Sage Sankara was criticized for his views on Maya (illusion) without understanding him.+

Swami Vivekananda: ~ “Advaita encompasses everything. Since Advaita requires heavy-duty intellectualism, it had to be progressively simplified.

Spirituality has to be bifurcated from religion and mysticism to get the scientific essence of spirituality. The Advaitic wisdom of Sage Sankara is scientific spirituality.

Sage Sankara alone is a Sage scientist humanity has to bow with gratitude to the great Sage.

Sage Sankara was criticized for his views on Maya (illusion) without understanding him.

Sage Sankara said: ~

(1) Brahman (Atman) is real

(2) The universe is unreal, 

 (3) Brahman is the universe.

He did not stop at the second because the third explains the other two. It signifies that the universe is real if perceived as the ‘Self’ and unreal if perceived as apart from the Self. Hence, Maya or illusion and reality are one and the same.

The realists criticize the concept of illusion without understanding it. 

Sage Sankara said:~

(1) Consciousness (Atman) is real

(2) The universe or mind is unreal

(3) Consciousness is the universe because the universe is an illusion created out of consciousness.

One need not stop at the second because the third explains the other two. It signifies that the universe is real if perceived as the Self (Atman or consciousness) and unreal if perceived as apart from the Self (consciousness). Hence, illusion and reality are one and the same because both are one in essence. Realizing the essence, which is consciousness, is Self-Realization or Truth-Realization of God- realization. 

Thus, Sage Sankara‘s declaration is the rational truth, scientific truth, and also ultimate truth,

Sage Sankara says: ~ “V.63 ~ "Without knowing and examining the external world, one can’t know the Truth, as the idea that the external world exists, won't go. It can go only by an inquiry into the nature of the external world.

Sage Sankara says: ~ VC-47- All the effects of ignorance, root, and branch, are burnt down by the fire of knowledge, which arises from discrimination between these two—the Self (Spirit) and the not-self (Matter).

Sage Sankara says ~ “The exercise in discrimination between real (Spirit) and unreal (Matter) and renunciation of the false is real meditation, then why you are indulging in other types of meditation.

Sage Sankara says you must first know what is before you. If you cannot know that, what else can you know or understand? If you give up the external world in your inquiry, you cannot get the whole truth.

Sage Sankara believed that those of superior intelligence, have no need of this idea of divine causality, and can, therefore, dispense with Sruti and arrive at the truth of Non-Dualism by pure reason.

Sage Sankara: ~ “The objective world-the world of names and forms has no independent existence. The Atman alone has a real existence. The world is only phenomenal.

Sage  Sankara was the exponent of Advaitic wisdom. His wisdom can be summed up in the following words:~

~ Brahman (Spirit) alone is real; this world (matter) is unreal. :~Santthosh Kumaar