MAYA

The Indian term for “illusion,” māyā from the verbal root ma, “to measure, to measure out, to form, to create, construct, exhibit or display”-refers to both the power that creates an illusion and the false display itself. The art of a magician, for example, is maya; so too the illusion he creates. The arts of the military strategist, the merchant, actor, and thief: these also are maya. Maya is experienced as fascination, charm; specifically, feminine charm. And to this point there is a Buddhist saying: “Of all the forms of maya that of woman is supreme.’

Let’s say we have the world of that which is no world: the Garden of Eden before the world of duality, the transcendent mystery. Then we have the world of things: the world of duality and multiplicity, of māyā, where we’ve lost connection with the transcendence.

Maya is that power which converts transcendence into the world.

As a cosmogenic principle-and as a feminine, personal principle, also maya is said to possess three powers:

1. A Veiling Power that hides or conceals the “real,” the inward essential character of things; so that, as we read in a sacred Sanskrit text: “Though it is hidden in all things, the Self shines not forth.

The first stage, the veil, manifests from the fact that you don’t see the white light. This is what is called the Maya veil. The image that’s given is of white light bro- ken into the colors of the rainbow by a prism. This prism is the Goddess. With the veiling power, the ob- scuring power, the white light can’t get through.

2. A Projecting Power, which then sends forth illusion- ary impressions and ideas, together with associated desires and aversions as might happen, for example if at night one should mistake a rope for a snake and experience fright. Igno- rance (the Veiling Power), having concealed the real, imagi nation (the Projecting Power) evolves phenomena. And so we read: “This power of projection creates all appearances, whether of gods or of the cosmos.

With the projecting power, the forms of the world come through. The prism is the veil, but it is also the projector: what stops the white light and what projects the colors of the rainbow. In this second stage, the white light shows through the forms of the world. If you put a number of colors on a disk and spin it, you’ll get a white spinning disk-that’s the revealing power.

These first two powers, concealing and projecting, can be compared to those properties of a prism by which sunlight is transformed into the colors of the rainbow. Arrange these seven colors on a disk, spin it, and they will be seen as white. So too, when viewed a certain way, the phenomena themselves may reveal what normally they veil; which demonstrates:

3. The Revealing Power of maya, which it is the function of art and scripture, ritual and meditation, to make known.