Hare Krsna,
Once a devotee asked Srila Prabhupada how one may recognize yoga-maya. Below is his response to the question.
Srila Prabhupada: Yogamāyā? Yogamāyā means that which connects you. Yoga means connection. When you are being gradually advanced in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, that is the action of yogamāyā. And when you are gradually forgetting Kṛṣṇa, that is the action of mahāmāyā. Māyā is acting upon you. The one is dragging you, and one is pushing you opposite way. Yogamāyā. So, just like the example, that you are always under the laws of government. You cannot deny. If you say, “I don’t agree to abide by the laws of government,” that is not possible. But when you are a criminal, you are under the police laws, and when you are gentleman, you are under the civil laws. The laws are there. In any situation, you have to obey the laws of the government. If you remain as a civilized citizen, then you are always protected by civil law. But as soon as you are against the state, the criminal law will act upon you. So the criminal activities of law is mahāmāyā, threefold miseries, always. Always putting in some sort of misery. And the civil department of Kṛṣṇa, ānandāmbudhi-vardhanam. You simply go on increasing the, I mean to say, depth of the ocean of joy. Ānandambudhi-vardhanam. That is the difference, yogamāyā and mahāmāyā. Yogamāyā is… Yogamāyā, the original yogamāyā, is Kṛṣṇa’s internal potency. That is Rādhārāṇī. And mahāmāyā is external potency, Durgā. This Durgā is explained in Brahma-saṁhitā, sṛṣṭi-sthiti-pralaya-sādhana-śaktir ekā chāyeva yasya bhuvanāni bibharti durgā (Bs. 5.44). Durgā is the superintending goddess of this whole material world. Everything is going on under his, under her control. Prakṛti, prakṛti is energy. Energy is accepted as feminine. Just like these materialistic persons, they are also working under some energy. What is that energy? The sex life. That’s all. They’re troubling so much: “Oh, at night I’ll have sex life.” That’s all. That is the energy. Yan maithunādi-gṛhamedhi-sukhaṁ hi tuccham (SB 7.9.45). Their life is based on the sex. That’s all. Everyone is working so hard, culminating in sex. That’s all. This is material life. So energy. The material energy means sex. So that is energy. If a person who is working in the factory, if you stop sex, he cannot work. And when he’s unable to enjoy sex life, then he takes intoxication. This is material life. So energy must be there. Here in the material world the energy is sex, and in the spiritual world the energy is love. Here the love is misrepresented in sex. That is not love; that is lust. Love is only possible with Kṛṣṇa, nowhere else. Nowhere else love is possible. That is misrepresentation of love. That is lust. So love and lust. Love is yogamāyā, and lust is mahāmāyā. That’s all. (from Lecture Seattle, October 18, 1968)
In essence, maha-maya and yoga-maya are two faces of the same goddess. She influences all aspects of our life.
Maha-maya, the goddess of material energy, activates the unlimited worlds and keeps the jiva souls bound in the shackles of passion and ignorance. She is very subtle yet extremely powerful. So perfect is the illusion she casts over the conditioned souls that not a single person even wants to escape from the prison-house of material existence. We are so attached to our chains and bondage that we feel no desire for true freedom. This is quite a contrast from the prison houses created by man, where someone always attempts to break free. How powerful the goddess of the material energy is and how bewildering is her spell!
Maha-maya separates the living entity from the Lord’s shelter by deluding him into thinking that he is the independent enjoyer, controller, and proprietor. However, as the expansion of the goddess of bhakti who reigns over the spiritual sky, Mayadevi ultimately desires our deliverance from material clutches. She is both our imprisoner and our well-wisher.
Her counterpart, Yoga-maya, the spiritual potency of the Lord, facilitates the union between the individual souls and Krishna. Both maha-maya and yoga-maya serve Krishna and govern jivas according to their desires and are in truth different faces of the same person.
The face we see is determined by the lens we look through, which could be exploitative or devotional according to our attitude. If that lens is the crystal-clear glass of being the humble servant of the servant, then everything and everyone will reveal the ultimate feature of the Lord’s internal energy and yoga-maya will make the arrangements for us to reconcile with Him and return to His shelter.
By their example, the great souls teach us how we must interact with one another and with the whole environment in order to evoke the divine nature, yoga-maya, to reveal herself as she is. Until we are deeply steeped in an attitude of humility, we need to realize material nature (maha-maya) for what she is. We must respect the concept of the inferior (material) nature as the response of Durga, Mother Parvati, to our rebellious mentality, manifested by our desires to enjoy, control, and exploit.
We need to practice here and now how to rectify this mentality. By interacting with everything as being essentially and inherently divine, we acknowledge that the inferior nature has a divine face and our respect for her grows. We will gradually perceive yoga-maya’s enlightening aspect taking precedence over her inferior, deluding feature.
Assuming the role of mother, she prepares us for going back to the land where there is no false ego, no sense of proprietorship, and where service is the predominant mentality directing the lives and activities of both the Lord and His servants.
(Source: Writings of HH Varsana Swami)
There is a lot to say and write about yoga-maya. However, I do not want to go too far ahead as we will increasingly witness yoga-maya’s divine play in Krsna’s sweet pastimes with Vrajavasis.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada!
Krsna Katha 