Acharya Prashant explains that consciousness is a mystery that exists as a sandwich between the material and the transcendental. He notes that while the material body showing conscious characteristics is an unanswerable mystery, the more important question is how consciousness acquires suffering and how it can be liberated. Consciousness has a material base, often associated with the brain, yet it exhibits non-material characteristics and suffers from its contact with the material. This state of being neither fully physical nor fully transcendental is the source of human suffering. Acharya Prashant describes two ways to alleviate this suffering: one is to sink further into the material through intoxication or unconsciousness, and the other is the spiritual path, which involves rising above the material and moving toward the transcendental. Spirituality is the process of leaving the material behind to overcome the inherent conflict of being caught in between.