The Lexicon
Time, reality, and cosmos
Maya
Maya is the Sanskrit name for the world as appearance, the magical power by which the one Reality seems to become the many. It is not simple falsehood but a veiling and a projecting, the shimmer of forms laid over the changeless ground. The rope appears as a snake; the Self appears as a world.
In Advaita Vedanta, maya explains how Brahman, ever one and undivided, presents itself as the field of time, space, and separate selves. To see through maya is not to destroy the world but to recognize its true substance as consciousness. The teachers describe this as discrimination between the Real and the apparent, the recovery of the One behind the play of the many.
In their words
A firm conviction of the mind to the effect that Brahman is real and the universe unreal, is designated as discrimination (Viveka) between the Real and the unreal.
Separation is the necessary illusion that lets the One meet itself as other.
The world is not an illusion in the sense of being nothing; it is an appearance whose substance is the Self.
You are the universe experiencing itself.