Jnana Sage Ashtavakra tells King Janaka, his disciple, to drop all ideas that, “I am this and that,” “I am not this or that,” completely. With a firm conviction of mind that everything indeed is the one universal self, be happy without formation of any hardened notions in the mind.
As in the Bhagavad Gita and in the Ashtavakra Gita, the disciples Arjuna and King Janaka do not need such long talks on the nature of their own true self. Their queries and questions and the teachings of Gurus Sri Krishna and Sage Ashtavakra come alive in our own mind even today for our deep understanding. Caught in an ever-changing world, the mind really needs to be told repeatedly about the changeless presence within.
This world exists only
because of lack of knowledge of reality. You alone are that supreme truth that needs to be attained. If you think that you are a samsara or one who is caught in samsara or constant movement of the world, it is out of your own thought that this state exists. You are not at any time not caught in movement or moving. You are the whole that exists beyond the two states of movement and stillness, change and changeless.
Know for sure that this whole world that you see before you is an illusion of the mind. There are no past actions that have left impressions of change in the mind and this universe is a mere expression of consciousness in the form of life. Knowing that even a trace of this doesn’t exist, the wise one abides in peace. This whole world is Maya or illusion is the understanding of Vedanta. Today science is slowly catching up with this understanding and amazing research and findings end in many scientific studies becoming tomes of understanding the truth as expressed by Vedanta.
The subjects of quantum physics and the study of particles are coming to show how our perception and vision tends to change the arrangement of particles in matter. Scientists say that each time someone observes space to study stellar activity, the very observation causes a change to what is observed. Science is yet to reach to that live energy which sees through our eyes, hears through our ears, smells through our nose, tastes through our tongue and feels through our skin. Science has yet no clue about what is that factor which makes you and me stand up, talk, walk, digest food, that is absent in a person lying in state. Ashtavakra Gita gives a clarion call to simply be quiet, knowing that everything that changes is an illusion.
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