"Trailing clouds of glory we come," says the poet. Not all of us come as
trailing clouds of glory however; some of us come as trailing black fogs; there
can be no question about that. But every one of us comes into this world to
fight, as on a battlefield. We come here weeping to fight our way, as well as we
can, and to make a path for ourselves through this infinite ocean of life;
forward we go, having long ages behind us and an immense expanse beyond.
So on we go, till death comes and takes us off the field — victorious or
defeated, we do not know. And this is Mâyâ.

Hope is dominant in the heart of childhood. The whole world is a golden vision
to the opening eyes of the child; he thinks his will is supreme. As he moves
onward, at every step nature stands as an adamantine wall, barring his future
progress. He may hurl himself against it again and again, striving to break
through. The further he goes, the further recedes the ideal, till death comes, and
there is release, perhaps. And this is Maya.

A man of science rises, he is thirsting after knowledge. No sacrifice is too
great, no struggle too hopeless for him. He moves onward discovering secret
after secret of nature, searching out the secrets from her innermost heart, and
what for? What is it all for? Why should we give him glory? Why should he
acquire fame? Does not nature do infinitely more than any human being can
do? — and nature is dull, insentient. Why should it be glory to imitate the dull,
the insentient? Nature can hurl a thunderbolt of any magnitude to any distance.
If a man can do one small part as much, we praise him and laud him to the
skies. Why? Why should we praise him for imitating nature, imitating death,
imitating dullness imitating insentience? The force of gravitation can pull to
pieces the biggest mass that ever existed; yet it is insentient. What glory is
there in imitating the insentient? Yet we are all struggling after that. And this is
maya.

The senses drag the human soul out. Man is seeking for pleasure and for
happiness where it can never be found. For countless ages we are all taught that
this is futile and vain, there is no happiness here. But we cannot learn; it is
impossible for us to do so, except through our own experiences. We try them,
and a blow comes. Do we learn then? Not even then. Like moths hurling
themselves against the flame, we are hurling ourselves again and again into
sense-pleasures, hoping to find satisfaction there. We return again and again
with freshened energy; thus we go on, till crippled and cheated we die. And this
is Maya.

So with our intellect. In our desire to solve the mysteries of the universe, we
cannot stop our questioning, we feel we must know and cannot believe that no
knowledge is to be gained. A few steps, and there arises the wall of
beginningless and endless time which we cannot surmount. A few steps, and
there appears a wall of boundless space which cannot be surmounted, and the
whole is irrevocably bound in by the walls of cause and effect. We cannot go
beyond them. Yet we struggle, and still have to struggle. And this is Maya.
With every breath, with every pulsation of the heart with every one of our
movements, we think we are free, and the very same moment we are shown
that we are not. Bound slaves, nature's bond-slaves, in body, in mind, in all our
thoughts, in all our feelings. And this is Maya.
There was never a mother who did not think her child was a born genius, the
most extraordinary child that was ever born; she dotes upon her child. Her
whole soul is in the child. The child grows up, perhaps becomes a drunkard, a
brute, ill-treats the mother, and the more he ill-treats her, the more her love
increases. The world lauds it as the unselfish love of the mother, little dreaming
that the mother is a born slave, she cannot help it. She would a thousand times
rather throw off the burden, but she cannot. So she covers it with a mass of
flowers, which she calls wonderful love. And this is Maya.

We are all like this in the world. A legend tells how once Nârada said to
Krishna, "Lord, show me Maya." A few days passed away, and Krishna asked
Narada to make a trip with him towards a desert, and after walking for several
miles, Krishna said, "Narada, I am thirsty; can you fetch some water for me?"
"I will go at once, sir, and get you water." So Narada went. At a little distance
there was a village; he entered the village in search of water and knocked at a
door, which was opened by a most beautiful young girl. At the sight of her he
immediately forgot that his Master was waiting for water, perhaps dying for the
want of it. He forgot everything and began to talk with the girl. All that day he
did not return to his Master. The next day, he was again at the house, talking to
the girl. That talk ripened into love; he asked the father for the daughter, and
they were married and lived there and had children. Thus twelve years passed.
His father-in-law died, he inherited his property. He lived, as he seemed to
think, a very happy life with his wife and children, his fields and his cattle. and
so forth. Then came a flood. One night the river rose until it overflowed its
banks and flooded the whole village. Houses fell, men and animals were swept
away and drowned, and everything was floating in the rush of the stream.
Narada had to escape. With one hand be held his wife, and with the other two
of his children; another child was on his shoulders, and he was trying to ford
this tremendous flood. After a few steps he found the current was too strong,
and the child on his shoulders fell and was borne away. A cry of despair came
from Narada. In trying to save that child, he lost his grasp upon one of the
others, and it also was lost. At last his wife, whom he clasped with all his
might, was torn away by the current, and he was thrown on the bank, weeping
and wailing in bitter lamentation. Behind him there came a gentle voice, "My
child, where is the water? You went to fetch a pitcher of water, and I am
waiting for you; you have been gone for quite half an hour." "Half an hour! "
Narada exclaimed. Twelve whole years had passed through his mind, and all
these scenes had happened in half an hour! And this is Maya.

