Chapter-14, Verse 1

Ashtavakra Gita Verse 14.1

जनक उवाच 

प्रकृत्या शून्यचित्तो यः प्रमादाद्भावभावनः। निद्रितो बोधित इव क्षीणसंसरणो हि सः॥१॥

Janaka said: 

1. He indeed has his recollections of worldly life extinguished who becomes void minded spontaneously, who thinks of sense objects only by chance and who is, as it were, awake though physically asleep. 

Language can never express experiences beyond the physical level and, therefore, wherever mystic sages have tried to communicate their subtle transcendental spiritual experiences, they have always stammered through their brimful descriptions. Here is a typical example wherein Janaka is trying to explain the inner condition and the outer behaviour of one, whose mind has become still and empty of all thought movements (śūnya cittaḥ). 

The memories of past experiences in the world of objects, recorded in our personality for future reference, are called vāsanās. It is these vāsanās that produce fresh impulses of desires which procreate the mental and the physical disturbances in the individual ego. 

The Man of Perfection is one who has gone beyond his vāsanās and, therefore, he is described here as ‘one who has extinguished all his worldly memories’. This state of vāsanā-lessness is a state of utter mental stillness in supreme meditation, and this state of total mental poise is gained by a Man of Realisation spontaneously, without any conscious effort (prakṛtyā). Even though he is constantly in the vivid experience of the Infinite Reality, as long as his physical body exists, forced by its prārabdha, he will be involuntarily forced into some fields of sense objects. He goes through the world of happenings as though one who is asleep to the enjoyments of the world around him. He is aware and supremely awake only to the state of God-Consciousness. 

This is not a mental state that has been reached through pills or drugs, nor is it achieved through effort and yoga. One who is established in his spiritual Awareness, to him this is a spontaneous vision, constant and effortless. He only becomes casually conscious of the world of plurality – a beautiful disturbance, dim and distant, on the horizon of his Infinite Bliss!