Ramayana_VOLUME V with index

Ramayana: A Divine Drama – Vol. V
Maya-sakthi (maayaa-shakthi). Power of illusion, the veiling and
projecting power of God. (Ibid)
Maya is inescapable for anyone however great. It will turn them upside
down in a moment. It will not loosen its grasp so long as the victim is
engrossed in the belief that he is the ‘body’. It will not be frightened by
the name or fame, the skill or intelligence of the person it seeks to
possess. Only when the individual discards name and form, releases
himself from body consciousness and establishes himself in the Atma,
can he escape from the misconception that Maya inflicts. (RKRV Part I
p.97)
Maya, by means of its power of (1) hiding the real nature and (2)
imposing the unreal over the real, makes the one-and-only Brahmam
appear as Jiva, Easwara and Jagath, three entities where there is only
one! The Maya faculty is latent but when it becomes patent, it takes the
form of the Mind. It is then that the seedling of the huge tree (which is
the Jagath) starts sprouting, putting forth the leaves of mental impulses
or vasanas, and mental conclusions or sankalpas. So, all this objective
world is but the proliferation or vilasa of the mind.
Jiva and Easwara are caught up in this proliferation and they are
inseparably intertwined in the Jagath and so, they too, are creations of
mental processes like the things appearing in the dream-world. Imagine
Jiva, Easwara and Jagath as having been painted. The pictorial Jagath
has both Jiva and Easwara incorporated in it and all three appear as
different entities though, created by the same paint. So also the same
mental process creates the appearance of Jiva and Easwara as pervading
and immanent, in the background of Jagath.
It is Maya that produces the illusion of Jiva and Easwara and Jagath: this
is declared by the Sruthis. Has not the Vasishtasmrithi made clear that
mental processes are responsible for the magic dance of He and I, This
and That, and Mine and His The expression “Sohamidam” found in that
text indicates Jiva, Easwara and Jagath. “Sah” means He, the
Unmanifested, the Super-soul, the Power beyond and Above, the
Easwara.
“Aham” means “I,” the entity enveloped by the consciousness of doer,
etc., “Idam” means this objective world, the perceivable sense-world. So,
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