Ashtavakra Gita 1.5 - Teachings on Self-Realization and Liberation

This knowledge, recognition and realization, is practical, functional and interactional. Aṣṭāvakra Maharshi applies it himself on King Janaka and enlightens him practically. As you are not the body, the senses cannot perceive you. You are imperceptible. Caste and similar considerations are made, decided upon, looking at the body of a child and on the basis of the parentage and lineage. Because you are not the body, but its witness, imperceptible to the senses, how can any caste attribute be made to you? Do we assign caste etc. to the water, air or sky? To be impersonal means to be above all materiality, shape, features, etc.

So you are not a kshatriya, as one generally thinks looking at the family in which your body was born. Likewise, no ashrama like Brahmacharya and Gṛhastha is applicable to you. The very fact that you are the inner sentience, Consciousness, which is not visible to the eyes, lifts you above all bodily considerations and assessments. Hence never relate yourself as a Kshatriya or a householder and the like. Feel clearly your inwardness, impersonality, which makes you attributeless.

As the inner sentience, always a witness of whatever is and takes place, how can you be tainted or blemished by anything? Earth can be split, air can be expelled, water can be emptied, fire extinguished. But nothing can be done to the sky or space! You transcend even space, as you are its witness too. Being so, you have no form or shape. You are the witness of the entire universe, the pāñca-bhautika creation.

Where or what affectation or infliction can you ever suffer, and in whose hands or by what effort or outcome? Everything you think of is the witnessed, and you its witness. Realize this basic fact, truth, and be jubilant, delighting, rejoicing and exulting. This very thought exempts you from all conditioning and limitation. Yes, let there be no doubt in this.

Remember, life is experience. And experience is not in the body, but inside it, in the sphere and plane of Consciousness. There you are only the witness, of all that otherwise is or is said to be existing. As for your dimension, you are the universal witness, single and alone. None to be second to you.

Being singular one is free of all attachment. You are not a doer or enjoyer. In Bhagavad Gita too Krishna clearly says: The Lord of the world has never imposed doership, enjoyership and sufferership on anyone. Nor has he enjoined any action on anyone. He does not also conjunct one with the result of his actions. Neither virtue nor sin of anyone is washed off by God any time. One’s own quality and nature make one do and think differently. Ignorance alone is the traitor.

Knowledge is shrouded by ignorance. Hence, the widespread delusion in all. Wrong notions as well as ignorance have to be removed by truthful introspection. That is the redress for all miseries and confusion in life (Gita 5.14,15 ).