Is Deceit Part of Moh?
Question
Sister, my first question is about this idea of moh that keeps coming up again and again. Generally, when we studied the Gita, we understood moh mostly in the sense of ignorance—in all its different forms. So, in a general way, moh means ignorance. Ignorance meaning what? That same constant “mine, mine” and attachment to what I call “mine.” So this “mine, mine” and the attachment to what is mine is our ignorance, our delusion, our foolishness—you can call it by any of these words. This is the usual meaning we have taken. But just now, in the explanation you were giving, you mentioned many other aspects like deceit, trickery, and so on. So my question is: do these also come under the meaning of moh, or should we see them as its “siblings”—other vikaras that are connected but separate?
Answer
No, it should be understood this way: Ravana does not go directly to face Ram. He tells Maricha, “You go, take on a deceitful form, and wander before Sita. She’ll become fascinated by you and will want you. She’ll tell her husband to bring you—dead or alive. You keep leading Ram away, because I cannot face him directly. When Sita is left alone in the hermitage, I’ll carry her off.” So this Ravana, symbol of body-ego (deh-abhimaan), wants to abduct Sita—our pure thinking. How will he take it? Through deceit. When we don’t do something openly and do it roundabout, that’s deceit. So Maricha is deceitful too—he takes the false form of the golden deer. That golden deer never really exists. That is moh—Maricha is the moh-vikara, one of our own demonic tendencies, appearing as a deceptive deer. Both Ravana and Maricha act through deceit: Ravana deceives so he can carry Sita away when Ram and Lakshman are gone, and Maricha deceives by appearing as the golden deer. So, moh performs deceit; moh itself is not deceit. Moh is attachment to “mine, mine.” But this moh works on behalf of ego—it performs deceit for Ravana. Ego (abhimaan) uses moh to make us act deceitfully. So deceit isn’t a separate brother or sister of moh.
Look at how we fall because of moh: “My son—so I must do this,” and we end up doing wrong. Or, “If I lose this job, I’ll be ruined,” and we do wrong out of attachment. So moh makes us act wrongly—it distorts our pure thinking. This is what moh does: it spoils our thinking. We all know this by experience: when we come under moh, the first thing that goes wrong is our thinking. If moh does not arise, our thinking stays pure. Moh means: “This is mine, and I’m so attached to it that I must have it.” Suppose four people apply for a post, and I feel, “I must get it at any cost.” Then my thinking becomes distorted. But if I’m free of that attachment—“If I get it, fine; if not, fine”—my thinking remains pure. So moh attacks our thinking, it corrupts pure thought. In the story too, Maricha, as the false golden deer, attacks Sita—our pure thinking. We can apply this to ourselves: when I fall under moh, what happens to me?
The most important thing is: moh never attacks directly—it comes in an attractive form. For example, “My son has to travel far; he has no ticket. Somehow, by bribing someone, I want to get one.” What attractive form has moh taken here? “He’s my son; he’ll suffer.” Under that emotional thought, we do wrong. Moh always attacks us through an appealing form.