Is the Vedic concept of Maya same as the Christian concept of Satan?

1.       Is the Vedic concept of Maya same as the Christian concept of Satan? Is Maya real or metaphorical?

Transcript

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Question – Is the Vedic concept of Maya same as the Christian concept of Satan? And is the concept of Maya real or metaphorical? Answer – The concepts of Maya and Satan are similar in the sense that they attempt to serve the similar purpose of explaining the presence of evil in a world that God has created and to explain it especially in the context of God being good. Now, there is a significant difference between the two principles or concepts because Christianity conceives of Satan as somebody separate from, independent of and rebellious to God. And Satan is almost as powerful as God and that is why Satan is able to cause evil and suffering upon people even when God doesn’t want it.
And, of course, the ultimate redeeming hope is that there will be a final fight in which God will exert himself fully and kill Satan and then there will be good forever in the world. This concept that somebody can be a competitor to God and give God a tough time is itself seriously problematic philosophically and morally. First of all, it compromises on the omnipotence of God and it makes the worshippers of God vulnerable to attacks by somebody who is opposed to God and especially who is vindictive to those worshippers for having worshipped God.
And the challenge of explaining how God is good and why there is still evil in this world has led some people to come up with distorted ideas like the Jewish Rabbi Harold Kushner who came up in his best-selling but self-deluded book When bad things happen to good people, the idea that God is all good but God is not all-powerful, however, the idea that God is good but not powerful enough to protect us makes God effeminate and impotent deeply. And even Kushner has the further audacity to imply that when God is not able to protect us, even when he wants to, because he doesn’t have the power, we humans should learn to forgive God. So, to err is divine, to forgive is human.
This is the kind of horrendous distortions that can result when we carry on with the idea of Satan. So, the concept of Satan is an imagined personification of the tendency towards evil that is present within all of us. But that personification is not only imagined but it is imagined in a distorted way because of which the supremacy of God is seriously compromised.
The Vedic understanding of Maya is significantly different in the sense that Maya is an energy of God and she is completely under the control of God. And Maya is not what creates evil within us as Satan is supposed to. Actually, Maya only fuels the evil that is present within us.
Ultimately, it is our desire to try to enjoy separate from God that is the cause of our suffering. Ultimately, it is we who have the evil desire of turning away from God and that is the cause of all our suffering. Maya simply provides us the promise, the facility and in the end the consequence of executing that evil desire.
Sometimes, in our personification of Maya, in our conception of Maya, we may think of Maya as evil but the Srimad Bhagavatam says, Vaishnavi Janamohini, that Maya which deludes all living entities is Vaishnavi, she is a devotee of the Lord. And it is her thankless service to the Lord to purify us of all material desires and to help us make spiritual advancement by focusing on the pure desires within our heart. So, there is a significant difference between the two concepts.
And more importantly, for us, we have to understand that Maya is not just a concept or a metaphor. There is a personality, Maya Devi is actually Durga Devi. She is the consort of Lord Shiva who is himself an expansion of Lord Krishna.
So, there is a real personality Maya and it is her real service to Krishna to separate the sincere souls from the insincere souls. The sincere souls, when they see the good and the evil desires coming up in their consciousness, the desire to serve Krishna and the desire to enjoy separate from Krishna, will choose the desire to serve Krishna and go beyond the influence of Maya. Those who entertain and enlarge the desire to enjoy separate from Krishna will come under the clutches of Maya.
So, therefore, Maya is not evil. Maya is doing a necessary service of highlighting to us the evil that is there in our heart and to help us remove that evil from our heart by making us endure the consequences of our evil choices. So, in that sense, Maya’s service is like that of a teacher who sets a multiple choice question paper.
The students are educated before to know what is the right choice, but after that, when they make the wrong choices, then they suffer the consequences. They lose marks, they suffer in their grades and their academy performance. So, yes, the wrong choices are provided by Maya, but we are not forced to take those wrong choices.
We take them by our choice and it is that choice that needs to be rectified. So, we cannot blame Maya for the evil within us as some interpretations of the concept of Satan imply that all of us are as it is vulnerable to Satan and we are helpless against his attacks. Not all Christians say like that, but some do.
So, the concept of Maya helps us understand both the presence of evil in the world as a result of our own wrong choices of acting on the evil desires in our heart and also the presence of God who helps us to see the consequences of those evil desires through our personal experience and thereby get rid of those desires through the agency of Maya. So, the concept of Maya by separating the cause of evil in this world from God and by explaining the aggravation of evil, the temptation towards evil in this world through the agency of Maya, whose power over us depends on our choosing to fall prey to temptations, solidly reconciles the omnipotence of God and the evil in this world without our having to come up with absurd concoctions like God is all good but not all powerful. Maya is no competitor to God and Maya is an obedient servant of God and in fact, in the fact that Maya is the obedient servant of God lies the greatest hope for the worshipper of God.
It may seem temporarily that when we try to surrender to Krishna, Maya tempts us more, but actually if we surrender to Krishna intensely, then the temptations of Maya fall away just as a dog who is attacking a person, a visitor, a trespasser. When the trespasser calls out to the master of the house and then the master signals to the dog, move aside. Dog just stands aside.
So, Maya inspires us to take greater shelter of Krishna and that is her service to Krishna. So, Maya is in that sense entirely different from Satan. She is subordinate to Krishna, she is fulfilling a necessary service to Krishna, whereas the concept of Satan is a distorted personification which conceives of an entity separate from God and competitor to God.
So, yes, Satan in one sense can be said to be within us in the sense that it is we who have the evil desire within us. It is not that there is some entity called Satan who creates the evil desire within us. No, it is we only by our false choices succumb to the evil desire and our tendency to succumb to this evil desire is satanic.
But the concept of Satan is a philosophically erroneous distortion.