Acharya Prashant begins by reading a quote from Ramana Maharshi, which states that just as a spider emits a thread from itself and withdraws it, the mind projects the world out of itself and resolves it back into itself. When the mind comes out of the Self, the world appears. Therefore, when the world appears to be real, the Self does not appear, and when the Self shines, the world does not appear. Persistent inquiry into the nature of the mind will cause the mind to end, leaving the Self as the residue. Responding to a question about how the mind is the cause of the world, Acharya Prashant explains that the words of a sage like Ramana Maharshi are subtle and require understanding and realization, not the creation of a conceptual framework. One needs realization, not a paradigm or a conceptual framework about the Self, the mind, and the world. He points out that the proof of the world's existence comes through our bodily senses. The world exists for us because we say it exists. The proof of the world's existence is tied to our own physical existence; for example, the only proof of the world's three-dimensionality is that our body is also three-dimensional. The seer and the seen exist in the same material dimension. Acharya Prashant further elaborates that the existence of anything is only confirmed through our senses. If you close your eyes, a waving hand ceases to exist for you. In deep sleep, when all senses are gone, even you do not exist with a shape, form, or identity. The material shape of the world seems to have a definite correlation with the material shape of the human being. Science, which relies on the senses, cannot go into the certifying agency itself, which is the senses. The proof for everything is experiential, and it is the senses that experience. Even the fact of material reality has a psychic angle to it. Materiality does not exist on its own; it exists because it is *our* material. He concludes by explaining that the teachings of the seers are poetic pointers meant to arouse something within, not to be taken as a literal, crude, or physical model. The ego survives on otherness, and all worldly pleasures are vicarious and mediated. Spiritual joy, in contrast, requires no mediator. The Vedantic view is that there is a hidden agreement between you and the world, and this conspiracy is called Maya. The teachings of the sages are meant to liberate you from this psychotic rollercoaster of happiness and sadness by showing that things do not carry any objective importance or existence apart from what you give them.