ૐ
"Because nothing can exist without the Lord, it should be known that the illusory energy is also an energy of the Lord. The right conclusion of dovetailing everything in relationship with the Lord is called yoga-māyā, or the energy of union, and the wrong conception of detaching a thing from its relationship with the Lord is called the Lord's daivī māyā, or mahā-māyā. Both the māyās also have connections with the Lord because nothing can exist without being related to Him. As such, the wrong conception of detaching relationships from the Lord is not false but illusory.
Misconceiving one thing for another thing is called illusion. For example, accepting a rope as a snake is illusion, but the rope is not false. The rope, as it exists in the front of the illusioned person, is not at all false, but the acceptance is illusory. Therefore the wrong conception of accepting this material manifestation as being divorced from the energy of the Lord is illusion, but it is not false. And this illusory conception is called the reflection of the reality in the darkness of ignorance. Anything that appears as apparently not being "produced out of My energy" is called māyā.
The conception that the living entity is formless or that the Supreme Lord is formless is also illusion. In the Bhagavad-gītā (2.12) it was said by the Lord in the midst of the battlefield that the warriors standing in front of Arjuna, Arjuna himself, and even the Lord had all existed before, they were existing on the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra, and they would all continue to be individual personalities in the future also, even after the annihilation of the present body and even after being liberated from the bondage of material existence. In all circumstances, the Lord and the living entities are individual personalities, and the personal features of both the Lord and living beings are never abolished; only the influence of the illusory energy, the reflection of light in the darkness, can, by the mercy of the Lord, be removed.
In the material world, the light of the sun is also not independent, nor is that of the moon. The real source of light is the brahmajyoti, which diffuses light from the transcendental body of the Lord, and the same light is reflected in varieties of light: the light of the sun, the light of the moon, the light of fire, or the light of electricity. So the identity of the self as being unconnected with the Supreme Self, the Lord, is also illusion, and the false claim "I am the Supreme" is the last illusory snare of the same māyā, or the external energy of the Lord.
The Vedānta-sūtra in the very beginning affirms that everything is born from the Supreme, and thus, as explained in the previous verse, all individual living entities are born from the energy of the supreme living being, the Personality of Godhead. Brahmā himself was born from the energy of the Lord, and all other living entities are born from the energy of the Lord through the agency of Brahmā; none of them has any existence without being dovetailed with the Supreme Lord.
The illusory energy has two phases of existence, namely the covering influence and the throwing influence. By the throwing influence the illusory energy throws the living entities into the darkness of ignorance, and by the covering influence she covers the eyes of men with a poor fund of knowledge about the existence of the Supreme Person who enlightened the supreme individual living being, Brahmā. The identity of Brahmā with the Supreme Lord is never claimed herein, and therefore such a foolish claim by the man with a poor fund of knowledge is another display of the illusory energy of the Lord. The Lord says in the Bhagavad-gītā (16.18-20) that demoniac persons who deny the existence of the Lord are thrown more and more into the darkness of ignorance, and thus such demoniac persons transmigrate life after life without any knowledge of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
Fire is possessed of heat, but heat is not fire. This simple thing is not understood by the man with a poor fund of knowledge who falsely claims that the fire and heat are the same. This energy of the fire (namely heat) is explained here as a reflection, and not directly fire. Therefore the living energy represented by the living entities is the reflection of the Lord, and never the Lord Himself. Being the reflection of the Lord, the existence of the living entity is dependent on the Supreme Lord, who is the original light. This material energy may be compared to darkness, as actually it is darkness, and the activities of the living entities in the darkness are reflections of the original light."
From the purport on Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 2.9.34
ૐ
Comments
Thank you for being sincere, Joram.
Of course, you must first become qualified: you cannot drop in to the God's party as intruder. :-) Nobody can. There is no way to "reach" God via material means or senses.
The key is Transcendence. How to obtain that key?
To obtain it, you must start asking relevant questions in order to get the relevant answers. That is the duty of every humang being: to obtain the answers and get the Knowledge. First you start inquiring about material world and its phenomena, and when you're done with that, you start inquiring about Brahman, that is: pure spirit and Transcendence.
As I previously mentioned, you need Knowledge for adult grown-up persons and not stories for children to whom you can sell almost anything in a form of a fairy-tale. The mentioned Knowledge is available in one place only: Vedic literature, specifically Vedanta-sutra which is the conclusion of all Vedas and is presented in perfectly structured philosophical work. Please understand that it is like climbing on the highest mountain for most people. (If you want the link to the authentic Vedanta-sutra, let me know.)
But before you can even think about it, you must turn almost every stone and check out what works and what doesn't work, get personal experiences of gain or failure (most of them are failures), and then you can start asking yourself relevant questions.
If you're consistent and serious enough, the Providence will give you the means by which you can attain your goal. You may come across authentic teachings via authentic books, or you can come across somebody who can introduce you with the basic terms necessary for getting the right ontology (background, context) on how to transcend, what to transcend, what is what, who is who, etc. That is just a beginning. But out of billions on planet Earth, you can hardly find one who is seriously interested in complete Knowledge and pure spiritual teachings. Isn't that strange?
If you were smart enough, you'd read very carefully my blog posts and writings and use them to obtain some knowledge and understanding, but my experience is that in most cases there are no shortcuts. Of course, you can benefit a lot from somebody providing you the right information, but you have to go your way, test it, and obtain personal experience. Then you make yourself ready to know more. It may take many lifetimes, but that's the way it usually goes. Only the extremelly strong desire to know the Absolute can accelerate things greatly, and that is the rarest thing you can find among human beings. They are all interested only in how to improve their financial situation, their body and health condition, their family life, their business, their sex life, their pet life, etc. etc. All these may be necessary for material life, but these are very low tendencies and they tend to captivate you completely.
Joram, I have been in your position and mood. But you haven't been in mine. It is all matter of personal self-realization that occurs in stages. But who talks about the stages of self-realization? Who KNOWS something about it? Nobody. There is just one place where you can get such information, and that is Vedic esoteric literature and you can find parts of it in the texts that I post here on AC. This texts are so high, so HIGH, that you cannot possibly grasp them even if you wanted. Anyway, I offer them to everybody, just in case someone somehow someday awakes the inner desire to reach - higher.
One day, when you get sick and tired of self-deception you'll want to know who are you, what is this world, how did you come here, what is this universe, what are the energies therein, how are the universes created, maintained and annihilated, what is time, what is karma, what is spirit, what is matter, what is illusion, and what is the way out...
Unless you're able to discriminate clearly what is spirit and what is matter, there is no chance to understand ANYTHING. And the definion and explanation of it is not given anywhere except in Vedic literature in a scientific, exact, structured, methodic and understanble way.
So, you don't even know what is the "medium" that you (and your temporary body) is IN, therefore you're doomed to do just the "guess work" and speculate about it and repeat the same things over and over again. That's exactly what all members on AC are doing, and that astonishes me: how is it possible that nobody really want to KNOW? This fact puts tears into my eyes, but I can't really help anyone who don't want to KNOW.
I have presented myself on my profile page here on AC and I have left the links to my blogs as parts of my testimonies of how I got where I got. There was plenty of inner work including the kundalini awakening. I have done everything within my power and even surpass it to get where I got.
Spiritual path is not for cowards, weak and lazy people who do nothing but chatting blablabla...
Cheers!