In one form or another, we are all in it. It is a most difficult and intricate state
of things to understand. It has been preached in every country, taught
everywhere, but only believed in by a few, because until we get the experiences
ourselves we cannot believe in it. What does it show? Something very terrible.
For it is all futile. Time, the avenger of everything, comes, and nothing is left.
He swallows up the saint and the sinner, the king and the peasant, the beautiful
and the ugly; he leaves nothing. Everything is rushing towards that one goal
destruction. Our knowledge, our arts, our sciences, everything is rushing
towards it. None can stem the tide, none can hold it back for a minute. We may
try to forget it, in the same way that persons in a plague-striker city try to create
oblivion by drinking, dancing, and other vain attempts, and so becoming
paralysed. So we are trying to forget, trying to create oblivion by all sorts of
sense-pleasures. And this is Maya.

Two ways have been proposed. One method, which everyone knows, is very
common, and that is: "It may be very true, but do not think of it. 'Make hay
while the sun shines,' as the proverb says. It is all true, it is a fact, but do not
mind it. Seize the few pleasures you can, do what little you can, do not look at
tile dark side of the picture, but always towards the hopeful, the positive side."
There is some truth in this, but there is also a danger. The truth is that it is a
good motive power. Hope and a positive ideal are very good motive powers for
our lives, but there is a certain danger in them. The danger lies in our giving up
the struggle in despair. Such is the case with those who preach, "Take the
world as it is, sit down as calmly and comfortably as you can and be contented
with all these miseries. When you receive blows, say they are not blows but
flowers; and when you are driven about like slaves, say that you are free. Day
and night tell lies to others and to your own souls, because that is the only way
to live happily." This is what is called practical wisdom, and never was it more
prevalent in the world than in this nineteenth century; because never were
harder blows hit than at the present time, never was competition keener, never
were men so cruel to their fellow-men as now; and, therefore, must this
consolation be offered. It is put forward in the strongest way at the present
time; but it fails, as it always must fail. We cannot hide a carrion with roses; it
is impossible. It would not avail long; for soon the roses would fade, and the
carrion would be worse than ever before. So with our lives. We may try to
cover our old and festering sores with cloth of gold, but there comes a day
when the cloth of gold is removed, and the sore in all its ugliness is revealed.
Is there no hope then? True it is that we are all slaves of Maya, born in Maya,
and live in Maya. Is there then no way out, no hope? That we are all miserable,
that this world is really a prison, that even our so-called trailing beauty is but a
prison-house, and that even our intellects and minds are prison-houses, have
been known for ages upon ages. There has never been a man, there has never
been a human soul, who has not felt this sometime or other, however he may
talk. And the old people feel it most, because in them is the accumulated
experience of a whole life, because they cannot be easily cheated by the lies of
nature. Is there no way out? We find that with all this, with this terrible fact
before us, in the midst of sorrow and suffering, even in this world where life
and death are synonymous, even here, there is a still small voice that is ringing
through all ages, through every country, and in every heart: "This My Maya is
divine, made up of qualities, and very difficult to cross. Yet those that come
unto Me, cross the river of life." "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are
heavy laden and I will give you rest." This is the voice that is leading us
forward. Man has heard it, and is hearing it all through the ages. This voice
comes to men when everything seems to be lost and hope has fled, when man's
dependence on his own strength has been crushed down and everything seems
to melt away between his fingers, and life is a hopeless ruin. Then he hears it.
This is called religion.

