The soul that distances itself from God and does not want to obey him, suffers the veil of maya that conditions it and gradually masks reality. Maya's aim is not to lead the beings she conditions into error, perdition and suffering. Rather, it seeks to awaken reason in them, so that they finally turn to God, obey Him, do His divine will, surrender to Him and eventually serve Him with love and devotion, for their own good, and return to the Lord, to His absolute kingdom for eternity.
Maya, the illusory energy of the Lord, conditions human beings who want to emancipate themselves from God, unaware that by doing so they are distancing themselves from the Lord, and precipitating themselves into perdition, the darkness of ignorance and endless suffering.
All those who are under the influence of maya, the Lord's energy of illusion, which is similar to Satan, remain in illusion. The latter exerts its influence in two ways, either by the effect of “projection” or by the effect of “veil”.
By the effect of “projection”, it plunges living beings into the darkness of ignorance of the data relating to God and existential truth, and by the effect of “veil”, it covers the vision of human beings with meagre knowledge relating to the existence of the Supreme Person. Maya, the illusory energy, also manifests its influence on men of lesser intelligence, leading them to believe that they are identical with God, even God Himself.
Each of us is a spirit soul distinct from Krishna, God, the Supreme Person, a tiny fragment and integral part of His Divine Person, so we must understand that being a part of the Whole, God, the fragment can never claim to become the Supreme. Rather, this is an indication that the soul conditioned by matter and illusionary energy falls victim to the last trap of illusionary energy, which makes it believe that it is God.
To make the conditioned being that each one of us is in this world governed by matter, pretend to be one with the cosmic consciousness of the Lord, such is the last stratagem used by the illusory energy to make him fall.
Therefore, to conceive of the self as separate from the Supreme Self, the Supreme Lord, Krishna, is also an illusion, and when the separate being comes to pretend that he is the Lord himself, then this is the ultimate illusion, the last trap set by maya, the illusionary energy or external energy of God.
The Lord says that the foolish, the demonic beings who refuse to admit his existence, sink deeper and deeper into the darkness of ignorance and thus reincarnate, life after life, without any knowledge of his Person.