Krishna and maya

 

Krishna and maya, by Haripada dasa

It is said in The Chaitanya Charitamrita that God or Krishna is compared to sunlight, and maya or ignorance is compared to darkness, wherever there is sunlight there can be no darkness. As soon as one embarks on the path of Krishna consciousness, the darkness of illusion, the influence of external energy, will immediately vanish. Also in The Bhagavad Gita Krishna says that this energy of Mine, maya, is very difficult to overcome, but those who surrender to Me can easily overcome it, in other words, maya is controlled by Krishna, and when a soul obeys the laws of God or Krishna, Krishna tells His energy not to influence His devotee, thus the devotee enjoys full and total freedom.

In the process of surrendering to God or Krishna one must: (1) accept everything that is favorable for the performance of devotional service, (2) reject everything that is unfavorable for it, (3) firmly believe in the protection of the Lord , (4) feel that you depend exclusively on the Lord's mercy, (5) have no interest apart from the Lord's interest, and (6) always be meek and humble.

In relation to the subject Srila Prabhupada says in his meaning of the Hare Krishna Maha-Mantra that this atmosphere, in which we now live, is called maya, or illusion. Maya means "what is not". And what is this illusion? The illusion is that we try to be the lords of material nature, when the reality is that we are bound by the shackles of its strict laws. When a servant tries to artificially imitate his almighty master, this is called illusion. Contaminated by this concept of life, we all try to exploit the resources of material nature, but the reality is that we become more and more entangled in its complexities. Therefore, despite our arduous struggle to conquer nature, we depend more on it. This illusory struggle against material nature can be stopped immediately if we revive our Krishna consciousness. Srila Prabhupada always said that the problem with people is that they are not afraid of maya.