Advaita Vedanta

====''{{IAST|Māyā}}'' (appearance)====
In Advaita Vedanta, the perceived empirical world, "including people and other existence," is Māyā, "appearance."{{sfnp|Vroom|1989|pp=122–123}}{{sfn|Shastri|1911|pp=5 and ix}} Jiva, conditioned by the human mind, is subjected to experiences of a subjective nature, and misunderstands and interprets the physical, changing world as the sole and final reality.{{sfnp|Vroom|1989|pp=122–123}} Due to ''avidya'', we take the [[phenomenon (philosophy)|phenomenal world]] to be the final reality,<ref group=web name="EB_Maya"/> while in Reality only ''Sat'' ( True Reality, Brahman) is Real and unchanging.{{sfn|Shastri|1911|pp=58–73}}

While Shankara took a realistic stance, and his explanations are "remote from any connotation of illusion," the 13th century scholar [[Prakasatman]], founder of the influential [[Vivarana]] school, introduced the notion that the world is illusory.{{sfn|Mayeda|2006|pp=25–27}}{{sfn|Koller|2006}}{{sfn|Koller|2013}} According to Hacker, maya is not a prominent theme for Shankara, in contrast to the later Advaita tradition, and "the word ''maya'' has for [Shankara] hardly any terminological weight."{{sfn|Nicholson, Hugh|2011|p=266, note 21}}