Ashtavakra Gita 2.16 - Self-Realization and the Nature of Consciousness

It is true that we are born into the world and are living in it, interacting with varied objects of the world. But in all these interactions, ‘grief’ is an inevitable part, as interactions always uniformly bring absolute happiness or misery, as Bhagavad Gita (2.14 ) emphasizes. Neither can the two be avoided, nor can either be preferred. Thus, grief remains an inevitable part of human life.

Ashtavakra Maharshi points, as his own experience, realization, that this grief is due to ‘duality’. Duality is a concept our spiritual thinkers had evolved right from the most ancient times. They hold the entire world, nay existence itself, as a display of duality. And transcending duality is the goal of spiritual life. As duality is perceptional, non-duality is also. Both are inner, not outer, and relevant to our mind and intelligence alone.

Existence is a duality-display, because two factors bring it about. One is the ‘Subject’ perceiver and the other the ‘object’ perceived. When subject interacts with the object, perceptions and their consequences follow. Thus the whole expression is an outcome of duality, one the ‘Subject’ and the other the ‘object’. It is this duality that Janaka speaks about next.

In fact, all experiences, which alone transform into knowledge, rest upon the mind, within the body. In the mind-plane, how can there be any gross object or objectivity?

As is the mind subtle, inner and experiential alone, so too is the world, in other words, duality. Mind and thought not being different from each other, at best they can only be two different expressions, implying no material or physical feature.

This being so, the whole duality becomes imaginary, illusory. All perceptions are mental, intellectual, hence notional alone.

The substance involved in all these is the same, single, singular. In other words, in all perceptions, experiences, the perceiver, the Subject, alone lasts, endures; not the perceived. Everything is the display of this Subject perceiver.

Grief, unhappiness results only when one deals with duality. And duality is a fictitious display of and in the mind. If duality, the objects, are fictitious, then what can be true, the real? When the objects are disposed of as unreal, we are left with only one presence, namely the perceiving ‘I’, the ‘Subject’ of all ‘objects’.

While objects are external, and are matter and energy, the Subject is not so. It is inner. Matter is inert, whereas ‘I’, the perceiver, is sentient. And it reigns even in sleep, wherein neither body, mind, intelligence nor ego prevails, not to speak of the world.

‘I’ is cit, Consciousness, which reveals the presence of others as well as itself. It is sentient. It is not like any object existence. It is the Subject of all, the sole perceiver, ever-enduring.

Nothing can stain it, as there is no other existence at all. Even sensory interactions with objects are inner, occurring in the plane of perception itself.

In all interactions, the singular interacting Subject, alone remains real, ever present. All other displays emerge and subside, hence unreal. They are creations of the Subject. Whatever has no cause, is ‘illusory’. Thus the whole dṛśya, visible, is mṛṣā, illusory.

The sentient ‘I’ alone is pure, unalloyed, real and ever present.