Acharya Prashant explains that the universe is not an objective reality but a purely subjective entity perceived through the ego. He clarifies that when Shri Adi Shankaracharya described the world as an illusion, he did not mean it was non-existent, but rather that it does not exist in the way we perceive it. This subjectivity operates at the levels of both meaning and fact, where our personal configuration and brain structure dictate how we see objects. He defines Maya as the ego's tendency to think of its own projections and perceptions as absolute truths. Maya consists of two aspects: the failure to see reality and the projection of things that do not exist, which together form the root of human misery.
