Q: We have read in many books that our mind is nothing but maya or illusion and that all our questions are only an illusion. Please can you tell us something about this?

[Paramahamsa]

Q: We have read in many books that our mind is nothing but maya or illusion and that all our questions are only an illusion. Please can you tell us something about this?

The famous question about maya is asked one more time! First thing: don’t confuse yourself with complicated reading. Second thing: understand very clearly that there is nothing to be understood with the mind. The mystery of life cannot be solved with your mind. You cannot know the purpose of your life with your mind. That is why they say that your mind is an illusion.

The first step to solving the mystery of our life is ‘dropping your mind’. If you allow your mind to play, you will continue to play, that’s all. Life after life, you will play. Your deep inner thirst will remain unquenched. Probably your seeker ego will get fulfilled, but that is of no use. You become only more confused inside you. Try to move your centre of operation from your mind to your heart or being. If you operate with your mind as the centre, questions and more questions will follow. With questions, you cannot know. Only with awareness you can know.

If you operate with your heart, awareness and understanding will happen in you and then automatically your questions will start dissolving; like when the sun rises, the darkness simply disappears. When awareness happens in you, understanding will happen and your questions will dissolve.

You will start understanding things even before you come to the question! In this way, the questions will dissolve. It is difficult to understand this, but once you get an experience of it, you will know exactly what I mean by awareness. Questions will disappear and understanding will continuously engulf you.

If you understand this much, you need not worry about maya or illusion. In addition to intellectual understanding from my words, meditation can help you switch to the mode of awareness easily. We can talk for hours about maya and illusion, but you will only get more confused.

Instead, it is worthwhile learning the solutions that will help us to live intelligently; that is enough. One thing I want to tell you: maya or illusion is everything that your mind projects, so that is why I say, don’t bother about knowing maya. Instead start living with more awareness, more consciously. Then the question of maya itself will not be relevant.

As I said earlier, bliss is continuously happening in us. This is the actual truth. But we continuously stop the flow of bliss, and as a result we suffer. Bliss is not something that you can get from outside and keep inside yourself. No. It is your inherent nature. When you arrive in this world, you are in a state of bliss. As society conditions you, you move far away from it. Then you start searching for ways outside of yourself to get it back.

We will see how to stop the stopping of bliss. When I say bliss, I don’t mean the ordinary happiness that we feel in our everyday lives. Ordinary happiness is a result of something that happens outside: some happy occasion, some material benefit, some happy news, some relationship that worked out, something to do with a person or thing in the outside world. This kind of happiness is purely dependent on the people and circumstances outside of us. And this kind of happiness is what leads us to sadness also, because people and circumstances keep changing. They are not the same. Their behavior is different at different times. And when their behavior changes, our happiness too changes!

A small story:

There was an old man in a family who could not be pleased at any cost. He remained stubborn and grumpy, no matter how much his family tried to keep him in good spirits. His children and grandchildren would come and visit him and try to cheer him up, but he would remain grumpy.

Suddenly one day, he became very gentle and cheerful. His family was surprised at the sudden transformation.

His granddaughter asked him, ‘Grandpa, how come you have changed so suddenly?’

The old man replied, ‘All my life, I tried my best to get a contented mind, but never succeeded. So I have decided to be contented with it now.’

Everything is a projection of our mind! We can decide how we want to be. It is all in the mind. With the help of our mind, we have stopped the flow of bliss from within. That is the truth. Understand: there is a universal consciousness that fills the entire cosmos and there is an individual consciousness that fills us. Man’s whole purpose is to establish a connection between these two. When this connection happens, man is said to be enlightened or in eternal bliss or in nithyananda. Nithyananda means eternal bliss.

Read More : Guaranteed Enlightenment - Ashtavakra Gita by Paramahamsa Nithyananda.