Maya

Maya is the power by which the one reality appears as the many: the veil of appearance that makes the changing world look complete in itself and hides what lies behind it. It is often translated as “illusion”, but that word misses much of what Indian thinkers meant.

What maya means

The word is linked to ideas of measuring and making, and in early texts it means a wonderful or magical power. Later it comes to describe the creative power through which the infinite shows itself as a world of names and forms. Its work has two sides: it covers the truth, and it projects the appearance, just as dim light on a rope can both hide the rope and make us see a snake.

Maya in the Bhagavad Gita

In 7.14 Krishna calls his divine maya, woven of the gunas, hard to cross, and says that those who take refuge in him cross it. 7.25 adds that he is not revealed to everyone, being veiled by his yogamaya. In 4.6 he says that he takes birth through his own maya, and 18.61 pictures beings turning as if mounted on a machine by maya. The theme is found in Chapter 7.

How the schools read maya

Shankara’s Advaita treats maya as neither wholly real nor wholly unreal: the world is dependent on brahman and ends as an object of ignorance when brahman is known. Ramanuja and Madhva, who stress the reality of the world, read maya as God’s wonderful power or as the working of nature, not as falsehood. So the word needs care before it is translated simply as “illusion”.

Crossing maya

The Gita offers more than one way across: knowledge (jnana), devotion (bhakti) and refuge in the Lord (sharanagati). What lies behind maya is brahman, and seeing through it is bound up with moksha and the way of the avatar.

Maya appears in the Upanishads, in Shankara's Advaita, and in the Bhagavad Gita, notably in verses 4.6, 7.14 and 7.25.