Chapter-10, Verse 5

Ashtavakra Gita Verse 10.5

त्वमेकश्चेतनः शुद्धो जडं विश्वमसत्तथा। अविद्यापि न किञ्चित्सा का बुभुत्सा तथापि ते॥५॥

5. You are the one, Pure Intelligence. The universe is inert and unreal. Ignorance also is non-existent. What then can you yet desire to know? 

By the four earlier verses the Teacher indicated to us, in a language of negation, what are the things to be renounced. Here, Aṣṭāvakra takes a positive stand and tries to indicate the student's very spiritual centre, to identify with which, is to reject everything else. 

The essential nature of being is the Self and the Self is Consciousness. Everything else is inert and functions only in the borrowed ‘light’ of the Self. In the midst of illusory, inert world of names and forms, the Self alone is Real. 

In the ‘light’ of Pure Intelligence, there cannot be the darkness of ‘ignorance’. After making this statement the Teacher asks, ‘What more should one intelligently understand?’ This is all to be understood from the study of the scriptures. To a practical student, who is ready to do sādhanā and move towards the experience of the Self, no other hair-splitting argumentations and endless logical reasonings are really necessary. Aṣṭāvakra advises the student to give up his intellectual gluttony, his ever-growing hunger to study, to discuss, to argue and to investigate. 

Mahopaniṣad pointedly indicates what exactly is to be realised: ‘Neither I, as an individual, nor others really exist. Unsullied Brahman am I. Thus he who sees from a point between Existence and non-existence, the Consciousness that illumines both the Real and unreal, he alone sees the Reality, the Self.’ 

(nāhaṁ na cānyadastīha brahmaivāsmi nirāmayam, itthaṁ sadasatormadhyādyaḥ yaḥ paśyati sa paśyati.  ~Mahopaniṣad-5.69)