Ashtavakra Gita 2.2 - Self-Realization and the Nature of Consciousness

How instantly Janaka makes his wonderful assertions! He says this body, very close to our mind, is revealed by the only light and witness, the ‘I’. In the same manner, it is the same ‘I’ that reveals the extensive Universe as well. The Universe is insentient, inert, and hence has no power to reveal itself. Even the sun is inert. Except the singular ‘I’, what is there to provide revelation?

Will you say that the ‘I’ reveals only the limited body? Or will you also say that the same ‘I’ alone reveals the extensive Universe too? Witness of the body is the witness of the world too. So always identify the ‘I’ as revealing the Universe, including the body. Only then the knowledge becomes true, complete.

Janaka follows it up with the statement: “The whole Universe is ‘mine’. Because there is nothing besides the ‘I’, the witness, to make a claim. Nothing else is there to witness the world. If none else witnesses it, as everything else is inert, who else can claim its possession?” How right and absolute is the King’s assertion!

But Janaka does not stop there. He adds: “Or, nothing is mine.” What does it mean? On examining the awareness about the world, one finds it is not external. Experience is an inner process, and it is of something existing within the body too. The ‘I’, different from the inert body, its witness, witnesses it within the body, like a wave in the sea. The world is inner, imaginary. Hence it is fictitious, illusory. It has no real inherence at all.