Maya and Mind

Divine Life Society Publication: Goal of Life is God-Realisation by Gurudev Sri Swami Sivananda

Om Sri Sadguru Paramatmane Namah

There is no duality in Reality. All modification is illusory. Multiplicity is an illusion.

Maya projects multiplicity. Maya creates division, division between the individual soul and the Supreme Soul.

Maya is a tremendous, delusive power of God. Maya is the material stuff of this world. Maya is the source of the physical universe. This world of names and forms is a false show kept up by the jugglery of Maya.

Just as a stick burning at one end, when waved round quickly, produces an illusion of a circle of fire, Alata Chakra, so is it with the multiplicity of the world. Maya deludes us. Maya havocs through the mind. The things that we perceive all round us are only mind in form or substance.

The world is a product of the mind. The whole world is an expansion of the mind. The entire universe arises and exists in the mind.

Nothing of the world is outside the mind. Earth, mountains, and rivers-all are fragments of the mind, appearing as it were to exist outside.

The world does not exist by itself. It is not seen without the aid of the mind. It disappears when the mind ceases to function.

It is imagination alone that assumes the forms of time, space, and motion. Space and time have no independent status apart from Brahman or the Self, which is Awareness.

There is no space without time, and there is no time without space. Space and time go together. Space and time are interdependent. They are unreal.

Time and space are mental creations. Time and space are mental projections, unreal as dreams. However real they may seem to be, they are not ultimately real. Timeless, spaceless Brahman is the only Reality.

Brahman alone is. It is Brahman alone that shines as the world of variegated objects, like waves differentiating the water into many kinds of foam, bubbles, etc. Brahman appears as the world when cognised through the mind and the senses.

 Excerpts from:

Maya and Mind - Goal of Life is God-Realisation by Gurudev Sri Swami Sivananda