Acharya Prashant explains that human beings are burdened by centuries of accumulated ignorance and social conditioning. He defines Maya not as a person or a concept, but as the collection of implanted notions about how things should be. He emphasizes that existence is not opposed to wisdom; rather, wisdom is attained by observing existence, which is as open as a book. He highlights that while we are born as physical bodies with natural ways of functioning, social conditioning complicates this by attempting to suppress or 'correct' our animal nature. This results in two layers of conditioning: the natural physical layer and the artificial social layer, which often turns the body into a source of disease or guilt.