On the one side, therefore, is the bold assertion that this is all nonsense, that
this is Maya, but along with it there is the most hopeful assertion that beyond
Maya, there is a way out. On the other hand, practical men tell us, "Don't
bother your heads about such nonsense as religion and metaphysics. Live here;
this is a very bad world indeed, but make the best of it." Which put in plain
language means, live a hypocritical, lying life, a life of continuous fraud,
covering all sores in the best way you can. Go on putting patch after patch,
until everything is lost, and you are a mass of patchwork. This is what is called
practical life. Those that are satisfied with this patchwork will never come to
religion. Religion begins with a tremendous dissatisfaction with the present
state of things, with our lives, and a hatred, an intense hatred, for this patching
up of life, an unbounded disgust for fraud and lies. He alone can be religious
who dares say, as the mighty Buddha once said under the Bo-tree, when this
idea of practicality appeared before him and he saw that it was nonsense, and
yet could not find a way out. When the temptation came to him to give up his
search after truth, to go back to the world and live the old life of fraud, calling
things by wrong names, telling lies to oneself and to everybody, he, the giant,
conquered it and said, "Death is better than a vegetating ignorant life; it is
better to die on the battle-field than to live a life of defeat." This is the basis of
religion. When a man takes this stand, he is on the way to find the truth, he is
on the way to God. That determination must be the first impulse towards
becoming religious. I will hew out a way for myself. I will know the truth or
give up my life in the attempt. For on this side it is nothing, it is gone, it is
vanishing every day. The beautiful, hopeful, young person of today is the
veteran of tomorrow. Hopes and joys and pleasures will die like blossoms with
tomorrow's frost. That is one side; on the other, there are the great charms of
conquest, victories over all the ills of life, victory over life itself, the conquest
of the universe. On that side men can stand. Those who dare, therefore, to
struggle for victory, for truth, for religion, are in the right way; and that is what
the Vedas preach: Be not in despair, the way is very difficult, like walking on
the edge of a razor; yet despair not, arise, awake, and find the ideal, the goal.
Now all these various manifestations of religion, in whatever shape and form
they have come to mankind, have this one common central basis. It is the
preaching of freedom, the way out of this world. They never came to reconcile
the world and religion, but to cut the Gordian knot, to establish religion in its
own ideal, and not to compromise with the world. That is what every religion
preaches, and the duty of the Vedanta is to harmonise all these aspirations, to
make manifest the common ground between all the religions of the world, the
highest as well as the lowest. What we call the most arrant superstition and the
highest philosophy really have a common aim in that they both try to show the
way out of the same difficulty, and in most cases this way is through the help
of someone who is not himself bound by the laws of nature in one word,
someone who is free. In spite of all the difficulties and differences of opinion
about the nature of the one free agent, whether he is a Personal God, or a
sentient being like man, whether masculine, feminine, or neuter — and the
discussions have been endless — the fundamental idea is the same. In spite of
the almost hopeless contradictions of the different systems, we find the golden
thread of unity running through them all, and in this philosophy, this golden
thread has been traced revealed little by little to our view, and the first step to
this revelation is the common ground that all are advancing towards freedom.
One curious fact present in the midst of all our joys and sorrows, difficulties
and struggles, is that we are surely journeying towards freedom. The question
was practically this: "What is this universe? From what does it arise? Into what
does it go?" And the answer was: "In freedom it rises, in freedom it rests, and
into freedom it melts away." This idea of freedom you
cannot relinquish. Your actions, your very lives will be lost without it. Every
moment nature is proving us to be slaves and not free. Yet, simultaneously
rises the other idea, that still we are free At every step we are knocked down, as
it were, by Maya, and shown that we are bound; and yet at the same moment,
together with this blow, together with this feeling that we are bound, comes the
other feeling that we are free. Some inner voice tells us that we are free. But if
we attempt to realise that freedom, to make it manifest, we find the difficulties
almost insuperable Yet, in spite of that it insists on asserting itself inwardly, "I
am free, I am free." And if you study all the various religions of the world you
will find this idea expressed. Not only religion — you must not take this word
in its narrow sense — but the whole life of society is the assertion of that one
principle of freedom. All movements are the assertion of that one freedom.
That voice has been heard by everyone, whether he knows it or not, that voice
which declares, "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden." It may
not be in the same language or the same form of speech, but in some form or
other, that voice calling for freedom has been with us. Yes, we are born here on
account of that voice; every one of our movements is for that. We are all
rushing towards freedom, we are all following that voice, whether we know it
