Ashtavakra Gita 2.8 - Self-Realization and the Nature of Consciousness

Janaka does not stop relating his experience, realization. He is clear that manyness is but a display. And that too within his own body. Outside the body, nothing is seen or felt. Experiences are at all times inner alone.

Universe is an inner perception as well as the display of Consciousness, the Self. It comes to be only when one wakes up from the sleep state. At the end of the day, the whole display is effaced, and one goes to sleep, where no world or anything else is felt. Since the world shines only when one wakes up from sleep, is it not clear that this shining is within oneself?

What real status can we give to anything shining for a period, and thereafter being extinct? What further? The display is clearly within the body, wherein there is evidently no space for it. When the Universe is not shining, one still shines. He does not become extinct at all. Thus there is great meaning in Janaka saying that he either shines as the Universe or as himself, shining in both cases being within the body alone.

Janaka says he is in the nature of brilliance, luminosity. What shines as the Universe is he himself. “I am in the nature of brilliance. I alone am shining as the Universe. Universe has nothing but me as the source and substratum.” What a clear perception, assessment!