The act of mistaking one thing for another is called illusion. For example, confusing a rope with a snake is an illusion, but the rope is not false. The person subject to illusion does indeed have a rope in front of them, but their vision of it is illusory. Moreover, the erroneous concept that sees the material manifestation separate from the Lord's energy is an illusion, but this material manifestation is not false. This illusory concept corresponds to a reflection of reality appearing in the darkness of ignorance. Thus, we will call maya anything that appears not to be produced by the union energy of God.
Believing that the separate being or the Lord have no form is also an illusion. Standing on the battlefield of Kuruksetra, in the midst of two opposing armies, the Lord declared that Arjuna, His disciple and pure devotee, and all the combatants assembled there, as well as He Himself, existed in the past, that they exist in the present, and that in the future as well, they will always be distinct individuals from one another, even when their bodies are annihilated and they are freed from the bondage of material existence.
The Lord and created beings remain forever distinct persons. They can in no way lose this personal nature. Rather, only the influence of illusory energy, that reflection of light in darkness, can disappear by the Lord's mercy.
The individual being does not enjoy true independence, but only a reflection of the independence inherent in Krishna, the Supreme Being. Thus, the soul, conditioned by matter and illusory energy, which claims supreme independence, finds itself under the influence of illusion. This illusion afflicts beings endowed with a poor foundation of knowledge. Thus, we see the shimmering reflection of the sun, the moon, fire, and electricity dazzling so-called scientists, physicians, empiricists, and others, who go so far as to deny the existence of the Supreme Lord, while putting forward their numerous theories and speculations on the creation, maintenance, and annihilation of the material manifestation.
The physician may deny the existence of the soul in the body of the individual being, but he remains unable to bring a corpse back to life, although all the body's mechanisms continue to exist after death. Psychologists, for their part, conduct in-depth studies of brain physiology, as if it were the arrangement of cerebral tissue that allowed thought to express itself, but they remain incapable of making mental activity reappear in a corpse.
Thus, scientists study cosmic manifestation or the constitution of the body, without seeing any connection with the Supreme Lord, but these are only various forms of intellectual gymnastics, which, ultimately, correspond to pure and simple illusion. All this progress of science and knowledge in the current context of this materialistic civilization is nothing other than a reflection of illusory energy, which manifests its influence by veiling reality.