Do objects exist when nobody is looking at them?

"We often discussed his notions on objective reality. I recall that during one walk Einstein suddenly stopped, turned to me and asked whether I really believed that the moon exists only when I look at it."

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—Pascual Jordan, a theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to quantum mechanics and quantum field theory

The mystery and murkiness surrounding quantum physics has led some to believe that science shows proof that an object doesn’t exist without an observer—that it instead awaits in a perpetual state until detected. However, this claim often exploits a very complex and obscure science that even few scientists truly understand.

Richard Feynman, who earned a Nobel Prize for his contributions to quantum mechanics once said:

We always have had a great deal of difficulty in understanding the world view that quantum mechanics represents. At least I do, because I’m an old enough man that I haven’t got to the point that this stuff is obvious to me. Okay, I still get nervous with it. And therefore, some of the younger students…you know how it always is, every new idea, it takes a generation or two until it becomes obvious that there’s no real problem. It has not yet become obvious to me that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.

As physicist and astronomer Marcelo Gleiser confirms, "We know how to use quantum physics, but we don't know what it is telling us about the nature of reality." In other words, scientists are saying that they’ve found something very strange at the subatomic level that goes against their expectations about how nature works. This uncertainty leaves much room for interpretation.

Some have used this uncertainty to argue that consciousness shapes reality. Vedanta does hold that consciousness is fundamental, but it arrives there through a consistent reasoning process—not the vague leaps of “quantum mysticism,” which fuels ideas like “quantum healing” and the “Law of Attraction.” For now, it’s best to let physicists untangle quantum puzzles.

Vedanta explains the world’s appearance through maya, a deluding power that shapes form from consciousness. Like clay and pot—where the pot is only name and form, and clay is the substance—maya produces a universe out of awareness. Maya is not a separate entity but God’s creative, sustaining, and dissolving power, made of knowledge (sattva), energy (rajas), and matter (tamas). It projects and conceals, distorting reality and hiding truth.

Dreams offer a useful parallel: in them, we create a world of objects from thought alone, serving as both material and intelligent cause. In both dreams and waking life, objects seem substantial until the experience ends.

In waking life, objects are not as they appear. Under close analysis, they dissolve into more objects, and at the subatomic level, into mostly empty space. Everything is in flux—created, sustained, and destroyed. If dreams are personal realities, the waking state could be called God’s dream: a universal field where objects appear and vanish.

Maya can also be compared to a video game. The programmer (God) creates and sustains the “field of experience” but does not become the objects. Unseen elements exist as code until triggered. Whether the universe works this way is unknown, but Vedanta holds that all things are known to the “cosmic programmer” even when not perceived by us.

Scientists caution that subatomic behavior may not scale up; quantum effects likely wash out at larger levels. The better question is: where do objects ultimately reside? Everything we know comes through the senses, is processed by the mind, and assembled by the intellect. We never perceive an object directly, only its properties—size, color, shape, texture, sound, or taste—which the mind unifies into an “object” based on prior knowledge.

As physicist Anthony Aguirre writes in Cosmological Koans:

Modern understanding of neurology and cognitive science confirms that perception is by no means a passive endeavor, but is a continuous bidirectional process in which the reality we experience is, like a dream, constructed out of the raw materials of sensory input, memory, feeling, awareness, prediction, and pattern matching, moment by moment.

Thus, the universe is a construction of thoughts cascading in the mind, like frames of an old film reel, creating the illusion of space and time. We share enough similarities in perception to agree on what we see, but interpretation varies with conditioning.

Life, then, is a dream-like existence in which objects have no independent reality—only thoughts on the screen of awareness. We cannot fully grasp maya or the code behind the field of experience. The point is not to decode it, but to wake up from the dream.

To summarize:

• All objects are ultimately thoughts on the screen of awareness.

• Objects arise from awareness through maya, just as dream objects arise from thought. Dreams are personal; reality is universal—God’s dream.

• For the individual, objects exist only when they are thoughts. For God, they exist always, because they are known to the cosmic knower.

In conclusion, from Vedanta’s perspective, all objects exist even when unseen because they are known by the “cosmic knower” (God/master programmer/super intelligence). We perceive objects when the mind reflects awareness and illuminates them; likewise, God has a reflecting medium that illuminates the entire universe. God, as pure intelligence, is conscious of creation even when we are not.