Atmananda offers us a helpful clue when it comes to trying to understand the nature of maya. In Atma Nivriti, he likens bondage, or maya, to the captivation one experiences while being transfixed by “the beauty of the figure” carved into a rock.

There are three key remarks to make about this metaphor:

One, maya works through a kind of seduction, an “erotic or desirous attraction”: the mind is seduced into being fixated on some object or other, or the mind is enamored with the movement from one object (with which it is temporarily fascinated) to another to another…

Two, that erotic attraction (i.e., the mobilization of desire for this object) is precisely captivating. The word is especially apt as it means both to be enchanted by something and, by virtue of being enchanted by something, to be “held captive” in and by that enchantment. One thinks here of the siren song in Homer’s Ulysses, a song whose beauty spells the undoing of sailors who are transfixed by it.

Three, implicit in Atmananda’s suggestion is an asymmetry between aversion and attraction. When, in the ordinary run of cases, one has an aversion, one “glosses over it” and instead grabs onto a fascinating object instead. If one has an aversion to a certain place, one may find oneself fantasizing at great length about some other, presumably perfect place. Scarcely did one notice the aversion. Rarely, except in deep sadhana, does witnessing awareness open deeply to aversions. More often, one is seduced into samsara by an attraction to this object, to this object, to this object…

What, then, is the turn to be made?

One needs to understand how maya works in order that one can “take the backward step and turn the light within,” says Zen master Dogen. In Atmananda’s metaphor, one must wholesomely want to know the rock–the Background–out of which the figure has been carved. What is THIS that makes “all of this”–i.e., the world of names and forms–possible? This wholesome interest in or wholesome love of the Background is, little by little, how one extricates oneself from longstanding, habitual captivation with objects.