The following is an excerpt from the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi.

> D.: How shall I reach the Self?
> 
> M.: **There is no reaching the Self.** If the Self were to be reached,
> it would mean that the Self is not now and here, but that it should be
> got anew. **What is got afresh, will also be lost. So it will be
> impermanent. What is not permanent is not worth striving for.** So I
> say, the Self is not reached. **You are the Self. You are already
> That**.
> 
> The fact is that you are ignorant of your blissful state. Ignorance
> supervenes and draws a veil over the pure Bliss. ***Attempts are
> directed only to remove this ignorance.*** This ignorance consists in
> wrong knowledge. ***The wrong knowledge consists in the false
> identification of the Self with the body, the mind, etc***. This false
> identity must go and there remains the Self.
> 
> A woman, with her necklace round her neck, imagines that it has been
> lost and goes about searching for it, until she is reminded of it by a
> friend; ***she has created her own sense of loss, her own anxiety of
> search and then her own pleasure of recovery***. 
> 
> Similarly the Self is all along there, whether you search for it or
> not. Again just as the woman feels as if the lost necklace has been
> regained, so also the removal of ignorance and the cessation of false
> identification reveal the Self which is always present - here and now.
> 
> 
> This is called ***realisation***. It is not new. It amounts to
> elimination of ignorance and nothing more.


---

Rig Veda [X.72.3][1] says as follows:

> **Existence**, in the earliest age of Gods, **from Non-existence sprang**.
> Thereafter were the regions born. This sprang from the Productive
> Power.

Translation of [H.H. Wilson][2] (p.130) is also on similar lines.

----

We have to remember that even the Rig Veda, which is called apaUrushEya and composed by Sages, is silent on how the **Existence**, came into being.

Then how can we can to know the root of mysterious thing called Body consciousness?

In my humble opinion, **it is next to impossible to know this**.


  [1]: https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/rv10072.htm
  [2]: http://vedicheritage.gov.in/flipbook/Rigveda_Samhita_Eng_Vol_VI/#book/139