The joke is that māyā cannot be unassociated with consciousness at all, and therefore cannot stand on its own at all. It cannot be separate from consciousness, since everything, including māyā, is consciousness, but consciousness is free from māyā. Because of this logic, māyā is also called ‘false’.

So māyā is nothing other than the ‘apparent’ unmanifested potential of brahman (single existence-consciousness) to manifest. Important addition: Manifestation is not creation (sṛṣṭi). It is apparent creation. Brahman, the self does not really change into anything. In reality consciousness, one and pure remains the same. We can deduce this from the ‘fact’ that no thing, matter or being is permanent, not even the cosmos. If you realize this, and you know that you are brahman, there is freedom.

Māyā in itself is nothing and cannot do anything. The great difference between the concepts īśvara and māyā is brahman, consciousness, existence itself. This is quite a difference, because brahman is the only thing that is. Māyā is therefore nothing in itself, but cannot exist without consciousness either. That is why the manifested phenomena are called illusion because of māyā. The wise will not quickly call it illusion. He sees all phenomena because of māyā, but knows it as himself (ātman), infinite pure consciousness. A devotional way of expressing this is: Since māyā cannot stand alone, but needs consciousness, we can also say: ‘There is only īśvara or god’, whether it is with properties (saguṇa) or without properties (nirguṇa).

So māyā are the properties or qualities (nirguṇa). But consciousness, sat-cit, brahman, ātman has no properties, therefore māyā is not real. Therefore we can also say īśvara is both brahman and brahman with properties. James Swartz calls these respectively īśvara I and īśvara II.

Are you dizzy yet? Perfectly understandable. From māyā a dizzying world arises. Moreover, it is impossible to describe māyā. Yet, Vedānta, through implicit meaning, manages to derive māyā and peel away reality. The teaching dissolves itself in paradoxes, and it has to. This is because the judgment that life and the world are real is not true. We have to solve this problem. Everything that is something ultimately dissolves in true self-knowledge.

For a proper understanding that māyā is in fact nothing other than brahman itself, there is more explanation to come. This answers all questions of existence and spirituality. All questions? Well, we now call in a side-kick (a pūrvapakṣī, someone who objects or brings in a different point of view). This person rightly asks: If consciousness is pure, why does māyā manifest, and why do I think I have experiences? Why do I suffer? Why on earth does a world appear, if I am a pure blissful ocean of consciousness. Well, the only answer to that why-question is, because that is just the way it is. The ignorant who thinks that suffering is real rightly asks why. Probably the best answer to the why question is: Brahman consciousness is infinite, and so it also has the ability to imagine karma, a world, an infinite number of individual perspectives and lives.

Vedānta says: You do not suffer, it is imposed (adhyāropa). And this imposition seems to give properties (upādhi-working) to you, the pure self, but this is not really so. You, the pure self, are the same in suffering and in happiness. There is no connection whatsoever between thoughts and experiences and you, the pure self.

All pure knowledge and potential power is undifferentiated, and without beginning. This can be seen as another label for the non-dual brahman. This must be understood. Māyā is nothing but pure consciousness. It does not stand alone, nor is it substantial. The substance of māyā is consciousness. Hence it is sometimes called ‘illusion’, or magic power. But it is not illusion at all, it is an ocean of being-consciousness. It is real, only the appearances as such are not real.

Māyā undergoes apparent (vivarta) changes to manifest the world with specific, relative knowledge. Apparently manifested, the saguṇa brahman (consciousness with qualities) is also called īśvara. Īśvara is thus brahman (the upahita, the carrying medium) with the upādhi (that which apparently transmits its qualities) māyā.

But there is only īśvara, we just said. Right, it’s like this. Just as a mind creates a whole dream-universe of its own mind-stuff (vāsanas from citta, memory), īśvara (consciousness + māyā)
creates a whole universe of its own god-stuff (all knowledge, all power).

Here the metaphor of the spider and the web is introduced. The divine as a spider who spins a web with material from his own body, designed according to his own knowledge. This metaphor is called ūrṇanābhi: literally thread (ūrṇa) from navel (nābhi). First, a few important differences between īśvara and jīva:

– Īśvara functions neutrally, jīva subjectively.

