SELF-REALISATION. PART III.

Maya makes the mind to think. Maya induces the intellect to respond to the thoughts created by
the mind. Maya again makes the consciousness to act on the thoughts created by the above two.
Finally maya makes a person to act. He thinks that he was responsible for the acts done by him.
Let us take two examples. A person is in need of huge money. He thinks, thinks and thinks. His
mind becomes very active in thinking. The mind decides finally that he should get money at any
cost. This information is passed on to the intellect (buddhi). He uses his intelligence to find ways
and means of acquiring money. The intellect tells him that he cannot get the kind of money he is
looking for, even if he works hard throughout his life time. Intelligence tells him that there are
crooked methods to get that kind of money. This is passed on to his consciousness.
Consciousness is not permitting him to do evil acts and it is not able to take a decision.
Confusion prevails. Consciousness is not passing on the information to ego to execute the act.
Instead, it passes on the information back to intellect, which in turn refers to the mind. Mind
again thinks. It could not find a better solution in the given situation. It endorses the decision of
the intellect. Intellect on getting the approval of the mind knows the pros and cons of the act.
Knowing fully well about the ultimate result, it passes on to the consciousness. The
consciousness also thinks twice and then informs the ego to execute the act approved by the
other three. The ego executes. The person steals the kind of money he was looking for. Finally he
got the money. The thief thinks that he had stolen the money. Here he means I. He thinks that
he alone is responsible for this mean act. He repents for his mistake, and it goes on like this. The
point to be noted here is that the man feels that he is responsible for the whole act. In fact, he was
induced by the maya through the anthakkaranam. Though he is not responsible for this act, his
ego makes him think that he (I concept) is intelligent enough to do this act. Our point of
discussion here is to just to understand the concept alone and not about the nature of the act,
weather good or bad. (Rudram blesses thieves also. This is the power of Veda.) Now, let us take
another example. There is a poor man. He does not get adequate food. A dog always goes with
him. He is not rearing the dog. He does not show any affection to the dog. Obviously he cannot
feed the dog, as he himself begs to get his food. On a day, he gets a handful of food. This is not
even enough to satisfy 10% of his appetite. When he got that handful of food, the dog was with
him. The dog was equally hungry and was looking at him. For a moment he looked at the dog.
The maya started working on the man. His mind started thinking. It tells his intellect to feed a
portion to the dog. Intellect agrees with his mind and informs his consciousness. Consciousness
approves this and informs his ego to act. He acts and feeds the dog with a portion of his alms.
The dog expressed his gratitude to the man through its eyes and the man understood that the dog
was grateful to him. Both the man and the beast were happy. Here the maya worked for a good
cause. We have seen two instances how maya induces a man to act under different
circumstances. Whatever is happening around us is nothing but maya. Since everything around
us is maya, we get ourselves identified with maya alone. If we dont want to get ourselves
identified with maya, what happens? How to get rid of maya? Who makes maya work for us? If
we find answers for these questions, we are nearing self-realisation. Self-realisation is nothing
but exploring ourselves internally. This is being dealt with in part IV of this series. Your feed
back will be of immense help to me.