Dear James,
Thank you for your blessing. Hope you are doing well. Please help me answer this doubt.
The Self (brahman nirguna) is unborn, eternal and is thus uncaused and unaffected by Ishvara/Maya or brahman saguna). But Ishvara/Maya is affected by brahman nirguna. Ishvara/Maya seems to be an effect of brahman nirguna. But how can the ONE without a cause create an effect? Thus Ishvara/Maya cannot be real, due to the lack of a cause. This concept, if it’s right, leaves me with Ishvara/Maya as something seemingly real and with a big questionmark about the nature of Brahman saguna.
Can you help me out?
Martin: But Ishvara/Maya (brahman saguna) is affected by Brahman nirguna.
James: No, it isn’t. If the Self, existence shining as blissful awareness, is affected by anything, it is not free. It is unchanging unborn and eternal. So realizing it would not remove suffering, which is to say change. It is always free of experience. It is the essence of experience, which is to say is is being, what is.
Martin: But how can the ONE without a cause create an effect?
James: You’re right. It can’t create an effect because it is incapable of change. It is beyond energy/matter/experience.
Martin: This concept, if it’s right, leaves me with Ishvara/Maya as something seemingly real and with a big question mark about the nature of brahman saguna.
James: Maya is seemingly real, meaning not real, but, as scripture points out, it doesn’t impact the Self. The Self is nirguna, without properties, qualities, etc. Maya only affects itself. It is dualistic so it has parts which interact with each other. Something that has no qualities can’t change.
Maya exists but it borrows whatever reality it has from nirguna brahman, existence itself. It does not exist independently. Only brahman is independent. To call it independent is not actually correct because from its standpoint there is no Maya at all.
This question is an example of a leading error. You came to the right conclusion (that Maya cannot be real) but for the wrong reason. You say it is because Maya has no cause, which implies that only a thing with a cause is real. But something that is caused is not real, meaning always present and unchanging, which is Vedanta’s definition of reality. Maya isn’t real because it is dependent and because it changes.
I hope this helps.
Love,
James
