The experience of birth and death is a reality within the illusory universe or Maya.+

Sage Sankara: ~ “VC~ All this universe, which through ignorance appears as of diverse forms, is nothing else but Brahman (Consciousness), which is absolutely free from all the limitations of Maya.

You appeared along with the universe, and you will disappear along with the universe. No use to know who you are? - Instead, inquire into the nature of the universe.

Self-realization arises only when you realize the Self is not you, but the Self is the invisible Soul hidden by the illusory universe.

The experience of birth and death is a reality within the illusory universe or Maya. The illusory universe is created out of consciousness.

You are born along with the universe, and you are going to die along with the universe.

Sage Sankara says: ~ V.63 ~ "Without knowing and examining the external world, one can’t know Truth, as the idea that the external world exists won't go. It can go only by an inquiry into the nature of the external world.

To say the universe is an illusion without first examining it and inquiring into its nature thoroughly is to delude oneself.

This world is common to every one of us; therefore, you must begin his inquiry with it. It is only after he has inquired into the nature of the objective world, he realizes the universe, which through ignorance appears as of diverse forms, is nothing else but the soul, which is present in the form of consciousness, is absolutely free from all the limitations of human thought.

That is why Sage Sankara said:~ VC-63- Without causing the objective universe to vanish and without knowing the truth of the Self, how is one to achieve Liberation?

The seeker should not shut his eyes to the nature of the universe because the universe is an illusion created out of consciousness.

The universe will not remain as reality when wisdom dawns. The universe is merely an illusion created out of consciousness, and there is conscious awareness of the unity in diversity because there is no second thing exists other than the consciousness.

That is why Sage Sankara says: ~ VC~65. As a treasure hidden underground requires (for its extraction) competent instruction, excavation, the removal of stones and other such things lying above it and (finally) grasping, but never comes out by being (merely) called out by name, so the transparent truth of the Self, which is hidden by Maya and its effects, is to be attained through the instructions of a knower of Brahman.

66. Therefore, the wise should, as in the case of disease and the like, personally strive by all the means in their power to be free from the bondage of repeated births and deaths.

Thus, one has to know what is real by realizing our body and our experience of the world as an illusion created out of the Soul or consciousness.

The invisible Soul is the Self. The nature of the invisible Soul, the Self, is emptiness. And it is identified by different masters with different names, such as God or Brahman or consciousness or the Self, or the ultimate truth. : ~ Santthosh Kumaar