Maya: The Big Pot in the Big Picture
By Marilynn Stark
Any reader of Freedom Source may want to make sense of the metaphysics that permeates the poem so as to become more deeply acquainted with Advaita Vedanta. Thus, to explicate in the abstract the connection between action and time would enrich your understanding.
As we view action in the world about us through our ability to cognize, we perceive a definite relationship between cause and effect. For example, a boy throws a ball, it hits the ground and bounces, he expects to catch it on the bounce, and he does so. He has expended effort, predicted its result, and acted accordingly. He knows of the law of gravity just by being alive in it, so he understands that his timing must be perfect on the rebound, or he will miss the ball and have to retrieve it in a different time frame, and therefore different place, since it will have moved past the locus defined by the first bounce. This is causality. The individual tends to extend the logic associated with the causal nature of the physical universe to the less empirical side of reality, as well. Newton’s Laws describe the mechanical behavior of objects, and so free will as exerted in the world of actions involving abstract values will perceive time to be as directly associated with those actions as it is in the mechanical sense.
But time has a more extensive nature than what it appears to have when bouncing a ball and catching it. For time arises out of the creation of the entire physical world, and as such is itself born from timelessness. The inquiry arises inevitably that this means that the word ‘beginning’ when applied to that conceptual framework of time as born of timelessness, is oxymoronic unto that framework; that indeed if the essence of time is timelessness, then time never began. Therefore, the creation always was, and should therefore not even be called the creation, since it was never made or created, it always just was. The creation just is, therefore. But if the continuum called time allows us to predict accurately events in the physical world which obey the laws of nature known as physics, then time as it gives us an understanding of the creation by such intuitive and empirical measure must have some validity as to tense. How to solve this dichotomy, this seeming contradiction, is a tall task. There is plenty of evidence that time’s grip is real enough — such as the simple fact that this very world of the Earth feeds from the sun, and the sun has a finite amount of hydrogen and helium which to expend for the purpose of supporting our life as a planet. This implies that an end to the world exists in time. So if the creation comes forth in time, since what has an end must have a beginning first, then time also has to come from somewhere conceptually. It can only come from timelessness in the most raw sense. Therefore, something must be hidden to our empirical senses which speaks through time and which escapes our direct awareness. We perceive causality from second to second. Is there a hypostasis, or underlying feature, to that bouncing ball, for instance, which goes beyond the time we know and by which we perform actions?
That question as to the validity of causality is difficult to prove from the close empirical events of a bouncing ball. However, if we can refute time as being the true source of cause in a larger sense metaphysically, and thus regard it as a continuum for sheer measurement in the objective world, then we will have understood time enough to derive its relationship to action. That understanding of the relationship of time to action in the sense of karma, whereby results of actions appear across time beyond the direct discernment of a given discrete lifetime, can then be accepted by an inquirer; and if such a time stretch as that has the power to affect our lives so momentously, wherein we are living as according to past-life fruits of actions —karma-phala–then we will review the sense of duty-mindedness we keep in our daily lives with quite a different honor. Indeed, we will realize now a discernment of mind founded upon a new objectivity. This can mean essentially discovering more of the Self in an active, living and more profoundly meaningful sense. Then what of this logical circle created heretofore, wherein if the world ends by a finite limitation of chemical elements located in the sun, then that end of the world implies that it had a beginning; and since it had a beginning, then time must also have had a beginning. But if the substance of the world came out of nowhere, and returns to nothingness through finite exhaustion to its own limit, then time must also end. But if matter such as that of which the world is made has a beginning and an end, and came ex nihil, then time, in which the world is invested, and against which mechanical and karmic actions are known and measured, must also have a beginning and end.
So from whence did time ever arrive? From timelessness came time. Timelessness must be the hypostasis of time, just as the creation was born in time out of timelessness. But if timelessness is the truest nature of time, then to say that the world ever began is a contradiction, then again, in terms. And so the circular argument will go. What is the way out? The term is maya. With maya causality stops that circular logic, for no longer are we reviewing the empirical realm of a simple ball bouncing. Rather, we are bridging the empirical realm which is relative in nature to the absolute realm whose universal attribute may also include that which is unmanifest. Thus, it is not proper logic to reason from the relative to the absolute in the same way that we reason from the absolute to the relative as there is a catch in it which may escape notice due to the intellectual lure of the vast category of the absolute. We are trying to compare what may be unmanifest — such as calling time as non-existent when the creation has not begun — with the manifest. It is the manifest where we can measure and even study time through such tools as archaeology and astronomy besides through Newtonian physics.
