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.