Yes the real substance is The Self and it pervades everything just as gold can be molded into many forms but is still gold.
It is very much real, you just don't see the whole picture and identify with form instead of who you really are.
Advaita is not a philosophy of realism. Like I said you have misunderstand it. The philosophy of Advaita has been beautifully summarized in this mahavakya from the Upanishads: Brahma satyam, jagan mithya: Brahman is real; the world is unreal
The philosophy that you seem to be describing is Buddhism not Advaita. There are similarities between Advaita and Buddhism because they both use a similar kind of linguistic critique of reality, but they come to very different conclusions. Buddhism says that there is no separation in reality, that our separations only exist as conceptual categories and hence all our labels are empty of inherent existence, but it does not say that the world is non-existent, but rather the world is one total causal system.(Similar to Samkhya's prakriti)
Advaita's critique of reality is that not just that no separations exist in reality, but no substance exists in reality altogether, because whatever we call substance is simply name and form, in the same way a gold necklace, a gold ring and gold statue are just names of different formations of gold, thus the actual real substance here is gold. Likewise everything that we consider to be existent, chairs and tables etc are only have name and form as their source, and hence all things are reducible to the source of all name and form - Maya. They do not correspond to actual real reality.
The Self does not get differentiated or transformed or changed into all the things that we see, this is a complete misunderstanding of Advaita. It is only Maya which gets changes, differentiated and transformed. The Self always remains absolute and transcendental. It never becomes anything. This is explained in the famous in the Upanishad mantra:
That is absolute, this is absolute, absolute comes from absolute, if the absolute is taken from the absolute, the absolute remains
The self has always been absolute and from the absolute only the absolute can proceed. Thus all of reality that we see of change, becoming, matter, individuality, world, effect and cause could never have proceeded from the Self. Hence why it is not reduced to the self, but to Maya. It is unreal.
But do you really feel you will reach Moksha? To do so you have to let go of some things, your ego for example.
Maya
What you need to do is not let go of the ego per se, but to allow more and more of your Self to become manifest by silencing your mind. This is meditation is prescribed by the Upanishads. This is technically explained in Yoga as chitt-vritti nirodha, the cessation or stoppage of all activities/modifications/patterns of the mind. It means to completely empty your mind of all conceptual content. To suspend it in a state devoid of any thought or activity.
If you do not get rid of your ideas of god/s, your assumptions, beliefs, prejudices you cannot silence your mind. Bhaktas do not silent their mind they fill their mind with mythology, god/s, beliefs, dogmas, rituals, prejudices.
