Everything you see and touch might be a compelling illusion laid over one single reality

The 8th-century Indian philosopher Adi Shankara argued that the everyday world of separate people and objects is maya — not nothing, but a kind of mistaken appearance, the way a coiled rope glimpsed in dim light can be mistaken for a snake. Underneath it, he claimed, there is only Brahman: one undivided reality that your sense of being a separate self obscures. His school, Advaita Vedanta, remains hugely influential in Hindu philosophy.

— Adi Shankara, Adi Shankara — Advaita Vedanta, c. 8th century CE