Maya solves this breach of logic. For maya is the declaration of illusion as present in the world by its own nature and design. By illusion a distinction is made between what is real–sat–and what is seemingly real–mithya. Maya thereby demonstrates that categorical divisions conceptually which support direct logic no longer hold. Such categories would include existence and non-existence. Maya leads the thinker to see through the relative realm. It is through the relative realm where the expression of the absolute is there as exactly ‘what is,’ and that means ‘being’ only as ‘beingness,’ and not being as compared to non-existent. Rather, the sheer existence which is the absolute remains distinct from that which it forms. And this is maya, which is above the question of existence/non-existence, much as a pot is made of clay, yet the clay is not qualified by the pot.
Rather, the clay is hypostatic to the pot, which means that its category is non-comparative to the pot. The pot could not exist without the clay and still be that pot we see empirically. It is dependent upon the clay for its existence. Contrariwise, the clay does not depend upon the pot for its existence. So existence and non-existence do not co-exist in the dint of maya as maya expresses in the creation. Maya rather expresses ‘what is.’ This is called effect. We can infer the effect that is maya as knowledge, activity and inertia which correspond to the three gunas, or qualities, which characterize maya. These gunas are sattva, rajas and tamas, and they cannot be seen, are unmanifest in maya, and can be inferred evidentially or in the manifest as knowing, activity and dullness. Action is the same as inaction. Maya cannot be both existent as sat and non-existent, or asat. Why? Think of it : these are two different categories which cannot be seen as equivalent in one place. Maya rather answers as to cause, and maya is how causality is refuted. So in the unmanifest, maya is of the three gunas; in the effect, or through the expression of the power of maya now manifest, the three gunas are observed as knowledge, action and inertia. If one is endowed with detachment from action and is thereby sattvic, then one is knowing, and action in that sense is the same as inaction. Even though one may express in the physical world by concerting action, even by knowing the universal Truth, satyam, and having distinguished that satyam from mithya, or maya, one is above the three gunas thereby. Then it follows that such a realized yogi or yogini, being nistraigunyah, or transcendent to the three gunas, will perform action with such a detachment which arises out of the sattva, out of knowing, that action for that knowing one is the same as inaction. This itself refutes the very causality which was posed in our inquiry earlier in this treatise. It is not so much that we do not plan action — we do, and this mimics cause; so rather, the ultimate source of action must be from a causal plane which refers to the penultimate will of Ishvara in all action period. We do exert free will as prayer. That qualifies our actions. If the quality is traced to maya, as was just accomplished heretofore, then cause is more of a theological consideration than a question of physics or of astrophysics, referring in astrophysics to the question of the beginning of the universe, etc. The giant contradiction which may clinch the argument one last time, an argument that refutes causality in a metaphysical realm, can be stated as follows: brahman, or the creation, is as total as total can be. Therefore, should brahman include cause? There is a contradiction in that precept of cause being included in brahman directly since brahman is accepted as being beyond time or even the question of time (is the same in all three periods of time), and change as we know change is measured against time. Maya is that power through which change occurs, and is the karana-shariram, or causal body, it is sheer cause. Maya must be sheer cause since it has no names or forms. Therefore, in summary, to quote Swami Dayananda, “The soul of time is timelessness;” and even though the world may have a beginning and an end, the true cause which connects this relative world of time and place to the universal, absolute picture known as brahman is unmanifest, is maya, who exerts her cause invisibly as the qualities of the three gunas of herself express. This expression is effect only. The cause is not directly perceived, it is only inferential, and since a knower of brahman is nistraigunyah, beyond the three gunas, knowledge, or sattva, will further prove the very equivalence of action and inaction. Therefore, the results of actions, of karma, which occur across lifetimes together and thereby encompass time immeasurable to us, are explained as born of the karana-sharira. That which imparts change in this physical world, including the bouncing ball at the gross level or the creation of the world itself in its cosmic frame of reference, is neither part of the whole, of brahman, nor separate from brahman. The pot depends on the clay for its existence, its form; the clay does not depend on the pot — it could just as well have been molded into a statue instead. The clay is satyam, universal Truth, the pot is mithya, seemingly real, maya is mithya. Parama is a Sanskrit word which refers to anything which is beyond the limitations of space, time or object. Isha means Lord. Paramesha is the Lord, who is beyond these three limitations of space, time or object. Maya is dependent upon the Lord, upon paramesha, whereas paramesha or brahman is not dependent upon maya. The world as we know it can come or go, and brahman does not attach to or depend on that fact, event or reality and is not qualified by it as a contingency; maya is the connective cause, rather, to the world — she is that which we infer as effect only. This is a difficult leap to make, since if there is a personal at-oneness between the jivanmukta and isha, that would imply a supplication for protection, for cover, in any event of mass destruction. For the confines of this argument, however, the compassion of the Lord is not in question, for that would certainly remain in and through the argument in the form of enlightenment unto the mysterious concept of causality. Indeed, if one grasps maya, then one has a greater awareness of the nature of the power of isha. In short, maya is the big pot in the big picture.
