Coat the Heart with Love
When the morning sun is above the horizon and you walk away from it toward the west, your shadow lengthens and struts before you. That shadow is maya [illusion], the primal illusion, and the basic ignorance. It deludes and hides truth and clothes it in the costume of falsehood. To discard maya and escape from its shadow, you have to walk sunward. Then the shadow will fall behind you. When the sun (the source of reason and intelligence) climbs higher and higher, then the shadow becomes shorter and smaller, until at last, when he [the sun] is right on top of you, the shadow (maya) crouches at your feet, surrendering to you, you can trample on it. So, too, when your intelligence is supreme, maya cannot caste her evil spell on you.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 6, pg. 235
The multiplicity is neither real nor unreal. It is relatively real, temporarily real, pragmatically real. Mithya [delusion] is a combination of truth and falsehood, apparently real but fundamentally unreal. Real for most practical purposes but unreal when the basic nature is unraveled. Mithya is the mixture of truth and falsehood, the knowledge of the serpent, that is negated when the knowledge of the rope is won.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 10, pg. 305
Maya is the will that causes all three gunas (attributes of action). It is a clear flawless mirror. When the satwic (spiritual) nature is reflected in that mirror, God results; when the rajasic (active) nature is reflected, the jiva (individualized self) results; when the tamasic (inert) nature is reflected, matter (the objective world) is the result. All three are Paramatma (the Universal Soul), but they derive their reality as its reflections.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 14, pg. 142
We now know that the illusion is like a mirror. The mirror reflects within itself all that is before it. The convexity or concavity of the mirror or the covering of dust that might have settled on it will certainly blur the reflected image, but it cannot distort the objects themselves. God, the world of matter, and the individual soul, all three are images of the Universal Soul reflected in the mirror of illusion and warped by the human characteristics that tarnish the surface of the mirror.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 10, pg. 307
God will not be reflected in a mind full of likes and dislikes and desires or a mind that is disturbed by impure thoughts. If you want to realize the presence of God in all beings, you must recognize the importance of purity and steadiness of mind. When the mind is pure and steady divinity will be resplendent everywhere.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 11, pg. 241
