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

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The strangeness of quantum mechanics has long invited speculation. Some have taken it to mean that science itself proves objects do not exist until they are observed—that the universe hovers in a suspended state, awaiting detection. But such claims lean on an obscure and unsettled science, one that even physicists themselves admit is far from understood.

Richard Feynman, who earned a Nobel Prize for his work in quantum mechanics, put it bluntly:

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.

Physicist Marcelo Gleiser echoes this caution: “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, the science is powerful, but its meaning is unsettled.

This ambiguity has fueled a cottage industry of speculation. Some claim that consciousness itself shapes reality, giving rise to notions like “quantum healing” or the “Law of Attraction.” But such leaps confuse two scales of existence: what occurs at the subatomic level does not translate directly to the macroscopic world we live in.

Vedanta’s Perspective

Vedanta also affirms that consciousness is fundamental—but it does so through a precise reasoning process, not by stretching physics into mysticism. The tradition explains the world’s appearance through maya, the power that shapes form from consciousness. Like a pot made of clay—where pot is only name and form while clay is the true substance—maya produces a universe out of awareness.

Maya is not a second reality but God’s creative power, composed of knowledge (sattva), energy (rajas), and matter (tamas). It both projects and conceals, making objects appear substantial while hiding their essence.

Dreams offer a useful parallel. In them, the mind generates a world of objects out of thought alone. Those objects seem real while the dream lasts, yet dissolve the moment we awaken. In waking life, the process is similar: objects appear substantial, but upon closer inspection they resolve into smaller parts, and at the subatomic level, into almost entirely empty space. If the dream is the projection of an individual mind, the waking world may be seen as the projection of the cosmic mind.

How Perception Works

Everything we know of objects comes filtered through our senses, shaped by the mind, and unified by the intellect. We never perceive an object directly, only its properties—size, color, shape, texture, sound, or taste—knit together into a mental construction based on prior knowledge.

As physicist Anthony Aguirre observes in Cosmological Koans:

“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 we inhabit is not raw matter but a cascade of thoughts and impressions moving through the mind—a "thought universe." Like frames of an old film reel, they create the illusion of continuity, space, and time. We agree enough on the patterns to call them “reality,” but our interpretations vary with conditioning.

Waking from the Dream

From Vedanta’s perspective, life itself is dreamlike: objects have no independent reality but exist only as thoughts illumined on the screen of awareness. The point is not to decode every detail of the dream but to recognize it as such—and awaken.

Vedanta resolves the question without mysticism or paradox. Objects exist when unseen, not because they persist as independent things, but because they are held in the infinite awareness that pervades all. What we call “existence” is God’s knowing—Ishvara’s unbroken consciousness of the whole.

Yet awareness itself does not “see.” It needs a reflecting instrument—the subtle body—to make knowing possible. In the total mind of the cosmos (maya), that reflection is Ishvara: omniscient, aware of every object at every moment. In an individual mind, that same light is limited by its upadhi, appearing as a finite self or jiva. The one sun is reflected differently in many pots of water; the light is the same, the reflections vary.

What exactly is this total mind? Vedanta calls it maya—the mysterious power that both veils and reveals, that makes the One appear as many. It cannot be fully grasped because it is the very medium through which grasping occurs. The intellect is part of the projection, trying to measure its own source.

And so, in the end, Einstein’s question dissolves not through explanation but recognition. The moon exists, not because we look at it, but because in the unfathomable mind of the universe, it is already known. Awareness never ceases to be; only our vision flickers in and out of it.