that unchangeable, im- movable, infinite existence it has not. Nor can it be called non-existence, seeing that it exists, and we have to work in and through it. It is a mixture of exist- ence and non-existence.
Coming from abstractions to the common everyday details of our lives, we find that our whole life is a mixture of this contradiction of existence and non- existence. There is this contradiction in knowledge. It seems that man can know everything, if he only wants to know; but before he has gone more than a few steps he finds an adamantine wall which he cannot move. All his work is in a circle, and he cannot go beyond that circle. The problems which are nearest and dearest to him, are impelling him and calling on him day and night for a solution, but he cannot solve them, because he cannot go beyond his intellect. And yet the desire is implanted strongly in him. Still we know that the only good is to be obtained by con- trolling and checking these impulses. With every breath, every impulse of our heart asks us to be selfish. At the same time, there is some power beyond us which says that it is unselfishness alone which is good. Every child is a born optimist; he is dreaming golden 56 J NANA YOGA dreams. In youth he becomes still more optimistic. It is hard for a young man to believe that there is such a thing as death, such a thing as defeat or degra- dation. Old age comes, and life is a mass of ruin. Dreams have vanished into air, and the old man has become a pessimist. Thus we are going on, from one extreme to the other, buffeted by Nature, without hope, without limit, without knowing the bounds, without knowing where we are going. It reminds me of a celebrated song written in the Lalita Vistara, in the biography of Buddha. Buddha was born, says the book, as the saviour of mankind, but he forgot himself in the luxuries of his palace, and some angels came to sing a song to rouse him up, and the burden of the whole song is, we are floating down this river, continually changing, with no stop and no rest. So are all our lives, going on and on without knowing any rest. What are we to do? The man who has enough to eat and drink is an optimist, and he avoids all mention of misery, for it frightens him. Tell not to him the sorrows and the suiferings of the world; go to him and tell that it is all good. "Yes, I am safe," says he; "look at me, I have a nice house to live in. I do not care for cold; therefore do not bring these horrid pictures before me." But, on the other hand, there are others dying of cold and hunger. Go and teach them that it is all good and they will refuse to believe you. There may be a man who has suffered tremendously in this life, and he will not hear of anything joyful, of anything beautiful, of anything that is good. "Frighten everybody," says he; "why should it be that anybody should laugh while MAYA AND ILLUSION 57 I am weeping? I must make them all weep with me, for I am miserable; that is my only consolation." Thus we are going on, between optimism and pes- simism. Then there is the tremendous fact of death. The whole world is going to death; everything is dying. All our progress, our vanities, our reforms, our luxuries, our knowledge have that one end — death. That is all that is certain. Cities come and go, empires rise and fall, planets break into pieces and crumble into dust, to be blown about by the atmospheres of other planets. Thus it is going on from time without beginning. What is the goal? Death is the goal of everything. Death is the goal of life, of beauty, of power, of wealth, of virtue, too. Saints die and sinners die, kings die and beggars die. They are all going to death, and yet this tremendous clinging on to life exists. Somehow, we do not know why, we have to cling on to life; we cannot give it up. And this is mdyd!
The mother is nursing a child with great care; all her soul, her life, is in that child. The child grows, becomes a man, and perchance becomes a blackguard and a brute, kicks her and beats her every day; and yet the mother clings on to the child, and when her reason awakes, she covers it up with the idea of love. She little thinks it is not love, it is something which has got hold of her nerves, she cannot shake it off; however she may try, she cannot shake off the bondage she has — and this is mdyd! We are all after the golden fleece. Every one of us thinks that this will be ours, but very few of them are in the world. Every reasonable man sees that the chance of getting 58 J NANA YOGA it is perhaps one in twenty millions, yet every one must struggle for it, and the majority never get anything. And this is may a! Death is stalking day and night over this earth of ours, but at the same time we always believe that we shall live eternally. A ques- tion was once asked of King Yudhisthira, "What is the most wonderful thing on this earth?" And the King replied, "Every day people are dying around us, and yet men think they will never die." And this is may a! This tremendous contradiction, pleasure suc- ceeding pain, and pain pleasure, seems quite natural to us. A reformer arises and wants to remedy the evils that are existing in a certain nation; and before they have been remedied a thousand other evils have arisen in another place. It is an old house that is falling; patch it up in one place, the ruin extends to another corner. In India our reformers cry and preach against the evils which enforced widowhood brings to Indian women. In the West non-marriage is the great evil. Help the unmarried on one side; they are suffering. Help the widows on the other; they are suffering. Like the old rheumatism in the body, drive it from the head and it goes to the body, drive it from there and it goes to the feet. Some people become richer than others; learning, and wealth, and culture become their exclusive possession. Reformers cry that these treasures should not be in the hands of a select few; that they should be dis- tributed, that all ought to share them. More happi- ness might possibly be brought to the masses in the sense of physical happiness, but, perhaps, as culture comes, this physical happiness vanishes. Which way MAYA AND ILLUSION 59 shall we go, for the knowledge of happiness brings the knowledge of unhappiness? The least bit of material prosperity that we enjoy is elsewhere causing the same amount of misery. This is the state of things. The young, perhaps, do not see it clearly, but those who have lived long enough and those who have struggled enough will understand it. And this is may a! These things are going on day and night, and to find a solution of this problem would be impos- sible. Why should it be thus? This is an impossible question to answer, because the question cannot be logically formulated. There is neither how nor why in this. We must grasp it before we can answer it; we must know what it is before we can answer. But we cannot make it steady one moment, it eludes our grasp every minute. We are like blind machines. We struggle to find a solution of a problem that incessantly changes; we have to do this, we cannot help ourselves. And this too is may a! I stand up and lecture to you, and you sit and listen; we cannot help it. And you will go home, and some of you may have learned a little, while, perhaps, others will think this man has talked nonsense. I will go home thinking I have been lecturing. And this is may a!
