Maya, Attraction, and Ignorance: Are They Different or the Same?

Question

I have a confusion. This thing about attraction and maya… Is it that attraction comes because of maya, or that maya comes because of attraction? Or are they mutually dependent on each other?

Answer

Maya by itself is nothing. In its real sense, maya has no independent existence at all. Our ignorance itself is what we are calling maya. We have just given it the name “maya.” And the one who especially spread and used this term a lot is Adi Shankaracharya, because he employed the word maya extensively. But in truth, maya is nothing separate—our ignorance alone is maya.

Who is attacking us? There isn’t some separate entity called “Maya” sitting somewhere and attacking us. The thing that attacks us is our ignorance. And what is the very first ignorance? The first and root ignorance is: I do not understand my real nature. I don’t recognize my true Self. That itself is maya. Call it ignorance or maya—we are free to use whichever word we like.

You mentioned attraction along with it, so let’s see that. When we explain something, we can only use one word at a time, but from the standpoint of meaning: ignorance, maya, avidya, delusion—all these words are pointing to the same basic thing. In the Gita, Bhagavan Krishna keeps using the word “mudha” (deluded, foolish). He doesn’t even repeatedly use the word “ajnaani” (ignorant); again and again he says, “That person is mudha,” the one who takes himself to be the body. Mudha means ignorant; ignorance means maya; it is also called avidya.

In any composition, it depends on the poet or writer which particular word they choose to emphasize. Here, in the Ramayana, we are dealing with a story—a visual scene is created before us: Maricha in deer form is roaming around, Sita is watching, and she feels a strong attraction. That attraction is arising because of ignorance. Sita is not seeing the deer as it truly is; she is not seeing that it is deceit. So attraction itself is born from delusion.

Take the example of mrig-marichika (mirage), another word linked with Maricha. What does it mean? There is no water on the ground; the sun’s rays are reflecting, but the deer feels, “There is water here.” It sees water and runs toward it. It is attracted to that “water”. When it reaches there, it finds there is nothing. Now, what do we call this? We can call it illusion, or attraction, or mirage. These are all words for the same phenomenon. In English they say “mirage effect.” We simply have many words—maya, illusion, ignorance, avidya, moha—their core meaning is very close. You can point out very fine, subtle differences if you like, but for our purpose here, whether you say ignorance or maya or avidya, there is no real difference in essence.