or not; as the children of the village were attracted by the music of the fluteplayer,
so we are all following the music of the voice without knowing it.
We are ethical when we follow that voice. Not only the human soul, but all
creatures, from the lowest to the highest have heard the voice and are rushing
towards it; and in the struggle are either combining with each other or pushing
each other out of the way. Thus come competition, joys, struggles, life,
pleasure, and death, and the whole universe is nothing but the result of this mad
struggle to reach the voice. This is the manifestation of nature.
What happens then? The scene begins to shift. As soon as you know the voice
and understand what it is, the whole scene changes. The same world which was
the ghastly battle-field of Maya is now changed into something good and
beautiful. We no longer curse nature, nor say that the world is horrible and that
it is all vain; we need no longer weep and wail. As soon as we understand the
voice, we see the reassert why this struggle should be here, this fight, this
competition, this difficulty, this cruelty, these little pleasures and joys; we see
that they are in the nature of things, because without them there would be no
going towards the voice, to attain which we are destined, whether we know it
or not. All human life, all nature, therefore, is struggling to attain to freedom.
The sun is moving towards the goal, so is the earth in circling round the sun, so
is the moon in circling round the earth. To that goal the planet is moving, and
the air is blowing. Everything is struggling towards that. The saint is going
towards that voice — he cannot help it, it is no glory to him. So is the sinner.
The charitable man is going straight towards that voice, and cannot be
hindered; the miser is also going towards the same destination: the greatest
worker of good hears the same voice within, and he cannot resist it, he must go
towards the voice; so with the most arrant idler. One stumbles more than
another, and him who stumbles more we call bad, him who stumbles less we
call good. Good and bad are never two different things, they are one and the
same; the difference is not one of kind, but of degree.
Now, if the manifestation of this power of freedom is really governing the
whole universe — applying that to religion, our special study — we find this
idea has been the one assertion throughout. Take the lowest form of religion
where there is the worship of departed ancestors or certain powerful and cruel
gods; what is the prominent idea about the gods or departed ancestors? That
they are superior to nature, not bound by its restrictions. The worshipper has,
no doubt, very limited ideas of nature. He himself cannot pass through a wall,
nor fly up into the skies, but the gods whom he worships can do these things.
What is meant by that, philosophically? That the assertion of freedom is there,
that the gods whom he worships are superior to nature as he knows it. So with
those who worship still higher beings. As the idea of nature expands, the idea
of the soul which is superior to nature also expands, until we come to what we
call monotheism, which holds that there is Maya (nature), and that there is
some Being who is the Ruler of this Maya.
Here Vedanta begins, where these monotheistic ideas first appear. But the
Vedanta philosophy wants further explanation. This explanation — that there is
a Being beyond all these manifestations of Maya, who is superior to and
independent of Maya, and who is attracting us towards Himself, and that we
are all going towards Him — is very good, says the Vedanta, but yet the
perception is not clear, the vision is dim and hazy, although it does not directly
contradict reason. Just as in your hymn it is said, "Nearer my God to Thee," the
same hymn would be very good to the Vedantin, only he would change a word,
and make it, "Nearer my God to me." The idea that the goal is far off, far
beyond nature, attracting us all towards it, has to be brought nearer and nearer,
without degrading or degenerating it. The God of heaven becomes the God in
nature, and the God in nature becomes the God who is nature, and the God who
is nature becomes the God within this temple of the body, and the God
dwelling in the temple of the body at last becomes the temple itself, becomes
the soul and man — and there it reaches the last words it can teach. He whom
the sages have been seeking in all these places is in our own hearts; the voice
that you heard was right, says the Vedanta, but the direction you gave to the
voice was wrong. That ideal of freedom that you perceived was correct, but
you projected it outside yourself, and that was your mistake. Bring it nearer and
nearer, until you find that it was all the time within you, it was the Self of your
own self. That freedom was your own nature, and this Maya never bound you.
Nature never has power over you. Like a frightened child you were dreaming
that it was throttling you, and the release from this fear is the goal: not only to
see it intellectually, but to perceive it, actualise it, much more definitely than
we perceive this world. Then we shall know that we are free. Then, and then
alone, will all difficulties vanish, then will all the perplexities of heart be
smoothed away, all crookedness made straight, then will vanish the delusion of
manifoldness and nature; and Maya instead of being a horrible, hopeless
dream, as it is now will become beautiful, and this earth, instead of being a
prison-house, will become our playground, and even dangers and difficulties,
even all sufferings, will become deified and show us their real nature, will
show us that behind everything, as the substance of everything, He is standing,
and that He is the one real Self.