Maya is a statement of the facts of this Universe, of how it is going on. People generally get fright- ened when these things are told to them. Bold we must be. Hiding facts is not the way to find a remedy. As the hare, you all know, hunted down by dogs, puts its head down and thinks itself safe, so, when we run into optimism or pessimism, we are doing just like the hare, but that is not a remedy.
6o J NANA YOGA On all sides there are objections and these objec- tions, you may remark, are generally from people who possess more of the good things of life, or of enjoyments. In this country (England) it is very difficult to become a pessimist. Every one tells me how wonderfully the world is going on, how pro- gressive, but what he himself is, is his own world. Old questions arise; Christianity must be the only true religion of the world, because Christian nations are prosperous. But that assertion contradicts itself, because the prosperity of the Christian nations depends on the misfortune of non-Christian nations. There must be some to prey upon. Suppose the whole world were to become Christian, then the Christian nations would become poor, because there would be no non- Christian nations for them to prey upon. Thus the argument would kill itself. Animals are living upon the plants, men upon animals, and worst of all upon each other, the strong upon the weak; this is going on everywhere, and this is may a! What solution do you apply to this? We hear every day of such and such explanations, and are told that in the long run it will be all good. Suppose it be possible — which is very much to be doubted — ^but let us take it for granted, why should there be this diabolical way of doing good? Why cannot good be done through good instead of through these diabolical methods? The descendants of the human beings^ of to-day will be happy; but why must there be all this suffering so now? This is mdyd; there is no solution to it.
Again, we often hear that it is one of the features of evolution that it eliminates evil, and this evil being MAYA AND ILLUSION 6l continually eliminated from the world, at last there will remain only good and good alone. That is very nice to hear, and it panders to our vanities, at least with those of us who have enough of this world's goods, who have not a hard struggle to face every day, and are not being crushed under the wheels of this so-called evolution. It is very good and comfort- ing, indeed, to such fortunate ones. The common herds may suffer, but they do not care; let them die, they are of no consequence. Very good, yet this argu- ment is fallacious from beginning to end. It takes for granted, in the first place, that manifested good and evil in this world are certain quantities. In the second place, it makes a still worse assumption, that the amount of good is an increasing quantity, and the amount of evil is a decreasing quantity. So, if evil is being eliminated in this way by what they call evolu- tion, there will come a time when this evil will be eliminated and what remains will be all good. Very ( easy to say, but can it be proved that evil is a lessening quantity? Is it not increasing all the time? Take the man who lives in a forest, who does not know even how to cultivate the mind, cannot read a book, has not heard of such a thing as writing. Run a bayonet through that man and take it out, and soon he is all right again, while we, who are more cultured, get scratched in the streets and die. Machines are making things cheap, making for progress and evolu- tion, but are crushing down millions, that one may become rich, making one richer than others, and thousands at the same time poorer and poorer, making slaves of whole masses of human beings. That way 62 J NANA YOGA it is going on. 'The animal man has enjoyments only in the senses. If he does not get enough to eat, he is miserable, or if something happens to his body, he is miserable. In the senses, both his misery and his happiness begin and end. As soon as this man pro- gresses, as soon as the horizon of his happiness increases, his horizon of unhappiness increases pro- portionately. The man in the forest does not know what it is to be jealous, to be in the Law Courts, to pay taxes regularly, what it is to be blamed by society, to be watched day and night by the most tremendous tyranny that human diabolism ever invented, prying into the secrets of every human heart. He does not know how man becomes a thousand times more diabol- ical than any other animal, with all his vain knowledge, and with all his pride. Thus it is that, as we emerge out of the senses we develop higher powers of enjoy- ment, and, at the same time, we have to develop higher powers of suffering, too. The nerves, on the other hand, are becoming finer and capable of suffer- ing more. Often, in every society, we find that the ignorant, common man, if he is abused, does not feel much, but he feels a good thrashing. But the gentle- man cannot bear a single word of abuse, he has become so finely nerved. Misery has increased with his sus- ceptibility to happiness. This does not go much to prove the philosopher's case. As we increase our power to be happy, we are always increasing our power to suffer, and in my humble opinion, if we advance in our power to become happy in arithmetical progression, we shall progress, on the other hand, in the power to become miserable in geometrical progres- ^M^fU, MAYA AND ILLUSION 63 sion. ") We who are progressing know that the more we progress the more avenues are opened to pain as well as to pleasure. And this is may a!
Thus we find that mdyd is not a theory for the explanation of the world; it is simply a statement of facts as they exist. The very basis of our being is contradiction, everywhere we have to move through this tremendous contradiction, that wherever there is good there must also be evil, and wherever there is evil there must be some good, wherever there is life death must follow it as its shadow, and every one who smiles will have to weep, and whoever weeps must smile also. Nor can this state of things be remedied. We may verily imagine that there will be a place where there will be only good, and no evil, that there will be places where we shall only smile and never weep. Such a thing is impossible in the very nature of things, for the conditions will be the same. Wherever there is the power of producing a smile in us, there lurks the power of producing tears in our eyes. Wherever there is the power of pro- ducing happiness in us, there lurks somewhere the power of making us miserable.