“Brother-in-law, Māyā is not some separate thing, a modification that newly comes along and attaches itself. To forget the Paramātma, who is the eternal Satya, and to take only the objects of name and form, the effects of the guṇas, as real: that is the characteristic of Māyā. For the Ātma, the embodied one, not to think of itself as itself, but to think of the body as itself: that is the nature of Māyā. Māyā is neither something that was there first and goes away later, nor something that was not there and comes along later. It never is; Māyā is the thing that is not. Yet it appears. It appears like the water of a mirage. Mirages are not water, and they were never born. They cannot draw those who have known their truth. Those who do not know, they deceive into seeing water and put through toil of many kinds. They bring unrest; they breed dejection. As darkness, born within the house, covers that very house; as moss, born in the water, covers that very water; as a cataract, born in the eye, covers that very eye: so Māyā too, being no ordinary thing, takes hold of the very ones in whom it is born. It covers the Trimūrti and the three guṇas.”