How can consciousness arise from a material body?||AcharyaPrashant,with Virat Hindustan Sangam(2021)

Questioner (Q): I want to know, essentially, the relationship between the material world and consciousness. Is the body, you know, just like putting together a few chemicals? And, how does consciousness come from an unconscious body? Or.. is it the other way around?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Obviously. Yeah, yeah! Obviously, that cannot happen. That cannot happen. Asat (false) cannot give rise to Sat (Eternal, Absolute Truth), obviously. So, Vedānta answers that in a beautiful way. Very beautiful way. And, when you will ponder over it, you will find it to be so obvious. Vedānta says, “There is no duality.

Therefore, no watertight distinction between the unconscious and the conscious."

This Jada-Cetana duality is refuted by Vedānta. [Jada: material body, material entity; Cetana: pure consciousness] Vedānta, in its essence, is non-dualistic, as we had said a while back.

So, this duality–Jada and Cetana; unconscious and conscious; as in man being conscious and the world being unconscious; or I being conscious and this pen being Jada, or just material–this is not accepted by Vedānta.

This is there in Sāṅkhyayoga, the duality between Puruṣa (spirit) and Prakṛti (material nature): there is Prakṛti, and there is Puruṣa, and these two are somewhat at odds with each other because the Puruṣa often gets corrupted by Prakṛti, and such things.