T here 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 mahamaya also makes manipulations on conditioned souls that 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 realise 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 analysed 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. Upastha vegam means the force of the genitals.
Sukadeva Goswami said there were tapasya, brahmacharya, vratha, and dhana, all of these processes helped overcome the sinful reactions. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu gave a very quick process for people of Kaliyuga instructing that we should abstain from sense gratification by tolerating the forces and on the other hand we must chant Krishna’s name because there was a special potency in the holy name and it would act and uproot the desires and we would be able to progress well.