– Īśvara is not a personality like jīva who reflects on himself and looks at himself critically or with praise. Īśvara is simply all knowledge, all power, all laws, all functions etc. So Īśvara does not think, it is all knowledge. So Īśvara does not feel and does not do, it is all power and action. So it is not someone, it is all beings together and the universe in which they live.

– Jīva thinks he wants and gets all sorts of things to become better off, happiness first, that is his reason for existence, and that is why he revolves around in saṁsāra. Māyā’s or īśvara’s reason for existence is not that it wants something, but that it provides the living and therefore willing beings with results (karma) through its own karmic law (īśvara as karma phala dātā). At Īśvara’s level, māyā is beginningless and endless, this is the infinite matrix, the infinite set-up. The good news is, at our individual level, māyā is just beginningless. With this knowledge, we can see that it was all just mithyā (seemingly real, not really real).

Back to the spider and its web. Since īśvara is all knowledge, as māyā it is the design of the web in which we as living beings are seemingly stuck. This is called the intelligent or effective cause (nimitta kāraṇa). The preys in his māyā web cry out: ‘help, help god, give me a solvent, so that I can break free from the web. This is a wrong idea of ​​spirituality. As a creature, you yourself are part of the māyā web, of the māyā matrix. And by lawfulness, īśvara from his own body, obediently spins the web of saṁsāra, made of his own power, energy, matter (the material cause, upādāna-kāraṇam). This is because his beloved beings (jīvas) due to wrong notions (ignorance) think that they can win in the web and so desire, want and disapprove, not knowing that they only entangle themselves more in the web. This seems cruel but is, as said, simply neutral as it is.

Fortunately, the spider in the subtle domains of the web weaves a piece of grace in the form of self-knowledge, which allows us to see through the whole rataplan. Knowledge itself is also part of māyā. The funny thing about ignorance and knowledge is that after going through them, you are back to where you never left.

Brahman as pure knowledge is also the potential as māyā, to manifest a world. This is apparent, as in a jīva a dream manifests. Brahman or ātman remain free from the dream or from the manifested. From the point of view of the ignorant individual it seems as if changes are permanent, really have an effect (pariṇama).

This means that māyā, the svabhāva of īśvara, does not exist independently of īśvara, just as the potential to burn does not exist independently of fire (and has no beginning). So to say that māyā exists is to say that it is mithyā (not real, because of relativity, impermanence, impermanence, changeability), as is everything that comes out of it.

Māyā has two forces. Vikṣepa-śakti, the projecting force, which makes everything manifest, and creates a wonderful universe. This also creates an individual, and all his thoughts are projections, but these projections also create a personal experience, in which all kinds of projections are superimposed on the mind. These often consist of judgments about myself and others.

The other force is āvaraṇa śakti, the force that covers everything on a macro level, keeps everything in potential, that does not manifest at that moment. This causes a limited world to appear for a person, and also much that can appear, does not appear. Āvaraṇa is also the power that covers knowledge of my complete, non-dual being, which is therefore avidya, ignorance. Hence, when knowledge comes to me from the teacher, my ignorance is lifted from something. And the knowledge that was already potentially present in me, is unfolded.

Etymologically, māyā is associated with illusion and magic. For example, a māyāvin is a magician in Sanskrit. However, there are several possible origins of this word.

Māyā has three possibilities, jñāna-śakti (power to know) which, when manifest, is called sattva-guṇaḥ. The kriyā-śakti (power to act) which, when manifest, is called rajo-guṇa (rajas). And the dravya-śakti (potency of inertia, matter, slowness) which, when manifest, is called tamo-guṇa (tamas).

From the jīva’s point of view, it may appear that māyā is an upādhi of īśvara. However, since māyā is inseparable from īśvara, it is neither an attribute nor an upādhi (only when māyā manifests as forms, names and functions do upādhis arise).

We must remain careful not to label māyā and its manifestations as illusion. The world is real, albeit dependently real. It is real in its true nature consciousness. So everything we see is real, but it is not what it appears to be. The substrate of the world, consciousness, is absolutely (independently) real. Because maya, the power of reality, is unmanifest, knowledge is undifferentiated (and this is commonly called ignorance, as in deep sleep). When maya is manifest, knowledge is differentiated, i.e., the universe is manifest knowledge.