The Sage Who Forgot Himself

The sages told the Pandavas of how the great sage Narada, who thought he understood the illusion that veils the world, was made to live through it himself, forgetting his very self - a tale of the power of the divine illusion, maya, and of how even the wisest may be caught in its net when they presume to have mastered it.

Narada was a sage among sages, a wanderer of the three worlds, a devotee of the Lord Vishnu, learned in all the highest truths. And being so wise, he had often heard of maya, the divine illusion - the power by which the one reality appears as the many, by which the soul forgets its true nature and is bound to the world of birth and death, of joy and sorrow and attachment. Narada believed that he understood this maya well, that he had seen through it and was beyond its power. And one day, in his confidence, he asked the Lord Vishnu to show him the nature of this maya, that he might understand it more perfectly; for he wished to know firsthand the power that bound all beings.

The Lord smiled at the sage's request, and agreed to show him the nature of maya. They went together a little way, and the Lord, seeming weary and thirsty, asked Narada to fetch him some water from a village nearby. 'Go, Narada,' he said, 'to that village, and bring me a little water; I will rest here and wait for you.' And Narada, glad to serve the Lord, went off at once toward the village to fetch the water, thinking it a small and simple errand.

But the moment Narada entered the village and approached a house to ask for water, the divine illusion began its work. The door was opened by a young woman of surpassing beauty; and as Narada looked upon her, he forgot, in that instant, what he had come for. The errand, the waiting Lord, the water - all slipped from his mind, and he stood lost in the beauty of the maiden before him. So subtly and so completely did the illusion take hold that the sage, who had come only to fetch a cup of water, found his whole attention and his whole heart caught and held by the woman at the door, and the purpose that had brought him there wholly forgotten.

Caught in the illusion, Narada lingered in the village. He sought the maiden's hand from her father, and was wed to her; and he settled there and took up the life of a householder, forgetting entirely his life as a wandering sage. Years passed within the dream: he lived as a family man, working and providing, and his wife bore him children, sons and daughters, whom he loved dearly; and he grew deep into the cares and joys and attachments of worldly life, his identity as the great sage Narada wholly forgotten, his very self lost in the role the illusion had given him.

For many long years Narada lived this life, bound by love to his wife and children, absorbed in the labors and the affections and the anxieties of a householder, knowing himself only as a man of that village with a family to keep. The divine illusion had so completely overtaken him that the truth of who he was - a deathless sage, a devotee of the Lord, who had come only to fetch a cup of water - was utterly buried; and he dwelt within the dream as within the only reality he knew, growing old in his attachments, his whole heart given to the fleeting things of the world the illusion had woven about him.

Then, after the long years of that life, calamity came. A great flood arose - the river rose in spate, the waters came rushing over the village, sweeping away houses and fields in a roaring deluge. Narada, in terror, took his wife and his children and tried to flee the rising waters, struggling to lead them all to safety through the flood, clinging to them, desperate to save the family that had become his whole world.

But the flood was too strong. As Narada struggled through the rushing water, holding to his wife and children, the torrent tore them from his grasp one by one - a child swept away here, another there, his wife pulled from his hand by the current - and he watched, helpless and anguished, as all of them, every one he loved, were drowned and carried off by the merciless flood. And then Narada himself was overwhelmed by the waters, swept away and sinking, losing his own hold, drowning in the deluge that had taken everything from him; and in that extremity of grief and terror, all that he had loved lost before his eyes, he was carried down into the flood.

And then, in the very midst of his drowning grief, the illusion lifted. Narada found himself, suddenly, no longer in the flood at all, but standing as before beside the Lord Vishnu, who was waiting just where he had left him, smiling gently; and the whole long life - the village, the wife, the children, the years, the flood - was gone in an instant, as a dream vanishes upon waking. And the Lord said to him, mildly, 'Narada, where is the water you went to fetch for me? I have been waiting; it is barely a moment since you went.'

Narada stood astonished, his heart still wrung with the grief of a flood that had never happened, slowly understanding. The whole lifetime he had just lived - the love, the family, the long years, the drowning - all of it had passed in less than the moment it took the Lord to ask for a drink of water; it had been maya, the divine illusion, shown to him at his own request. He who had thought he understood illusion, who had believed himself beyond its power, had been caught in it so completely that he had forgotten his very self and lived and grieved through a whole imagined life, all in the space of an instant. And he understood, now, the power of maya as he never had before - not as a doctrine, but as a thing that had swallowed him whole.

Narada was humbled to the depths. All his confidence that he understood and had mastered illusion was gone; for he had seen that the very power he thought himself beyond had caught him in an instant and held him through a whole lifetime, making him forget his deathless nature and bind his heart wholly to fleeting things, until he wept over a family that was no more real than a dream. He bowed before the Lord, his pride in his own wisdom undone, and acknowledged the boundless power of the divine illusion and his own helplessness before it.

The Lord had taught him, gently and without rebuke, the very thing he had asked to know: the nature and the power of maya. Narada understood now that this illusion is no small thing to be grasped and set aside by the proud intellect, but a power so subtle and so strong that it can swallow even a great sage who presumes upon his wisdom; that to know about maya is not to be free of it; and that freedom from it comes not from pride in one's own understanding, but only from the grace of the Lord who wields it. The wise sage had been made wiser by being humbled, and had learned the limits of his own wisdom.

There was in the tale a teaching the sages drew out with care: the immense and subtle power of the divine illusion that veils the truth from all beings. For if even Narada, a sage of the three worlds, a devotee of the Lord, could be caught so completely that he forgot his very self and lived a whole lifetime within the dream, grieving over phantoms as though they were real - then how much more are ordinary beings bound by this same illusion, taking the fleeting world for the whole of reality, forgetting their deathless nature, and giving their hearts wholly to things that pass away like a dream.

The whole life of beings in the world, the tale taught, is much like Narada's imagined life: a passage through attachments and joys and griefs that seem utterly real while they last, but that pass and vanish; a forgetting of the true and deathless self in the absorption of a passing role. And the deepest lesson was the humbling of the proud intellect: that to know about illusion is not to be free of it, that the mind that boasts it has mastered maya is the very mind maya most easily catches, and that true freedom comes not from one's own cleverness but only from the grace of the Lord, surrendered to in humility.

The sages drew the lessons of the tale for the Pandavas.

'See, first, the vast and subtle power of the divine illusion, maya, that veils the truth from all. Even the great sage Narada, who thought himself beyond it, was caught so wholly that he forgot his very self and lived and grieved through a whole imagined lifetime in the space of a moment. The tale teaches how powerful is the illusion that binds us, how completely it can make us forget our deathless nature and give our hearts to fleeting things as though they were the whole of reality; and it bids us see that our own absorbed and anxious life in the world is itself much like Narada's dream - real-seeming while it lasts, yet passing. Hold the world, then, more lightly, knowing it for the passing thing it is.

'And see the humbling of the wise, and where true freedom lies. Narada's confidence that he had mastered illusion was the very thing that left him open to it; for to know about maya is not to be free of it, and the proud intellect is the one it catches most easily. His freedom came not from his own cleverness but from the grace of the Lord. The tale teaches humility above all: that we are not the masters of the illusion we are caught in, that pride in our own understanding is itself a snare, and that release comes only by the grace of the divine, surrendered to in humility. Be humble, then, before the mystery that binds you; and seek not to master the dream by your own pride, but to be awakened from it by grace.'

And the Pandavas, who lived amid the joys and griefs and attachments of the world, took to heart the tale of the great sage who forgot himself in the dream of maya, and was awakened only by the grace of the Lord.