Text 34] Answers by Citing the Lord’s Version 513

its interactions of different cnergies, its deterioration and its disappear-
ance—all has its basic relation with the existence of the Personality of
Godhead. And as such, whenever there is forgetfulness of this prime re-
lation with the Lord, and things are accepted as real without being related
with the Lord, that conception is called the product of the illusory energy
of the Lord. 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-maya, or the energy of union, and the wrong conception of
detaching a thing from its relationship with the Lord is called daivi maya,
or mahé-maya, of the Lord. Both the mayds also have connection with the
Lord because nothing can exist without being related with 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. The example
of accepting the rope as a snake is illusion, but it 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 re-
flection of the reality in the darkness of ignorance. Anything that appears
as apparently not being ‘“‘produced out of My energy” is called maya. The
conception that the living entity is formless or that the Supreme Lord is
formless is also illusion. In the Bhagavad-gita (Bg. 2.12) it is said by the
Lord in the midst of the battlefield that the warriors who were standing
in front of Arjuna, Arjuna himself, and even the Lord were all existing
before, they were existing on the battlefield of Kuruksetra, 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 the fire,-or the light of
electricity. So the identity of self as being unconnected with the Supreme
Self, the Lord, is also illusion, and the false claim that “J am the Supreme”
