The term ‘maya’ is used in the Rig Veda to denote the power that borders on the magical: ‘Indro mayabhih pururupa iyate; Indra, through the help of maya, assumes different forms.’ (Rig Veda, 6.47.18.) In the Upanishads the word acquires a philosophical significance. The Shvetashvatara Upanishad announces: ‘Know that Prakriti, Nature, is surely maya, and that Maheshwara, the Mighty Lord, is the maker of maya.’ (Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4.9.10.) Krishna says in in the Bhagavad Gita: ‘This divine maya of mine, consisting of the modes [gunas] is hard to overcome. But those who take refuge in me alone cross beyond it.’ (S Radhakrishnan, The Bhagavatgita (Bombay: Blackie & Son, 1970), 218.
Adi Shankaracharya speaks of maya as the power of Bhagavan,
beginningless and compounded of the three gunas. Though imperceptible, maya can
be inferred from the effects it produces. It is ‘something positive, though
intangible, which cannot be described as either being or non-being, which is
made of three qualities and is antagonistic to knowledge.’
Maya is said to be indefinable because it cannot be
described either as being or as non-being. If it were being in the truest
sense, then its effect, the tangible universe, would be perceived at all times;
for being can never become non-being, the real can never become unreal. But
sages report that one does not behold the universe in samadhi or while one is
in communion with Brahman, and its absence in dreamless sleep is a universal
experience. On the other hand, if maya were non-being, a non-existent
unreality, like ‘the son of a barren woman’, then the universe would not have been
manifested at any time. One could not have apprehended the world of names and
forms as real.
Therefore, maya is said to be ‘something positive’. The
qualifier ‘something’ denotes insubstantiality; in comparison to Brahman, its
substratum, the world is both insubstantial and devoid of intrinsic worth. The
word ‘positive’ reminds us that it is capable of being apprehended through the
senses. It also serves the purpose of removing the erroneous notion that maya
or ignorance is purely a negative entity, the absence of knowledge, because
both maya and its effect, the material universe, disappear when one attains the
knowledge of Brahman. Brahman and maya cannot coexist any more than the
Absolute and the relative, the one and the many. When one of them is
apprehended, the other appears to be non-existent. They cannot even be
described as correlative entities. That is why the oft-asked question ‘how the
Absolute becomes this world of relatives’ is illogical and, therefore, meaningless.
Source - Excerpts from an article titled ‘Maya: A Bhagavadgita Perspective’ by Dr D Nirmala Devi in February 2010 issue of Prabuddha Bharata