"I am the body" causes maya

There are so many thoughts in the mind. Thought after thought after thought... But there is one thought that is continuous, "I am the body". This is the string on which all other thoughts are threaded. Once we identify ourselves with the body by thinking this thought, maya follows. If we cease to identify ourselves with the body, maya will not affect us anymore. -- A.S.

Freedom from the World Illusion

Live in the present with your consciousness externalized momentarily, but without any effort: when the mind stops linking itself to the past and to the future it becomes no-mind. If from moment to moment your mind dwells on what is and drops it effortlessly at once, the mind becomes no-mind, full of purity.

It is only as long as the mind continues to be agitated that it experiences diversity of its own projection or expansion, even as rain falls only as long as there are clouds; and it is only as long as the infinite consciousness limits itself into the finite mind that such agitation and expansion take place. If consciousness ceases to be the finite mind, then know that the very roots of cyclic world-illusion (of birth and death) are burnt and there is perfection.

-- Yoga Vasishta

QOTD (SNM)

All depends on you. It is by your consent that the world exists. Withdraw your belief in its reality, and it will dissolve like a dream. Time can bring down mountains; much more you, who are the timeless source of time. For, without memory and expectation there can be no time.

-- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That

Getting rid of Maya

D.: Can you help me to get rid of Maya ?
M.: What is Maya ?
D.: Attachment to the world.

M.: What is it then that raises the question of Maya ^[?] just now?
D.: The mind was not in sleep. The world and the attachment to it are of the mind.

M.: That is it. The world and the attachment to it are of the mind , not of the Self.

D.: But I do not understand.
M.: Because you are identifying the Self with the body. Give up the wrong identity and the Self is revealed.
...
D.: But this does not answer my question to help me to get rid of Maya, i.e., attachment.

M.: This attachment is not found in sleep. It is perceived and felt now.
...
It is not your real nature. On whom is this accretion? If the Real Nature is known these exist not. If you realise the Self the possessions are not perceived. That is getting rid of Maya.
Maya is not objective, that it could be got rid of in any other way.

[Ed: The above conversation (sadly) shows how often aspirants were either not listening to what the Maharshi was saying, or were asking for what they actually did not want]

Words of Bhagavan Ramana