BENGALURU: There are two mayas working under the direction of Krishna - mahamaya, the energy of the material world, and yogamaya, the energy of the spiritual world.
Yogamaya acts on the devotees and makes various manipulations on how to bring more pleasure to Krishna and similarly maha maya also makes manipulations on conditioned souls who want to forget Krishna and gets the living entities entrapped in so many kinds of pursuits in this material world. We as practitioners - sadhakas, should realize we are subjected to material energy and we have to struggle and by the mercy of Krishna we will be able to free ourselves from this influence.
This influence of mahamaya has been analyzed by acharyas in order to help us deal with it. The jiva who desires to be independent of Krishna is given a material yantra which has certain forces called vega, vegam.
Rupa Goswami in his Nectar of Instruction elaborates there are six kinds of vegam, forces in the body. The first force is - vaco vegam - to talk, that’s the urge in the body - the force of the mind is such that it is always flickering. Similarly when desire is frustrated, mind generates a powerful force called anger - krodha vegam. Jihva vegam and udara vegam - one is the force of the tongue, the other is the force of the belly, when we want to eat more and we are never satisfied. upastha vegam means the force of the genitals.
The nervous system is designed in such a way that when the body needs energy, it triggers off certain stimulations in the senses - we start looking for food. The force of the genitals is also a biological force, that’s how you see animals and birds engaging in mating. A person who has learned to tolerate these forces in the body, he can actually become a spiritual master. When you eat nice food, you feel good or when you drink coffee, you feel very active. Scientists have found that it is a substance known as dopamine that generates a feeling of happiness. When the anti-depressants are taken, they increase the dopamine content in the nerves and automatically a depressed person feels very good. It is a yantra; it’s made for the living entity to fulfill its desire in the material world without Krishna. These kinds of pleasure seeking forces have been implanted in the body. Sukadeva Goswami said, there is tapasya, brahmacharya, vratha, dhana, all of these processes help overcome the sinful reactions. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who came to give a very quick process for people of Kali-yuga instructed that we should abstain from sense gratification by tolerating the forces and on the other hand we must chant Krishna’s name because there is a special potency in the holy name and it will act and uproot the desires and we will be able to progress well.