Conclusion

Now this is the picture of reality in the modern quantum physics alluding to the Vedantic principle of Maya and echoing Sankara’s statement that Maya cannot be stated to be existent or non-existent nor both, therefore a mysterious wonder beyond description.

Swami Vivekanada gives a beautiful observation on Maya. “Maya is not a theory for the explanation of the world; it is simply a statement of facts as they exist – of what we are and what we see around us; that the very basis of our being is contradiction, that wherever there is good, there must also be evil and wherever there is evil, there must be some good, wherever there is life, death must follow as the shadow and everyone who smiles will have to weep and vice versa.”

“We are walking in the midst of dream, half sleeping, half waking, passing all our lives in a haze. Whatever you may call by any name – matter, spirit or mind or anything else – the fact remains we cannot say that they are or that they are not. This external play of contradictions is always there. A fact yet at the same time not a fact; awake and at the same time asleep! This is what is called Maya. We are born in the Maya, we live in it, we think in it, we dream in it. We are philosophers in it, we are spiritual men in it, nay, we are devils in this Maya.”

Thus the conclusion is inescapable that the phenomenal world is nothing but Maya -

jagat mythya

We merely spend our precious life times in an eternal shopping spree in the well stocked, well decorated and very attractive shopping mall which goes by the brand name ‘The World We Live In’ or a ‘Maya Bazar’.