Chapter-12: An Introduction

Chapter-12: How to Abide in the Self 

Introduction 

In the earlier Chapter (11), considered as an eight versed hymn to the glory of the Self, Sage Aṣṭāvakra, with a rare spontaneity of inspiration, completes a vivid and pulsating picture of the intellectual attitude of a Man of Perfection towards happenings in the objective world and towards his own subjective intellectual reactions to them. Together with that, this chapter gives the view of the world from the silent and quiet bosom of a Man of Realisation. 

Vedānta being a subjective science, worldly descriptions given out by Masters have no purposeful validity in themselves unless they are considered as check posts, in which the student must search his own within. The ideas expounded in the philosophy of Vedānta are to be re-read and re-heard by the student himself in his own bosom. Janaka as a perfect disciple recognises the deep significance of his Teacher's words. In this section the royal saint confesses how he has, in stages, come to abide in himself, in the blissful Self. 

The steps and the stages by which he ascended to this altitude of spiritual experience is being mapped in detail in these eight verses of this section. 

Through the ideas provided in this section, when we observe the Man of Perfection in Janaka, continuing his onerous responsibilities of administering his kingdom and apparently revelling in the luxury and showy sensuousness of his court, we shall gain the glimpse of an unattached mind playing in the world, unaffected by the happenings around it; ‘like a lotus leaf in water’ (padma-patram-iva-ambhasā) is a famous analogy used in the context by the Bhagavad-Gītā. 

Emptying the mind of all the thought disturbances within is the process to attain the spiritual life. To quieten and still even the last traces of thought disturbance in the mind is the accomplishment of the higher meditations. This is gained, in different stages, by sealing off the different sources from which these disturbances gurgle into our bosom. These processes of illumination are exhaustively indicated in these eight verses of this section.