Maya is doing what’s best for us. Maya is the servant of our Father, Shree Krishna, and maya is, in fact, our first teacher. We don’t belong to maya. We are not mayic (material) beings. We simply have a mayic body, a mayic vehicle that we’re living in. Rather we are Divine beings, and we belong to Shree Krishna. Yet we’re turned away from Him and turned towards maya, willfully, stubbornly turned towards maya and away from Shree Krishna.
Now, Shree Krishna can send Saints into the world. He can make the Vedic knowledge available in the world. Those Saints can teach us and try to guide us towards Shree Krishna. Shree Krishna Himself can take avatar (Divine descension) in this world, and yet none of that would have any effect if maya was not here to put us in our place. You see, we say there’s the carrot and the stick, right? There’s two ways to get somebody to do what you want them to do. You offer them the carrot, like a horse. You say,
“Come here, horsey! Have this carrot!”
You want the horse to come in this direction. So, if the horse allows himself to be drawn forward by the carrot, then there’s no need for the stick. The stick means you give him a smack and make him run in that direction. So either we can encourage someone, lovingly, to go in the right direction. That’s what Saints do. That’s what God does. They come into this world. They try to inspire us and lovingly encourage us to go towards Shree Krishna, which is where we really belong. That’s where our real happiness is. And we stubbornly say,
“Nope. You’re wrong. You Saints are crazy!”
All the millions and billions of people are running in this direction after maya, saying that there’s perfect happiness in maya. Even though we haven’t gotten it, we’re about to get it. Everybody’s saying that. And there are a few Saints over here quoting the Vedic scriptures and saying,
“No, they’re all wrong. They’re all crazy! True happiness is in this direction. The happiness you experience in the world is only your own imagined experience. It is not a stable, real happiness. Unlimited, permanent, perfect happiness, is none other than Shree Krishna! Stop running in that direction! Come in this direction!”
And we say, “No, I think you few Saints are crazy! All these billions of people can’t be crazy. So I’m going to keep running in this direction.”
Then the stick comes. That’s maya. Maya is the stick. Maya says,
“Look, Krishna is my Swami (Lord) as well, and He’s your Father. Go to Him!”
And we say, “Nope. I’m coming to you!”
So maya says, “Okay, then I’ll give you some smacking around.”
Maya gives us unpleasant situations and suffering, and we suffer life after life after life in this world, but then we blame maya. We say,
“Maya is bad. Look, maya is giving me all this suffering!”
But maya is not bad. Maya is the stick.
Maya is saying, “Look, if you come to me, you’re just going to get transitory happiness and plenty of suffering.”
If we didn’t have that suffering, we would never develop detachment from maya. Even though we’re not totally detached, we have some doubt in maya,
“Is this really all there is?”
So that doubt, that slight detachment we have from the world, gives the Saints an opening to say,
“Look, there’s something better. There’s something perfect. Come towards Shree Krishna!”
The Saints and maya work in tandem. The Saints give us loving inspiration, and maya gives us punishment if we turn towards her. Without maya giving us that punishment, we would never be open to listening to the philosophy about God. So maya is doing mangal (auspicious) work. Maya is doing very auspicious, very good work at the behest of God.
