Maya, remarks on

 Sankara’s use of the analogy of perceptual illusion was ontological/epistemological rather than psychological.  In his preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya he considers the puzzle of how the inert unconscious object comes to somehow be ‘in’ the consciousness of the subject.  This is the launch pad for the rest of his transcendental postulate.  The initial question then is - How must things fundamentally be for things to appear as they do?  His  assumption is that what is out there is real and is within us as it actually is and is grasped by perception.  The snake/rope is a focused analogy for the transference/superimposition of the object on the consciousness of the subject.  In a later Advaitic work ‘Vedanta Paribhasa’ this capacity of the object is called its perceptuality.  A single unity of being unites the object and the subject.  They share the same substratum of pure Consciousness.  The limiting adjunct of the object and limiting adjunct of the subject can flow together.  This is the source of the ‘cit jada granthi’ i.e. the knot of the inert and the conscious.

Where does avidya or personal Maya come into this?  It is the natural tendency of the sensing subject to place its identity where it feels it is.

Corne van Nijhus writes maya

“The existence of an object can only be proven when it is perceived. But suppose there is an object that has never been seen. No one would recognize that object as valid!  ! There must first be some consciousness to observe this object, to prove its existence. So every object depends on Consciousness to be validated. So the object is Mithya“

In Advaita the ‘ajnatta satta’, the unknown object, is recognised as a reality.  Perception is regarded as a disclosure or the removal of the darkness veiling an object.  That unknown object is out there awaiting disclosure and is distinguished from the object that is real only during the time that it is being known/experienced.  Fleeting emotions are examples of this.