“Ananda” means bliss.

“Nanda” is something that can die out, disappear and related to suffering. Ananda is that which can never disappear from your being, it is bliss. It is not joy. Joy brings suffering in its wake. Ananda is beyond joy. It is eternal bliss, Nithya ananda.
Pleasure is what you feel through your senses based on an outer object; music, a fragrance, a beautiful sight, physical touch. When you meet nature, a mountain, a sea, a forest, you feel joy. When you feel ecstasy without sensory inputs or nature, not even inputs of forms of God, only from your inner core of energy, your atman, without any external input, it is bliss. It can be with no reason. It comes from within your being. That is Ananda.
Yoga: it’s important to understand what yoga is not. Yoga is not physical exercises or breath control; these are but a part of Yoga. Yoga is union; the union with the divine; union with the cosmic power. It is chitta vritti nirodaha: it’s the cessation of the mind, to take it beyond the mind, to be one with existence. The blissful technique to unite your own self with the divine is ananda yoga, using bliss itself to unite.
Life has no goal, it has only purpose.

Living has a purpose. If  life is a goal it’s a rat race; even when you win this race you are still a rat. The very living is bliss when you go without a goal, only with a purpose of enjoying the path.
You cannot look at God as a goal. You cannot run towards God. In inner world, logic is very different. Goals are not reached by running towards them. Vivekananda says: Arise, awake, and do not stop till the goal is reached. I say: arise, awake, stop; goal is reached.
Seeking makes you tense, will make you miss your purpose. In a relaxation course you are so tense that you lose the purpose.
I say accept all guilt, all mistakes, and all failures; even if you cannot accept, accept that you cannot accept. You will then relax; guilt will drop from your mind.
If your mind is tense it can never stop. Only when you relax it can cease. You have to drop goal orientation. If you accept what you are, what is, mind will lose its roots- Meditation just happens. When mind is, bliss is not. It is either mind or bliss.

-Paramahamsa Nithyananda

We can’t speak about silence. The moment we speak we disturb the silence.

Let me try and explain how to create that silence in us.

When I use the word silence I don’t mean soundlessness. Soundlessness is negative silence. When I use the word silence, I mean a living, vibrant silence.

It is not the silence of a graveyard. It is the silence of an enlightened Master. The silence of a graveyard is totally different from silence of an enlightened Master. An enlightened person’s silence is vibrant and alive.

When Jesus says ‘Be still and know that I am truth’, he means this silence, the silence of enlightenment.

To enter into that you need to go beyond words. Words and silence, you should cross both these to realize that silence of an enlightened Master.

When we enter into that silence, our whole being radiates, we start singing. When I say we start singing, not only through our mouth, our whole being starts singing. Our very movements will be graceful. Our very presence on the planet earth will be a blessing. Our air, our space will heal. That itself will radiate so much energy, so much life, and so much light. We can touch and feel God in the presence of that person who has experienced God.

What is keeping us from experiencing this silence?

The first thing we don’t have the trust that we can also experience that silence. We always think this is not for us. It is the property of the whole universe. It is our birthright. Being alive is the only qualification to experience this silence and be enlightened.

One more obstacle is that we always have guilt about ourselves. We don’t respect ourselves. We always measure ourselves only based on our failures. We don’t even remember the good things we have done or the right decisions we made. The strength of our being should be measured only on the positive decisions we make, not on the negative decisions we made.

Also we have to drop the wrong ideas about enlightenment. Enlightenment is very simply going beyond desires; it’s going beyond thoughts and words.

The moment we drop the wrong ideas about ourselves, the wrong ideas about enlightenment, we start experiencing enlightenment. We are in that silence. The silence of enlightenment is a living, vibrant silence, a living, vibrant energy. It is the heartbeat of existence. Meditation is the doorway to this silence!!