Acharya Prashant addresses the relationship between Maya (illusion/phenomenal world) and God, or more precisely, Brahm (the Ultimate Reality). He explains that the statements "Maya becomes all things" and "Brahm becomes all things" are both correct, just expressed at different levels of understanding. All things are indeed Maya, but Maya itself is nothing but a great power inherent in Brahm. Maya is the very freedom of Brahm to manifest as existence and also to not exist. Therefore, viewing the world as a game of Maya is a useful perspective, especially when one feels enthralled by worldly charms, as it helps create distance. However, it is crucial to remember that Maya has no independent power or agency of its own; it is not a competing truth against Brahm, unlike the dualistic concepts of God and Satan found in other philosophies. In Vedanta, Maya is the power of Brahm to do as it pleases. Brahm is the source and master of Maya, hence called 'Mayapati'. Just as Brahm is timeless and without a beginning ('Anadi'), so is Maya, because its beginning is inseparable from Brahm's. The crucial difference is that while Brahm is endless, Maya can come to an end through a process of involution, where it retreats back into its source. The Guru is also a manifestation of Brahm's freedom—the freedom to remind itself of what it has forgotten. In this sense, Maya's function is to make one forget, while the Guru's function is to make one remember. Fundamentally, the Guru and Maya are two aspects of the same freedom of Brahm, playing a game in the world ('Sansaar'), where one builds the world and the other dissolves it. Practically, this understanding applies to our desires. Since we are shackled, we must have desires. The key is to discern between right and wrong desires. A right desire is one that leads to progressively fewer wants, while a wrong desire breeds more wants. The speaker warns against the self-deception of believing one's situation is unique, and that pursuing the same desires that have trapped countless others will somehow lead to a different, better outcome. We are not unique in our desires or our fundamental nature. This commonality, however, allows us to learn from the experiences of others. From a purely absolute perspective, evolution has never occurred, and only Brahm is the truth. But since we experience ourselves as existing individuals, the practical question becomes how one must live. The answer lies in existing in two dimensions simultaneously. In the dimension of action, one must see oneself as a prisoner who must act vigorously to break free. In the dimension of non-action, one must remember that one is the ever-free, untouchable sky. The essence of spirituality is to hold these two seemingly opposite perspectives concurrently: to act with determination while knowing that, in reality, no action is truly happening because you are already free.