Māyā (ILLUSION , DELUSION)

The Upanishads are scholarly and take a more logical view. The Brhad-āranyaka Upanishad (V.5.1) explains this manifestation as satyam , an eternal truth emanating from Brahman, the Unknown. Brahman is beyond conscious ken and can only be referenced by neti neti (not this, not this), that it is neither big nor small, can never be created or destroyed, omnipotent but yet not accessible to the senses and so on and so forth. Satyam consists of three syllables, sa , ti , yam , the first and the last being real and the second unreal, madhyato anrtam. The fleeting is enclosed on both sides by an eternity which is real…. Here sa is the third sibilant and stands for shaktī or emanating energy and yam means the end, it is also the name of a mythical Purānic God who appears at the time of death – scythe in hand. So māyā is ti, the incessant cosmic dance of matter, set between these outer limits. Brahman without losing its integrity is likened to the immense ocean and its calmness. The individual ātman arises as a wave from this sea, finds its height of glory during its ‘life’ and ends on a smooth beach or crashes on crags, as the case may be, depending on its collective karmas or samskāras .

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