Chaitan means to have consciousness, to be sentient. In other words, to be able to perceive and experience the world around us, to have a mind and a conscious awareness of our own existence, as well as being able to experience everything around us. This is being chaitan. Being jaṛ means the opposite of that, not having a mind, being insentient, having no feelings, no knowledge, no experience, no awareness. This is maya.
God and the souls are chaitan. Maya is jaṛ. God is chaitan. That makes sense. He is the supreme Divine personality, so, of course, He has a mind. He has unlimited Divine knowledge in His mind. He is the personified essence of Divine bliss. Souls are also chaitan. We know. That’s us. We know that we’re sentient beings. We’re aware of our own existence, and we can experience and know things.
Now maya, there are things in this world that are chaitan, but mayic energy itself is jaṛ. The tree that this harmonium was made out of had a soul in it when it was standing and still alive. That soul is chaitan. The wood itself was never chaitan. It behaves as a living organism for as long as the soul inhabits it, but the elements themselves are not alive. And we see that once the soul leaves, it goes back to its original elements, meaning the physical body, the physical thing, goes back to its original elements. And we see that,
“Oh, this thing isn’t actually alive. There was a soul in it; that’s why it was alive.”
So maya has no mind of its own, which means maya has no problems. You might say,
“Oh, there are so many problems in maya, there are so many negative things, so much suffering.”
Yes, that doesn’t bother maya. Maya is what it is: good, bad, whatever it is. Maya has no awareness of its own existence. Maya is an abstract existence that only exists on the basis of God and is activated by God. And only with God’s upholding of maya’s activated state is this universe held in its physical phase, which we see right now. When God withdraws His power, maya returns to that absolute, abstract, formless original energy. So maya has no mind of its own, nor any capability to do anything on its own.
