Posted on: 09 Apr 2023
[Prof. JSR Prasad asked:- I can take the word Prakriti to mean the creation also because in the Gita, the creator is said to be Purusha and the creation is said to be Prakriti. Moreover, this creation or Prakriti is sub-divided into Para Prakriti and Apara Prakriti and both together constitute the creation of Prakriti. When we hear the Veda saying that Maayaa is Prakriti (māyāṃ tu prakṛtiṃ viddhi), I will confine the word Maayaa to the creation. In that case, how the word Maayaa can be applied to the inherent power of God? The product of Maayaa is this world called as Maayaa. This brings the repetition of the same word for the power and its product.]
Swami Replied:- All this situation is created by you and you are entangled in your own created net. The solution for this is that you call the power of God as Mahaa Maayaa and the product of that divine power or the creation can be called as Maayaa. Shankara has already used these two words for these two separate items. He called the inherent power of God that rotates all the creation as Mahaa Maayaa (mahāmāyā viśvaṃ bhramayasi parabrahmamahiṣī). He also used the word Maayaa to mean this creation (māyāmayamida makhilaṃ hitvā). The word Maayaa has both the root meanings:- one is ‘wonder’ and another is ‘that which does not exist by itself.’ You can use both these meanings in creation because this creation is inherently non-existent (yā mā sā māyā) and also wonderful (maya-vaicitrye). The power of God and God are unimaginable and two unimaginable items result in one unimaginable item only. The reason is that you cannot distinguish the unimaginable boundaries of one item from the unimaginable boundaries of another item. Hence, God and His inherent power are to be accepted as one and the same item. God is the most wonderful and hence, the word ‘Mahaa Maayaa’ meaning ‘most wonderful’ can be used for God. This means that God is a big wonder whereas, His creation is a small wonder in comparative sense. Shankara assumed some dualism between God and His inherent power by superimposing the difference between possessor of power and its power as seen in the worldly example like Sun and Sunlight. In the worldly example, the boundaries of both are distinct and hence, dualism exists apart from the essential monism (monism is due to the same energy in both). Based on this superimposed dualism in two unimaginable items (God and His power), Shankara poetically assumed God as husband and His power as His wife. But, in the process of logic both are one and the same item only. In view of logic, the resultant one unimaginable item can be called as God by philosophers and can be called as Shakti (power) by the people following the Shaakteya tradition. In the case of these two lines of philosophy, each philosophy followed monism only by telling the resultant item as one item only. Hence, the poetic way of Shankara is not to be mixed with the logical ways of analysis of these two philosophies. I have to tell this point because Shankara is fundamentally the establisher of monism in His logical way of analysis.