Sai Baba Gita - The Spell of Illusion and its two Powerful Forces

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The Spell of Illusion and its two Powerful Forces

However, involved with all your actions, there will be the spell of maya or

illusion which will frustrate your efforts to reach your divine goal. There are

two powerful forces which make up maya; these are the veiling power and the

projecting power. There is no particular form or shape to these two. First,

consider the veiling or covering power. How does it cover? With what does it

cover? How can you uncover this thing which it has covered? If it does not have

form itself, by what means does it cover? How can it be removed? These are all

questions that cannot be answered.

Maya is mysterious and inexplicable. Delusion and confusion are its very nature.

Consider a rope lying on the road. In the darkness you are deluded into

believing that this rope is a snake. What is it that has covered the rope? Try

to understand what happened. You were suddenly filled with a feeling of fear

because you imagined a snake lying on the road before you. So, it was in your

mind that the rope got converted into a snake and you got frightened. Is the

snake really there? No, there is no snake there. Then how can the rope be

converted into a thing which does not exist and never has existed? This is the

delusion.

Under what circumstances does this delusion exert its influence on you? It is

during twilight or in the dark that you imagine you see the snake when there is

only a rope there. It is through darkness that the delusion comes and envelops

you. In truth, no snake has replaced the rope, but the delusion beclouds the

minds of human beings and obscures their clear perception. This delusion is

maya. When you shine your light on the area, you find no snake there; there is

only a rope lying there. Thus, in the light, delusion disappears and the real

object is seen.

That which exists will always exist; it will never cease to exist. It remains

unchanged forever. There cannot be even the slightest variation in its

existence. It is only the delusion affecting it which comes and goes. The form

that this delusion takes in the mind is the second powerful force of maya, the

projecting power, which superimposes imaginary creations and objects on the

unchanging basis. In this case the projection was the snake. Another time it

will be something else.

Moods, pains, pleasures, all come and go. They are something like relatives that

come to visit you but do not stay permanently. In the same way, this maya comes

and goes as a delusion for human beings. The delusion in your mind which covers

the rope and hides it from view is the veiling power. The illusion which has

been projected by your mind onto the rope is the projecting power. With the

help of the light you see the rope as rope, and the snake vanishes. So these

two aspects of maya have come in the darkness and have disappeared in the

light.

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Sai Baba Gita, Compiled and edited by Al Drucker - Published by Atma Press -

http://www.atmapress.com - ISBN: 0963844903Online Edition:

http://www.atmapress.com/saibabagita/index.html