Advaita Vedānta

On this reading maya is beginningless ignorance superimposed on pure consciousness, which by its veiling and projecting powers makes the untrue appear and hides the true. The maya is called 'divine' with reference to the self-luminous consciousness that is its witness, and 'mine' with reference to the Lord who is the consciousness reflected as its original. The detailed picture (in one source) is the mirror model: on undivided consciousness ignorance is superimposed; grasping a reflection of consciousness, the original gives the Lord and the reflection gives the limited living being, along with the whole displayed world. As long as the living being does not realize its oneness with that original-Lord, it stays bound, knowing little, doer and enjoyer of a hundred calamities. So 'taking refuge in me alone' is read as direct, non-conceptual realization 'I am Brahman,' awakened by the Vedanta sentence 'that thou art' after purification, hearing, reflection and meditation; this realization uproots the ignorance that is maya's very root, as a lamp uproots darkness, and with the material cause destroyed the whole effect-display falls. One source stresses that only knowledge of the substrate (consciousness itself) can pull error up by the root; not other knowledge, and not mere restraint of mental movements. Yet refuge in the Lord and his grace are kept as the path that ripens into this knowledge; one source even sets the whole philosophical dispute about how jiva and Lord are related aside as detail that does not change the seeker's one task of surrender.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here maya does NOT mean something false or illusory. The word 'maya' is used because this real power of the Lord brings about wondrous effects, the way the 'maya-weapons' of demons are called maya for their marvelous workings; even a conjuror is called a mayavin because by some mantra or herb he produces a real cognition of a false object, and the mantra or herb is itself the maya. So 'maya' here denotes the Lord's real, quality-made power (made of sattva, rajas, tamas), as scripture says 'let one know matter to be maya, and the great Lord the mayin.' Its effect is to conceal the Lord's own nature (unsurpassed, limitless bliss) and to make one take one's own nature as a thing to be enjoyed, so the deluded world does not know him. It is hard to cross because the human effort to cross it itself proceeds within the maya; the means is the Lord's grace, available through prapatti, the wholehearted taking-of-refuge, in him who is of true resolve, supremely compassionate, the refuge of the whole world. One source guards two errors: prapatti is not a mere intellectual recognition but the inward asylum-taking with one's whole being; and it is not made unnecessary by the Lord saving all, since prapatti is the candidate's part, the door by which grace enters, and the Lord's grace works through the door the candidate opens. The same source marks that 'they cross' is present tense: the crossing happens now, in the very act of refuge, not in some deferred future.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

On this reading maya is the Lord's real deluding power, hard to cross because his power is exceedingly great; one source derives 'daivi' from 'deva' through the root 'div,' which carries the senses of play, the wish to conquer, shining, joy and the rest, so the Lord is 'deva' as the one of play and surpassing power, and the maya is divine because it is his and supremely dear to him. This power, named Shri, Bhu and Durga, is the Vaishnava power; though it falls endlessly short of the Lord's own power, by its dependence on him even Brahma and Rudra cannot cross it except through the grace of Vishnu. Notably, the word 'alone' in 'me alone' is read as mere emphasis on taking refuge in him, NOT as a prohibition of other means or of reverence to the teacher and others. The middling devotees revere teacher and the rest as a wealth that is the Lord's; the highest see the Lord himself abiding in the teacher and in all beings, so even reverence to the teacher is, in truth, reverence to the Lord indwelling.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Bhedabheda

Only a fragment of this commentary survives. It glosses 'divine' as belonging to the deity (deva), notes that the word 'for' (hi) marks the reason, and reads the maya as fashioned by the deity who is the Lord himself; the remaining clauses are textually uncertain and broken, so no fuller doctrine can be drawn from what is on file.

