Mahamaya - Sri Ramakrishna

Keshab Sen asked me: “Why can’t I see the Lord?” I replied: “You are busy with name and fame, scholarship and so on. That’s why you don’t see Him”. As long as the infant continues to suck on the pacifier, the mother does not come to him. After a while the infant throws away the pacifier and cries aloud. The mother then takes down the rice pot from the fire and comes to it.

You are engaged in arbitration. The Mother says to Herself: “My son is doing fine as a leader. Let him enjoy himself”.
All this time Ishan has been holding Thakur’s feet. He says humbly to him, still holding his feet: “It is not that I have been doing all this willfully”.

Sri Ramakrishna: “I know, it is the Mother’s game. Her sport indeed! Mahamaya wants to keep everybody bound to the world. You know how it is?

Many boats float on the ocean of the world. How many of them sink!

Again, out of a hundred-thousand kites, only one or two have their strings cut through and are thus set free; oh, how then You laugh and clap Your hands!

Similarly, out of a million people, only one or two attain Liberation. All the rest remain bound by the Mother’s will.
Haven’t you seen the game of hide and seek? It is the Grand-dame’s will that the game should continue. If everybody were to touch the Grand-dame, the game would not continue. So the Grand-dame does not want everybody to touch her.
You see, in large shops big sacks of rice are placed as high as the roof. Besides rice, lentils are also stored there. To save them from mice, the shopkeeper puts some sweetened puffed rice in a straw basket. They taste sweet and have their own smell, so all the mice busy themselves eating from the basket, not knowing about the big sacks. Similarly, man is enchanted with “lust and greed’”and does not seek the Lord”.

Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna
("Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita" word to word translation by Sri Dharm Pal Gupta, V2, Section XIX, Ch. V, “Sri Ramakrishna with Devotees in Dakshineswar”, 11 October, 1884)