Chapter-1, Verse 9

Ashtavakra Gita Verse 1.9

एको विशुद्धबोधोऽहमिति निश्चयवह्निना। प्रज्वाल्याज्ञानगहनं वीतशोकः सुखी भव॥९॥ 

9. Having thus burnt down the forest of ignorance with the fire of certitude ‘I am the one Pure Consciousness’, and discarding all grief, be happy. 

The non-apprehension of our spiritual nature, indicated in Vedānta as ‘ignorance’ (ajñāna), is considered here as a ‘forest’ inasmuch as having gone into a dense forest one is sure to lose one's way therein and keep wandering within it, until hunger and thirst, exhaustion and fatigue, reach to destroy him. Just as in the forest, there are merciless wild beasts of prey, in the dense forest of ignorance, ego and its passions can pounce upon the wayfarer. This is an efficient and vivid metaphorical phrase often used in our śāstras. 

At this moment the knowledge we gather, through our restless intellect, is of the world of time and space, and of the various modifications happening in a web of the cause-effect relationship. When through sādhanā, the intellect becomes calmer and quieter, it automatically turns inward to experience therein the dynamic silence of a spiritual peace.

Such a serene intellect, contemplating subjectively upon the Self within, is considered by the Vedānta śāstra as the purified intellect. A clean intellect alone can come to apprehend in meditation, the infinite Self. 

The ‘knowledge’ of the world outside is gathered, for each one of us, by our sense organs, mind and intellect, only when the Consciousness in us comes to illumine them. Where Consciousness is not, as in a block of stone, or a piece of wood, there is no ‘knowledge’; where Consciousness is, ‘knowledge’ also is. Therefore, Consciousness is often equated with ‘knowledge’. At this moment our Consciousness is always sullied by the presence of the objects of our experiences. 

Consciousness of objects is the ‘Knowledge’ of objects. Consciousness of objects devoid of all objects would be pure Consciousness – Pure Knowledge (viśuddha bodhaḥ).

On transcending the body-mind equipment, the seeker in meditation comes to experience ‘I am the one pure Consciousness.’  When a seeker gets himself established in this experience of Pure Consciousness, the ‘fire of the certitude’, declares Aṣṭāvakra, ‘shall burn down the forest of ignorance’ within the meditator. 

Grief is the mental condition when a dear object possessed by it comes to decay. Joy and grief, happiness and sorrow are all emotions and sentiments, experienced by the mind. In Pure Consciousness we have transcended the mind and, therefore, we automatically go beyond all grief. Attaining to this state of the Self, ‘be happy’.