Śrī Bhāskara

Śuddhādvaita

Here the stress falls hard on the word 'mine' (mama): the maya is not an alien, ownerless veil as the illusionist's doctrine would have it, but the Lord's own shakti, the consciousness-bewildering portion of his being. Because it is his own, no self-effort and no mere knowledge of the bare imperishable (aksara) can get free of it, for both work inside the very field the maya controls; and the impersonal aksara, having no will, cannot lift anyone, while the Purushottama, whose will brought the maya about, has full power to withdraw it. So surrender (prapatti) must be directed not to the impersonal but to the Purushottama who is at once cause, support, indweller and the very rasa (sweet essence) of the world. The shakti of the Lord himself does the lifting; the devotee (in the pusti, grace, way) has only to place the bond, and he is lifted clear by grace alone, drawn down by his refuge. One source adds a tender note: the maya appears to the fortunate few in the shape of play, springing from the Lord's wish to give them rasa, and 'taking refuge in me alone' means the single, undivided disposition of servanthood, not seeing him merely as one delighting in his own enjoyment.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

Here 'deva' is the maker of play, and what arises in him is 'divine'; the sense is 'this play is mine.' The key move is this: sattva and the rest are in truth not distinct from the supreme Brahman that is pure consciousness; but the very perceiving of them as distinct, that perceiving-as-different, is itself their being-a-guna, their being dependent on an enjoyer and being things-to-be-enjoyed. That difference-made form, being indefinable, is for the people caught in transmigration a thing of the nature of maya. So those who know the light of the supremely real Brahman, and see the world as not distinct from that, cross over the maya whose very mark is the guna-hood of the gunas, the appearance of difference; this, the source says, is the point of 'me only.' Those who know only the standing appearance of difference do not pass beyond maya.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

On this reading maya is the Lord's own shakti, supra-mundane and marvelous, made of the gunas, and the one key that fits its one lock is unswerving, single-pointed devotion (avyabhicarini bhakti) and refuge directed to the very Lord whose shakti she is; self-effort short of refuge does not suffice, and having crossed, the devotee comes to know and attain him. Some sources lean on a play on words, reading the guna-made maya as a great noose or rope of three coils or strands, very firmly twisted, the cause of beings' bondage, which no one can cut or untie by himself. One source has Krishna touch his own chest as he says 'trust my word,' and bids the seeker take refuge in his very dark and beautiful form. One source names the crossing's ease: the devotee crosses this ocean-like maya as easily as the water in a cow's hoofprint held in the palm, and reads 'me alone' as excluding surrender to others such as Vidhi (Brahma) and Rudra, since liberation is the gift of Vishnu alone. The long Marathi source paints the maya as a vast, terrible river fed from the highlands of the Most High, full of whirlpools of hatred, fish of haughtiness, eddies of ignorance and cycles of birth and death; it warns that the very rafts people build (self-confidence, dry knowledge, Vedic ritual tied to ego, youth and lust, sacrifices, works done for salvation) all sink them, renunciation is no ferry and wisdom no rope, and only those who worship with unswerving devotion ford it with ease, the flood drying up on the near side, though such devotees are very rare.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These modern voices keep the verse's plain practical teaching. One reads maya as the Lord's causal body and the material cause of the universe, made of the three gunas: the Lord (Isvara) is its master with perfect control, while ignorance is the limiting adjunct that screens the individual soul; when the veil is removed by the dawn of Self-knowledge, the soul loses its separate character and becomes one with Brahman, and those who devote themselves wholly to the Lord after renouncing all formal religion cross this illusion. Another identifies the Lord's maya frankly with the three-constituted Prakriti of the Samkhya system, citing the Mahabharata where Krishna tells Narada that what he sees is the maya created by him and that he should not think the Lord himself possesses the qualities of the created world; this maya is hard to understand, and only those who surrender to him swim through it. A third, non-sectarian devotional voice puts it very starkly: the maya is hard to cross but not unconquerable, and it has one and only one door, taking shelter (sharanagati) in the Lord; the person who keeps the craving for enjoyment (bhoga) and hoarding (samgraha) cannot break his tie with the maya, but the moment a person, in whatever measure of fitness or unfitness, says with his whole being 'I am yours,' the maya loses its hold, for the maya belongs to the Lord, and when its very master has been taken as one's own, the maidservant does not detain the guest. The seeker is not asked to break the maya himself; he is asked to take refuge, and the maya breaks of itself.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas