Chapter-1, Verse 1

Ashtavakra Gita Verse 1.1

Chapter-1: Self-Witness in All

Introduction

In this opening stanza of the Aṣṭāvakra-gītā, the brilliant disciple, the royal-seer, Janaka, expresses his problems and the Teacher, totally established as he is in the experience of the transcendental Truth, answers the questions raised by the student. The pure effulgent Self is ever the unattached and the peaceful, the all-knowing seer and the witness of everything that is happening in all creatures. It is the one supreme and eternal God, the Brahman or the ultimate Reality. The perceived world of names and forms outside, and the experienced worlds of emotions and thoughts within, all exist and sport only in the all-pervading immutable Self.

This one universal Consciousness Supreme, which is the substratum for the changing world of phenomena should be realised through practice of meditation till we rise above the misconception that we are the limited ego – the Self, reflected in our thoughts.

When I, the Supreme Self, become conscious of and get utterly identified with my body, mind and intellect, I become the limited ego, the perceiver feeler thinker entity. This ego through its own illusions misconceived the infinite Self as the sorrow ridden calamitous world of birth and death. This individualised ego gets itself completely bound to the wheel of happenings and appears to get crushed by the world that it has imagined itself through its own delusions. When true knowledge dawns, the misconceptions end and the little ego in the meditator rediscovers itself to be the infinite Brahman.

जनक उवाच
कथं ज्ञानमवाप्नोति कथं मुक्तिर्भ विष्यति। वैराग्यं च कथं प्राप्तमेतद् ब्रूहि मम प्रभो॥१॥


1.1 “Teach me this, O Lord! how can Knowledge be acquired? How can Liberation come? How is renunciation achieved?”

When a student reaches a spiritual Master, it is the duty of the seeker to express his difficulties and from the doubts so expressed by the student, the Teacher can evaluate the psychological and spiritual problems in the student. Here we find the Aṣṭāvakra-gītā opens with the questions raised by Janaka, the disciple. The royal-seer asks three pertinent questions.

The ignorance of the post, in the dim light of the dusk, can produce the illusion of a ghost. This misapprehension of the ghost, sprung from the non apprehension of the post, frightens the deluded observer and brings to him all his sorrows. From the ‘ignorance’ of the post is born the ghost. This ‘ignorance’ is constituted of both these factors – the non-apprehension of Reality and the misapprehension of the Self. This ‘ignorance’ can be removed only by ‘Knowledge’.

With the apprehension of the post, the non apprehension ends and when the non-apprehension of the post has ended, the misapprehension of the ghost cannot remain. This ‘Knowledge’ alone is the antidote for ‘ignorance’. The ‘ignorance’ of the spiritual essence, as the blissful immutable Self, gives us misapprehensions of a world of plurality around us and of a suffering miserable perceiver, the ego. These misapprehensions of a subject object world can be ended only when the non apprehension of the Self is ended.

To apprehend the Self is to have the ‘Knowledge’ of it. Hence, the student very aptly asks the question, 'How can ‘Knowledge’ be acquired?’ A seeker, so long as he is recognising a world of objects, emotions and thoughts, through his body, mind and intellect, cannot escape his sense of limitations and his experiences of suffocating sorrows. The world of joys and sorrows will buffet him mercilessly amidst the roaring waves of the world’s tumultuous happenings. A sensitive student cannot but feel himself bound and gagged everywhere, at all times. Naturally, Janaka asks here in his second question, ‘How can Liberation come?’ To liberate ourselves from our identification with our own body, mind and intellect equipment is to liberate ourselves from the thraldom of our ego and make us realise our infinite Stature Divine. In order to attain this sense of complete Liberation, we must learn to detach from our own equipment of perceptions, feelings and thoughts. Naturally, the subtle thinker in the disciple asks the third question, ‘How is renunciation achieved?’ Each one will have to discover in himself the capacity to renounce. Renunciation is not a mere giving up of possession or a sudden cutting away from all relationships of the world.

Without mental detachment, outer renunciation amounts to only an unproductive calamitous escapism. To run away from life and its duties is not to run into the spiritual dimensions. Sense of attachment springs in us when the ego feels incomplete and when, in its illusion, it hopes to become full and complete by the acquisition, possession and enjoyment of objects which it perceives outside itself. Thus, where plurality is experienced, there is a subject-ego perceiving world of objects.

The ego, thereafter, gets itself attached to the things it likes and comes to feel extremely disturbed and, therefore, impatient with the things that it dislikes. As long as an individual lives in this sense of duality, he cannot avoid his sense of attachment. The ego is that aspect of our personality that perceives the plurality, and the ego arises in our identifications with our body, mind and intellect. Therefore, true renunciation or detachment is in withdrawing ourselves from our equipment. How are we to withdraw our consciousness from our equipment through meditation and come to experience the infinitude of the Self as our own real nature is the deep significance of this small looking question: ‘How is renunciation achieved?’ Attachment gurgles forth from ‘ignorance’ and renunciation or unattachment flows out from ‘Knowledge’.