For as long as I can remember, a quiet thought has drifted through my mind in the still hours between dusk and sleep: what if life itself is a simulation—an elaborate stage play in which we, vivid though we seem, may yet be characters animated by some higher intelligence? Even facial expressions change, as if we are possessed by some external energy.

The concept of Maya has been interpreted in various ways by sages, seers, and philosophers throughout the centuries. This cosmos is a dream of the Supreme Creator. Just as a dream is formed in the consciousness during sleep, the Absolute manifests this universe not out of necessity, but out of sheer abundance and playfulness (Lila). Creation is not some enterprise but a dance, where Maya becomes the stage on which consciousness experiences itself in infinite forms.

I often reflect on the disquiet of our times—wars that swallowed young soldiers, terrorist attacks killing innocent people, a virus that brought the globe to its knees, and a climate in turmoil. It revives the old question: are we participants in a simulation, scripts running on algorithms we do not write? Does Maya continue to hold us in an unreal loop, testing us again and again? Two dear scientist friends have sketched its modern contours with striking clarity.

My friend Dr Ashok Tiwari, a biologist, once paused as if stepping between thoughts and told me, like the body is created out of code written in DNA, the mind is also an ever-flowing stream of consciousness. Dr Tiwari has been delivering excellent lectures on this theme for several years after his superannuation from CSIR. He declared in one of his podcasts, “The universe is a simulation of Cosmic Intelligence and the algorithm is changing every instant.” 

Then there is Prof. Ramesh Loganathan, the computer scientist, whose eyes light up behind his glasses when he speaks of virtual worlds. “Look at what we’ve done in fifty years—entire forests regrowing in pixels, avatars falling in love, armies clashing without real blood.” There is no king or throne in the virtual world (computer science) only workstations (called consoles) and yet there is power, excitement and pride everywhere.

And in the midst of these reflections came word of a recent article: “We Live in the Matrix,” by British physicist Melvin Vopson, published in the Science Journal. Vopson claims he has uncovered evidence of simulation—not vague speculation, but a hint traced in the very behaviour of gravity. He proposes that gravity—and indeed the universe itself—emerges from a process of data optimisation and compression.

Indian philosophy had a sense of this long ago: the Vedas describe the universe as emerging from Shabda (sound/vibration, i.e., information). Modern ‘infodynamics’ echoes that intuition: reality itself may be structured as evolving information. American physicist John Wheeler (1911–2008) said it in three words: “It from bit.” Matter, energy, and even spacetime may be emergent from information processes. Bits cannot exist without a physical substrate (such as a photon, an electron, a spin, or a mark on paper).

Just as there is no free energy, there is no free information. To gain information about a system, you must invest energy through observation, computation, and measurement. Information can only be reduced to its basic pattern, retaining some repetition to correct mistakes and some novelty to convey meaning. DNA is tightly packed but still has built-in repetition to resist errors. Information flows in one direction, like time: DNA produces proteins, but proteins cannot produce DNA.

Even when systems appear to ‘lose’ information (like a book burning or matter falling into a black hole), the information is not annihilated; it disperses, scrambles, or becomes inaccessible. Diseases are inherited. Subsequent generations carry the diseases even after the death of people. Dormant genes that have been inactive for several generations become activated when they encounter new environments like radiation or chemicals. Information is conserved at the deepest level of physics.

As in a computer simulation, the universe doodles itself more efficiently: it binds particles together, reducing informational complexity, much as a program consolidates data to save processing power. Instead of tracking every particle separately, the universe groups them into wholes: atoms, molecules, stars, galaxies. Each new level of order is like a higher-order data structure, an elegant shorthand that allows the cosmic computation to proceed without drowning in its own detail. In this way, the world is both infinitely rich and surprisingly efficient: it hides its bits in patterns, its chaos in symmetry, its noise in music.

Ancient wisdom calls it illusion, Dr Ashok Tiwari names it script, Prof. Loganathan reads it as code, and Vopson discerns in gravity’s pull an architecture—compressed, ordered, a simulation in motion. Amid this confluence, I often circle back to the scripture’s promise: that beneath whatever façade exists, there lies a witness—the Atman—untouched, serene, outside and beyond the mechanism of Maya.

Yes, pandemics rage. Forests burn. Seas rise. We are fragile and not in control. Yet, in the notion of simulation—even in that unsettling idea—there is space for dignity. These trials aren’t happenstance; perhaps they are scenarios to test our compassion, our resilience, our capacity to act with awareness within this seeming illusion.

Poets and philosophers have described life as a river—always flowing, impossible to grasp. I feel that the current in my thoughts is the puzzle of reality versus simulation, which may be less urgent than how we live inside it. An illusion, after all, still demands care. A dream garden wilts if ignored; a simulated earth still calls for tenderness. What if tenderness is a command?

On the sidelines of the Cancer Run event organised by mutual friend Dr S. Chinnababu, Prof. Loganathan lovingly held my hand and said, “We cannot rewrite the code—or so it seems—but we can choose how we move within it. To live with intention as though each gesture matters. To acknowledge suffering as sacred. To love as though love might breach the veil of Maya and touch something eternal.”

I remain—uncertain, searching, yet anchored. As the 2017 Nobel Prize-winning Japanese-born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro has famously uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world in his narratives, what we are living is a fleeting performance where roles shift, masks fall, and truth glimmers in the pauses. To be both actor and witness is to live with awareness, to hold in balance the part we play and the stage upon which we play it.

Whether this life is real or an illusion, it is the only stage at which we can be conscious. And the question we must live, not resolve, is whether we can become not just performing actors, but also spectators watching the play.