Within the Vishishtadvaita vision, māyā is affirmed, yet it is understood in a way that sharply diverges from the Advaita doctrine of world-illusion. The world is not treated as a deceptive appearance or a dreamlike projection that must ultimately be dismissed as unreal. Rather, the universe is real and enduring in its substance, existing as the body (śarīra) of Brahman, with Brahman as its inner controller. Creation is therefore a genuine manifestation of the divine, not a mere semblance that vanishes upon enlightenment. This perspective preserves both the unity of Brahman and the authenticity of multiplicity.

In this framework, māyā is primarily conceived as the creative power (śakti) of Īśvara, the means by which Brahman manifests, sustains, and withdraws the cosmos. It can also be spoken of in relation to prakṛti, primordial matter that remains under the sovereign control of God. What is crucial is that māyā does not undermine the reality of the world or of individual souls; it is not a principle that renders them only provisionally or deceptively real. Instead, souls and the world are genuine modes or attributes of Brahman, utterly dependent yet truly existent.

The problem of bondage and error, therefore, is not that beings are trapped in an ontological illusion, but that their understanding is clouded. Ignorance (avidyā) consists in failing to grasp the true relationship of dependence and unity-with-distinction that links the individual self, the world, and Brahman. Māyā, as divine power, can be spoken of as obscuring full realization of this relationship, yet it does so without negating the objective reality of what appears. Error is thus epistemic rather than ontological: a misreading of a real cosmos that is pervaded and owned by Brahman.

Seen in this light, Vishishtadvaita does not so much deny māyā as reinterpret it. The term is rescued from the sense of cosmic falsity and recast as the inscrutable, creative energy through which the one Brahman expresses itself in a manifold universe. The unity of Brahman is preserved, not by dissolving the world into illusion, but by affirming that all plurality exists as the body of the one, dependent reality. Unity and distinction are held together without resorting to the notion that the many are ultimately unreal.