Ashtavakra Gita 2.18 - Self-Realization and the Nature of Consciousness

Janaka speaks of the multiple effects of his realization of the Self. Each time he brings forth a new note. Here he reveals how he is not concerned any more with liberation at all. Liberation becomes a need, only when bondage is first felt and established. By the dawning of right knowledge, one realizes that he is the Self, ever shining and ever free. There is no bondage for the Self at all, as there is nothing else to bind it. So, real freedom is when the seeker feels the fallacy of bondage and stops hunting for liberation.

Even the illusory world is gone, because there is nothing to support it. The whole Universe has no outward existence. Can it exist inwardly either? That too is impossible when we know what the mind is and how the imprints it makes in itself of the world are not different from it in substance or truth.

Is the wave on the sea different from the sea? Inside the body, even the illustration of the wave does not apply. For, Consciousness is full, all-pervading, comprehensive. In a comprehensive ocean can wavy formations ever be possible at all?

The whole Universe exists in oneself, if at all, making it not different from the Self. Or it does not exist as a distinct entity. In both cases, bondage and hence liberation too have no relevance at all to the Self, the ‘I’. So be free, full and abundant!