Maya
Also known as: Illusion, Cosmic Illusion
Sanskrit: maya, from a root meaning to measure or construct; traditionally rendered as illusion or appearance.
Maya is the Advaita Vedanta concept describing the appearance of a separate, changing world superimposed on the one unchanging reality of Brahman. Often translated as illusion, it more precisely means a veiling and projecting power that makes the one appear as many, not that the world itself is nonexistent.
In Advaita Vedanta, maya performs two functions: avarana, which veils the true nature of reality, and vikshepa, which projects the appearance of a separate world of objects and selves. Maya is described as anirvachaniya, neither fully real nor fully unreal, because it appears vividly yet has no independent existence apart from Brahman. Recognizing maya is not a rejection of the world but a shift in how it is understood, from something solid and separate to something appearing within a single, unchanging awareness.
Maya is often translated loosely as 'illusion,' which invites a common misunderstanding, that Advaita Vedanta considers the world unreal or meaningless; the more precise claim is that the world's appearance of being separate, permanent and self-existent is what's illusory, not its practical reality moment to moment. A frequently used analogy is mistaking a coiled rope for a snake in dim light: the snake was never real, but the rope, and the perceptual error itself, both were.
Go Deeper
Related Terms
Nonduality
Nonduality (or non-duality) is the direct recognition that awareness and its contents, such as thoughts, sensations, and the sense of being a separate self, are not two separate things but a single, seamless reality. It is a description of direct experience, central to Advaita Vedanta and related contemplative traditions.
Brahman
Brahman is the Advaita Vedanta term for the single, unchanging, limitless reality underlying and pervading all existence. It is described as without form and without a second, the ground of being from which the entire universe of names and forms appears, and is held to be identical with the individual self, Atman.
Atman
Atman is the Sanskrit term for the true Self, the innermost witnessing awareness that Advaita Vedanta holds to be identical with Brahman, the universal reality. It is distinguished from the ego or personality, which is considered a changing, constructed sense of I rather than the unchanging awareness in which all experience appears.