I was not accusing anyone. Was it not you who first said that it was I who 'strained', when, in fact, it was none other than you?
Yes, but the wave is indeed the ocean. We mentally isolate 'wave' but there is in fact no separation. Where do you see any such separation?
Yes, individual Jiva is indeed Brahman, The Absolute! Kundalini Yoga teaches that each individual is none other than a microcosm of the entire universe.
'You are not just a drop in the ocean; you are the Mighty Ocean itself'
Rumi
Neither is Brahman a person. There is no such 'person'. If Brahman is the One without a Second, appearing as many, that appearance is none other than Brahman.
How are you able to be everything and nothing at the same time? You are making no sense. .
As I understand it, maya is not the power of Brahman, but Brahman's manifestation. Brahman's power lies in tamas, rajas, and sattva, which together create maya:
"What do the Vedantins mean by maya? First, we know from the Upanishads that it is made of
tamas, rajas, and
sattva. Tamas has its
veiling power;
Rajas has its
projecting power, and
sattva has its
revealing power. Now this language, "veiling", "projecting", and "revealing," is the language of
perception, not the language of
manufacture. You can't make anything out of a guna as the Sankhyans wanted to do. These three gunas, of which maya is said to be made, are just three aspects of a misperception. They are not substances, like wood, stone, or gold, out of which objects could be made. They are simply three aspects of an
apparition. In order to mistake a rope for a snake, you must fail to see the rope rightly; that's the veiling power of
tamas. Then you must jump to the wrong conclusion; that's the projecting power of
rajas.
You yourself project the snake. But the length and diameter of the rope are seen as the length and diameter of the snake; that's the revealingpower of
sattva. If you hadn't seen the rope, you might have jumped to some other wrong conclusion."
The Equations of Maya
But if all is Brahman, then maya must also be Brahman. Otherwise, how can you talk about maya as different than Brahman?
Imagine that you know me well, but you do not know that I am a master of disguise. One day, I disguise myself as someone famous, and walk into the same coffee shop you are in. You think: 'Oh, look! That famous movie star, so and so!', and I come to your table and have conversation with you. You cannot believe that Mr. so and so is sitting at your table, but then I remove my mask, and we have a good laugh. Mr. so and so is none other than godnotgod, your familiar friend. In the same sense, Brahman is playing all the parts of the universe simultaneously, but the universe is, in fact, none other than Brahman.
Therefore, what we thought was a snake, was all the time none other than a rope. We must congratulate the Originator of this most excellently and thoroughly convincing appearance.
It is said that, if one should meet the Devil face to face, do not fear; only congratulate him on the quality of his illusion.
Via your example:
By means of its inscrutable power called MAYA, the unconditioned Brahman
becomes the conditioned Brahman endowed with attributes...
I take issue with this, as unconditioned Brahman is The Changeless, and therefore cannot 'become' something other than what it is. Brahman does not 'become' the conditioned Brahman; Brahman is only revealed to have been there all the while. In fact, maya is not something that comes into being either; it was there right from the beginning:
Unless mAyA is already present, neither concealment nor projection can take place...
...For jIva itself cannot come into existence until mAyA has operated..[However] Time and space cannot claim prior existence. .It is therefore wrong to ask whether mAyA is prior to jIva or later than jIva. Ultimate Reality is beyond space and time. In the words of Swami Vivekananda [sic], time, space and causation are like the glass through which the Absolute is seen. In the Absolute itself, there is neither space, nor time nor causation.
The cause of the world versus the world itself gives us a comparison about their relative reality. When we say that the universe is unreal, we mean that it is unreal as the universe,
but it is surely real as Brahman, its cause...
This phenomenon of Brahman not being visible but something else, the universe, being visible, is exactly what the term `mAyA' means. It does two things. It hides Brahman from you. Simultaneously it projects the universe to you...
The snake appears on the rope, the rope does not undergo any change, but the snake is supported by the rope, (meaning, without the rope there is no snake). But in reality the snake was never there and so it is also true to say that the snake is not in the rope. To the question: Where is the snake?, the answer is: it is in the rope. To the question, Is the snake there?, the answer is, there is no snake, the snake was never in the rope. It is in this strain that the Lord gives out, almost in the same breath, what appears to be two contradictory statements.
Everything is in Me; and nothing is in Me. This is the cosmic mystery of the existence of the Universe. It is and is not -
sad-asad-vilakshaNa, mAyA!
Professor V. Krishnamurthy
What is the nature of maya? Professor V. Krishnamurthy.
