Illusion

CONSCIOUS IMMORTALITY

Q: What is illusion?

M: Find out to whom the illusion occurs and it will vanish. It is foolish to talk about it, for it is outside us and unknown whereas the seeker is inside and to be known. Find out the immediate and intimate instead of what is distant and unknown.

Q: 'Brahman is real, world is illusion,' is Sankara's stock phrase. Others say the world is real. Which is true?

M: Both. They refer to different stages of development. The aspirant starts with the definition that the Real always exists, and then eliminates the world as unreal because it is changing, and hence cannot be the ReaL Ultimately he reaches the Self and there finds unity. Then that which was originally rejected as being unreal, is found to be part of the unity. 

Being ab­sorbed in the Reality, the world is also real. In realization there is only existence, and nothing but That.

There is no difference between matter and spirit, Modern
science admits that all matter is energy. Energy is shakti. There­ fore all are resolved into Siva and shakti, i.e. Self and mind. The bodies are mere appearances. There is no reality in them as such.

The world is not real, apart from the hidden reality. Hence it is really the spiritual reality itself in another way. Ananda lives in
every being.