Maya and the Gunas

(Illusion and Nature)

Self Inquiry/Clarity Check:

(a) Consider the 15 points below ...

(b) Mark on the scale below your current level of clarity of the

principles of maya (illusion) and gunas (the three qualities of nature - see teachings #1-7 below). Put an “M” on the scale at your understanding of maya, and a “G” on the scale at your understanding of gunas:

1--------2--------3--------4--------5--------6--------7--------8--------9

Dense Fog Part Mist Fully Clear

(c) Rest assured your clarity will increase.

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In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna informs us that:

“My delusive maya and I are always co-mingled. Very few can see through this veil of illusion that I hold in front of Me…

___ 1) All of nature, everything in the physical world consists of just three qualities called gunas:

- goodness (sattva guna)

- passionate activity (raja guna)

- darkness, indolence, inertia (tama guna)

___ 2) These three qualities come from nature, which is

My lower nature.

___ 3) I put on the appearance of this natural world but I am separate from it.

___ 4) These three guna-qualities are contained within My Divine vastness but I am not in them in the sense that I need to rely on them in any way.

___ 5) I do not rely on nature, it relies on Me.

___ 6) The three gunas of nature (goodness, passion, and darkness) are like the three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) which intermix in an infinite number of ways to create all the hues in the universe. The gunas likewise combine endlessly to create all of the variety in nature.

___ 7) All of nature seems real but in the spiritual sense,

as it is constantly changing, it is an illusion.

___ 8) The curtain of illusion (maya) is hard to see through. Only those who love and depend completely on Me, Divinity, are eventually able to see through it.

___ 9) Due to this maya (the illusion that the world is real), people do not look beyond the veil to Me, the immutable, unchanging consciousness, the Absolute Reality beyond all the worldly.

___10) They think of Me as merely a finite figure, as a worldly body, and they do not see beyond that worldliness to the real Me, the very basis of it all.

___11) They are also oblivious to their own higher nature and true Reality (the Atma-Self), and thus they sink to their lower nature and do evil deeds that turn them away from Divinity.

___12) Not knowing the holy from the unholy, they are of course not devoted to Me. I do not reveal Myself to them.

___13) While others are deluded by the appearances of physical ‘reality,’ I am all-knowing.

___14) I know all beings, whether from the past, present, or future—but nobody fully knows Me.

___15) If individual souls do not know the truth of their own soul (Atma), how are they to know the truth of God, the Cosmic Soul?

– Krishna

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