Buddhists do not believe that at the core of all human beings and living creatures, there is any "eternal, essential and absolute something called a soul, self or ātman". Buddhists reject the concept and all doctrines associated with ātman, call ātman as illusion (Maya), asserting instead the theory of "no-self" and "no-soul". Buddhism, from its earliest days, has denied the existence of the "self, soul" in its core philosophical and ontological texts. In its soteriological themes, Buddhism has defined nirvana as that blissful state when a person realizes that he or she has "no self, no soul".