Krishna and maya, by Javier Figuerola or Haripada dasa
It says in the Chaitanya Charitamrita God or Krishna is compared to sunlight, and maya or ignorance is compared to darkness, wherever there is sunlight can not be darkness. As soon as one undertakes the path of Krishna consciousness, the darkness of illusion, the influence of external energy, will immediately vanish. Also in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says this energy of Mine, Maya, it is very difficult to overcome, but those who surrender unto Me can easily overcome it, in other words, maya is controlled by Krishna, and when a soul obeys the laws of God or Krishna, Krishna tells His energy not to influence His devotee, so the devotee enjoys full and total freedom. In the process of surrender to God or Krishna one must: (1) accept everything that is favorable to the discharge of devotional service, (2) reject everything that is unfavorable for it, (3) firmly believe in protecting the Lord , (4) to feel that it depends exclusively on the mercy of the Lord, (5) to have no interest apart from the Lord’s interest, and (6) to be always meek and humble.
Regarding the topic, Srila Prabhupada says in his meaning of the Hare Krishna Maha-Mantra that this atmosphere, in which we now live, is called maya, or illusion. Maya means “what is not”. And, what is that illusion? The illusion is that we try to be the lords of material nature, when the reality is that we are subject by the shackles of their strict laws. When a servant tries to artificially imitate his almighty master, that is called illusion. Contaminated by this concept of life, we all try to exploit the resources of material nature, but the reality is that we get entangled more and more in its complexities. Therefore, despite our hard struggle to conquer nature, we depend more on it. This illusory struggle against material nature can be stopped immediately if we revive our Krishna consciousness. Srila Prabhupada always said that the problem of people is that they are not afraid of maya.