Maya: Illusion and the Power of Appearance
What maya means in Hinduism, from the magical power of the Vedic gods to Advaita's doctrine of illusion, and why other schools disagree.
Maya is one of the most famous and most misunderstood ideas in Hinduism. It is often translated as “illusion”, and it refers to the power by which the one reality, Brahman, appears as a world of many separate, changing things. Maya does not usually mean that the world does not exist, but that we do not see it as it truly is.
From magic to metaphysics
In the Rig Veda, maya means a wondrous or magical power, the power of gods such as Indra and Varuna to take on forms and work marvels. The word is often linked to the root ma, “to measure” or “to form”: maya is the power that measures out and shapes the world.
The Shvetashvatara Upanishad (4.10) takes a decisive step: it says that nature (prakriti) is maya and that the great Lord is the wielder of maya. Here maya is the creative power of God, through which the world is produced.
Maya in Advaita Vedanta
The idea of maya is most closely associated with Advaita Vedanta, the non-dual philosophy taught by Adi Shankara. For Advaita, only Brahman is ultimately real. The world of separate objects and individuals is an appearance projected onto Brahman by maya, in the way that a rope seen in dim light may be mistaken for a snake.
Advaita describes maya as neither real nor unreal (anirvachaniya, “indescribable”). It is not simply unreal, because we experience the world and must act within it. Nor is it fully real, because it disappears when the truth is known, just as the snake disappears when the rope is seen clearly. At the individual level, maya appears as avidya, ignorance, which makes us identify with the body and mind rather than with the true self, the Atman.
Advaita also distinguishes two levels of truth. At the practical level (vyavaharika), the world, other people and moral duties are fully real and must be taken seriously. Only at the ultimate level (paramarthika) is everything seen to be Brahman.
Other schools disagree
Not all Hindus accept the Advaita view. Ramanuja, founder of Vishishtadvaita, argued strongly against it, insisting that the world and individual souls are real, forming the “body” of God. Madhva's Dvaita school likewise holds that the world is real and distinct from God. For these theistic schools, maya usually means God's wondrous creative power, or the power that keeps souls bound until they turn to God, not the unreality of the world.
Maya in devotion
In popular Hinduism, maya is often personified as a goddess. Mahamaya, “great illusion”, is a name of the Goddess, who both binds beings in the world and releases them. In stories of Krishna, Yogamaya is the divine power that lets his family forget his divinity so that they can love him as a child.
Living with maya
For many Hindus, the teaching of maya is practical as well as philosophical. It encourages detachment from possessions, status and passing pleasures, which are impermanent, and directs attention to what is eternal. As the Bhagavad Gita (7.14) puts it, Krishna's divine maya is hard to cross, but those who take refuge in him pass beyond it.
Sources and further reading
- Eliot Deutsch, Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction (University of Hawaii Press, 1969).
- Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, Dreams, Illusion and Other Realities (University of Chicago Press, 1984).
- John Carman, The Theology of Ramanuja (Yale University Press, 1974).