Chapter-2, Verse 14

Ashtavakra Gita Verse 2.14

अहो अहं नमो मह्यं यस्य मे नास्ति किञ्चन। अथवा यस्य मे सर्वं यद्वाङ्मनसगोचरम्॥१४॥

14. O! Marvellous am I! Prostrations to Myself who have nothing, or all, that which is accessible to speech and mind, belongs to Me only. 

This is the concluding verse of ‘Hymn to the Self’, the spontaneous offering of Self-prostrations. The Self is the substratum and as such it can claim that everything in the universe belongs to It. Or, It can, in Its perfect understanding of the illusoriness of the world of plurality realise that nothing belongs to It. Identifying with this Self, the Man of Realisation in the royal-saint, declares in the language of a pleasant paradox, ‘All belongs to Me or I have Nothing.’ The same idea was expressed by Janaka earlier in this chapter when he said, ‘Mine is all this universe; or, indeed nothing is mine.’ When Janaka says, ‘All that is accessible to speech and mind (vāṅ manasa gocaram)’ it includes all that can be defined or felt. That means everything. For wealth of suggestiveness, no language can stand equal to the Sanskrit idioms.