What I Find to be 'Maya'

[satay]

Namaskar Santosh,
I was enjoying your sweet post but then I ran into this...

The original constitutional position of jiva is also sat-Chid-Ananda. However, the jiva out of its foolishness develops false ego and deviates from that and falls from spiritual world into material world and and is under the spell of Maya.

Earlier in your post you said that

Where do Jivas come from? Jivas come from the Supreme Lord. The Supreme Lord emanates it, that's why He is called our Creator and we are His creation.

I am puzzled. How does something that emanates from the Supreme Lord can do something 'foolish'? Are you saying that Lord is the source of this Foolishness? or is there any other source that injects this foolishness into the jivas?

[santosh]

Hare Krishna Satayji,

Thank you for your appreciation and great question. It's certainly "the" most difficult question in terms of fully understanding why/how a jiva, which comes from all pure, all good Supreme Lord, falls from spiritual world. I myself had this same question when I came to ISKCON and many other seekers ask this question. Like you say, it is extremely puzzling.

So I am humbly putting forward this reply which is derived from the teachings of the Brahma-Madva-Gaudiya Sampradaya.

The Lord is all pure, all good and supremely independent. Becuase He is Supremely independent, the jivas emanated from Him also have some independence, they can be obedient or rebellious. Lord does not force them to love Him. Love means loving someone on one's own free will, not by force. Just like a man/woman can not say to other woman/man by putting gun to their head - love me. No, that's not love. Love means voluntarily loving someone. So in Spiritual World jiva has freedom to choose. It can use the freedom given to it or misuse it and rebel against the Lord. If it rebels, it falls from the Spiritual World. Example given in this regard is a government in a democracy gives free will to its citizens to behave good. Some do behave good and obey the laws of the state and others don't. Those who don't, are arrested by police and put in prison. The government is impartial to all citizens (and so is the prison-in-charge), but some citizens choose to break the law and then they suffer because of the bad choices they made.

Therefore this material world in Scriptures is called a prison house (Durg) and the keeper of this prison is Durgadevi. Neither the Supreme Lord nor Mother Durgadevi is against the jivas. Both the Supreme Lord and Mother Durgadevi are extremely kind, the individual jiva is to blame itself.

When trapped in this material world which is dukhalayam ashashwatam, the jivas obviously suffer under the influences of the three modes of material nature (sattva, raja, tama), three types of kleshas (miseries) - Adhi Daivik, Adhi Bhautik and Adhi Atmic.

In the material world, the jiva commits some good action sometime, some bad action other times and accordingly either enjoys or suffers respectively due to karmic reaction as instrumented under the law of karma. But the suffering does have important purpose that is to realize that this place (material world with 14 planetory systems, ours is eighth) is not a good place to be and think of how to get out of this repeated cycle of birth and death. If the jiva really sincerely repents and wants to get out, the Lord presents him with a bonafide Guru who can show him the path to go back to its original home - the spiritual world.

[satay]

Namaskar Santosh,

Hare Krishna Satayji,
The Lord is all pure, all good and supremely independent. Becuase He is Supremely independent, the jivas emanated from Him also have some independence, they can be obedient or rebellious.

Let's focus on the above point of you put forward.
Lord is supremely independent - agreed.
Jivas emanate from him - agreed

Then you say, "Jivas also have some independence, they can be obedient or rebellious".

If the jivas 'also have some independce' as you mentioned, then I agree that logically it implies that jivas can either be obedient or rebellious. However, where does this 'rebellious' nature come from? Since jivas are emanated from the Lord, logically it implies that the source of the rebellious nature is Lord himself.

Secondly, if the Jivas have some independence, then why would the Lord punish them with karmic debt simply becuase they exercise this independence? Logically it implies that 'rebellion' is implied in the so called 'independence' or 'independent will'.

From his instruction we know that he is beyond karmic law yet. If Jivas are emanated from the Lord and jivas get some of his qualities like 'independence' then why jivas also don't the same ability to be beyond karmic law? Why Jivas get engtangled in the karmic law? Why this one particular quality of the lord doesn't get injected into the Jivas?


My problem is that this type of logic makes the Lord look like irresponisble and unjust Lord. In addition, it makes his shakti or emanation look like it has some flaw. That is to say that in the process of emanation somehow somewhere jivas either don't get all of his qualities or a 'flaw' gets injected in it somehow.

Lord is pure thus logically anything emanating from him should also be pure. Lord has supreme independence, logically then anything emanating from him should have at least some indepence in its nature. Lord is beyond Karmic law, logically then anything emanating from him should have at least some ability to be beyond karmic law. Yet jivas don't have the ability...

[atanu]

Hare Krishna Atanuji,

Thank you for your even more wonderful questions.

Where do Jivas come from? Jivas come from the Supreme Lord. The Supreme Lord emanates it, that's why He is called our Creator and we are His creation.

Namaste Santosh,

All what you say is mental speculation of Maya alone.

Temporarily agreeing to your concept of a Jiva/Jivas emanating from Lord, I point out that still a Jiva does not lose the essential nature of Sat-Chit-Ananda, which is also the nature of Brahman.

Your notion that '-- the Jiva is fallen separate entity --' (that the creator and the created are separate entities) is itself the Maya-- The ignorance, an imagination of thirsty mind. The Sat-Chid-Ananda never becomes asat-achit-dukkha. Lord has said that what is sat is always sat and what is Asat is ever Asat. Your mental speculation fall in the second category.

---------------

A wave is not the ocean. But a wave thinking that it has an essential nature different and independent from the ocean is in error -- in Maya.

A wave which sees the ocean and finds the source of its existence in the ocean, yet still thinks that its difference is eternal is in Maya called Dvaita. The wave will break and the form will be gone.

A wave which thinks itself to be essentially same as the ocean yet a different being -- a part of ocean, is in Maya called Vishista Advaita.

A wave which comes to know its own nature and of other waves to be the water that makes up the ocean also, has attained Advaita knowledge, comprehending Lord's saying that Yogis see same everywhere.

Sat-Chit-Ananda is Sat-Chit-Ananda. The concept of time and place sprouts off Sat-Chit-Ananda, which being prior to Time and Space does not allow differentiation or any partition of itself.


Om

[brahman]

What I Find to be 'Maya'

Everything what you find and feel is MAYA. Your atman alone is reality.

Mind free of imaginations is called Atman.
Brhaman