Chapter-2, Verse 2

Ashtavakra Gita Verse 2.2

यथा प्रकाशयाम्येको देहमेनं तथा जगत्। अतो मम जगत्सर्वमथवा न च किञ्चन॥२॥ 

2. I, the One, illumine this body and also reveal this universe. Therefore, mine is all this universe or indeed nothing is mine. 

Established as he is at this moment in Consciousness, Janaka declares, ‘I am the sole one, who illumines the body and reveals the universe’. Matter by itself has no light of its own. Matter is to be illumined by some other 'source' of light. My body, mind and intellect are equipments, made up of matter. The sense stimuli received by the mind are again inert matter. If the Consciousness were not in me, who else would have illumined this panorama of the subject-object world? 

It is in the light of the Consciousness that all perceptions of the sense organs, all the emotions of the mind and all the thoughts of the intellect become our experiences. If this principle of Consciousness were not in the universe, there would have been no ‘knowledge’, everything would have been an empty void, a barren stretch of non-existence.

With his new found wisdom, the royal Saint Janaka looks around and concludes that everything of the subjective and the objective worlds are illumined by Himself, the Consciousness. Thus, from the relative standpoint meaning, accepting the delusion of pluralistic phenomenal world, Janaka thunders that He, the Self, is the one that illumines the entire plurality. Immediately, he gets himself uplifted into the sanctum of the Self and from this absolute standpoint, he roars, ‘Or, indeed, nothing is mine’. 

Viewed from the non-dual Self there are no worlds of multiplicity and therefore, ‘nothing is mine’. The Self as Consciousness (Cit) illumines the plurality; and as Existence (Sat) is the very substratum for the entire universe.