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The hare's horn is non-existent; it is a description of something super-imposed; knowledge of the reality alone will destroy the idea for ever. Then the false idea will melt away. Only the ignorant will stick to Maya as Truth; the wise will at best designate it as "Indescribable" or "Beyond explanation", for it is difficult to explain how Maya originated. We know only that it is there, to delude. The wise refer to it as "hare's horn".

When simple-minded children are told, "Lo! There lurks a ghost there", they believe it to be true and get terribly frightened. So too, unthinking, ignorant persons get convinced of the reality of the objects around them through the influence of Maya. Those endowed with Viveka, however, distinguish between the true Brahmam and the false Jagath; others, unable to do so, or to find out the real nature of Maya, simply dismiss it as 'beyond description', 'anirvachaneeya'.

Jnanis who have clearly grasped the truth characterise it as the mother whose corpse is cremated by the son! It is the experience of Maya that gives rise to Jnana, or the 'revealing wisdom'. The child Vidya kills the mother as soon as it is born. The child was delivered for the very purpose of matricide, and its first task is naturally the cremation of the dead mother.

When one tree rubs against another in a forest, fire starts and the fire burns both. So too, the Vidya or knowledge that arose from Maya destroys the very source of the knowledge. Avidya is reduced to ashes by Vidya.

Like the expression "hare's horn", which is the name for a non-existent thing, Maya too is non-existent and one has only to know it to dismiss it from the consciousness. So say the Jnanis.

Nor is this all. You label anything non-existent as Avidya or Maya. Whatever becomes meaningless, valueless, untrue, baseless and existenceless when knowledge grows, that you can take to be Maya's manifestation. Next