The theistic understanding of the jivas’ situation in this world, gleaned from analyzing Srila Vyasadeva’s trance, is that Maya cannot tolerate the jivas’ perversion of root attention away from the Supreme Lord, due to beginningless ignorance. She thus covers the knowledge of the jivas’ true ontological identity and binds them to empiric identification.

Maya’s principal functions are to punish and rectify the jivas who have turned away from Bhagavan. Her motive is not to inflict suffering, but to encourage the ignorant jivas to seek rectification by inquiring into transcendental knowledge.Sri Kṛṣṇa therefore says in gita 4.37 that transcendental knowledge burns all the bonds of karma in the same way that fire burns fuel, because once a person attains transcendental knowledge, Maya need no longer restrain him.

According to Srila Jiva Gosvami, maya’s conditioning of the jiva has no beginning; it is anadi. Although statements such as, “she covers the real nature of the jiva” seemingly imply a beginning, in fact there is no beginning to the jiva’s bondage.
Sri Kṛṣṇa confirms this: 

Primordial nature and the living beings should both be understood to be beginningless. Their transformations and the guṇas of nature are phenomenal arisings out of primordial nature. (gita 13.20) 

Commenting on this verse, both Visvanatha Cakravarti Ṭhakura and Baladeva Vidyabhuṣaṇa confirm that the conditioning of the jiva is beginningless. Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Ṭhakura states:

“[Sri Bhagavan says] ‘Because both maya and the jiva are My potencies, they both are beginningless. Thus their conjunction is also without beginning.’ This is the sense of Sri Kṛṣṇa’s words.”

Here Visvanatha is employing the nyaya principle that the qualities or potencies of anadi substances are also anadi. Naturally, a beginningless substance or entity cannot have a prior state of existence, for it could not be said to be beginningless.

In this case, the subjects—primordial nature and the jivas— are understood as anadi,
and thus their shared quality of apparent separation from Kṛṣṇa, is also anadi.In fact, in the beginning of his comment on the Gita verse, Visvanatha says, “In this verse, Sri Kṛṣṇa is answering two questions— why or how did the conjunction of the jiva and maya occur? And when did it occur?”

He says that both of these are answered by the word anadi. In regard to the first question, anadi implies na vidyate adi karaṇam yayoḥ, “the conjunction of maya and the jiva is without prior cause” [and hence there is in fact no “why” as to how it occurred]. The answer to the second question—when?— is also anadi: It has no beginning, and hence, it did not occur at any moment in time. 

Baladeva Vidyabhuṣaṇa, commenting on this same verse, writes, “In this way, the conjunction between primordial nature and the living being, who have distinct natures and are both beginningless, relates to a period of time that is without beginning.”
He uses the adjectival compound anadi-kalikatva, “a period of time without beginning,” to qualify the phrase prakṛti-jivayoḥ saṁsargaḥ, the conjunction of the jiva with prakṛti.

From this we understand that the jivas and primordial nature are both eternal, although sometimes manifest and sometimes wound up within Mahaviṣṇu. Being eternal, they are beginningless, and the nature of their conjunction is also beginningless. Just as there was no prior state of existence for material nature, there was also no prior condition of existence for the bound jivas.

The common example given is that of a spider, which expands its energy in the form of its web and sometimes withdraws the web back into its body. Similarly, primordial nature and the bound jivas are manifested and unmanifested in a cycle that is anadi, beginningless.
Beginningless karmic imprinting and patterning is the nature of the bondage of the beginningless jiva.

Srila Jiva Gosvami will explain all this in greater detail in Paramatma Sandarbha (Anuccheda 47). He will show that, according to the precise criteria pertaining to definitions in the nyaya system of logic, the word anadi is to be taken literally.
We should note, however, that the subject at hand transcends conventional logical faculties.

Srimad Bhagavatam confirms:

The living entity, who is transcendental and liberated, is yet subject to misery and bondage. Such indeed is Bhagavan’s extrinsic potency(maya), which defies logic. (sb 3.7.9) 

We are advised not to employ empirical logic to comprehend the beginningless bondage of the jiva. Rather, through open receptivity to the verdict of sastra, accompanied by profound contemplation on the truth therein disclosed, there arises immediate intuitive insight of this enigma.
This is the way of the self-disclosure of sastric truth, and it is, therefore, the means to resolve this riddle of beginningless bondage. To not avail of this transempirical mode of knowing is to risk failure in completing life’s essential purpose.

Bhagavad Gita confirms: 

One who rejects sastra attains neither completion, nor contentment,´nor the supreme destination. (gita 16.23)

Although the jiva is beginninglessly deluded, it eternally retains the inherent capacity to know Bhagavan. This capacity is an unactualized potential, comparable to the illuminating power of an unused light bulb. Even when unused, a light bulb retains the capacity to illuminate, but cannot do so until connected to a power source. Similarly, the conditioned jiva’s capacity to know Bhagavan is unactualized, but is ever present as an inherent potential of consciousness itself.

When consciousness is attuned to its Source, the inherent capacity to know Bhagavan is made possible, like the illumination that is enabled when a light bulb is connected to a power source.
This is why the jiva is described as an eternal servant of Kṛṣṇa, “nityaḥ kṛṣṇa-dasaḥ.

When conditioned, the jiva’s constitutional eternal servitorship (dasatva) remains in a potential state. This potential is actualized when Kṛṣṇa’s intrinsic potency descends to the jiva, dissolving the empirical conditioning through unconditional devotion. 

In the conditioned state, however, the jiva misdirects root attention into phenomenal identity and appearance. Thus, the self’s instruments of knowing— the mind and senses— are misapplied in service of a separative ego point of reference. In this condition, the self’s inherent potential of consciousness to be devotionally whole-bodily attuned to its Source remains undiscovered, causing the jiva to suffer. 

But when the jiva redirects the mind and senses to repose in their conscious Source, effected through the transmutational power of sadhana-bhakti, then through the descent or pervasion of divine power, the self’s true potential becomes actualized. If one perseveres on the path of bhakti, he becomes aware of his original identity and is established in the unending bliss of prema-bhakti.

In Paramatma Sandarbha (Anucchedas 19–47), Srila Jiva Gosvami discusses this and other aspects of the jiva’s nature in greater detail.

One may ask why the all-powerful Bhagavan does not stop Maya from bewildering the jiva. Srila Jiva Gosvami addresses this question in the next Anuccheda (33). 

– Srila Satyanarayana das Babaji, tika to Anuccheda 32 (Tattva Sandarbha)