Chapter-4: An Introduction

Chapter – 4 

Glory of Realisation 

An Introduction 

This chapter is the eloquent defence, pleading ‘not guilty’, by the King Janaka. All the taunting criticisms of the king’s behaviour made by his Teacher Aṣṭāvakra are satisfactorily explained and vividly clarified. One who has realised the Self in him to be the Self everywhere understands the universe as Himself and Himself as the Lord of the universe. He lives thereafter in perfection and freedom, fearless and ever blissful. 

Such a magnificent soul can never be compared with the ignorant individuals, who live upon the surface of the world, dragging themselves through life like miserable beasts of burden – each a sad victim of his lusts and inhibitions, mercilessly weighed down by the loads of his fears and miseries! 

The entire universe is but one's own essential form; one is not separate from it.  The head, the brain, the heart, the liver are different names, but not separate ‘events’. Similarly, an individual is separate from the universe only in name. In fact you are not only an essential part of the universe, but you are the very being of the universe, just as the heart or the liver, is not a part of you, but an essential aspect of the whole. 

When this oneness with the universe is not realised, you are fooled by your own name! Hence, the Riṣhis had described this hallucination, called the jagat, as a mere bundle of names and forms. 

All fears arise from the dreadful sense of alienation from the world; on realising that you are the Infinite Self, there is no more any sense of alienation. To realise that I am the Self is to recognise at once that the society and the world are but extensions of my own mind and body. 

Space is not contaminated by the things existing in it, nor by the movements and activities that are taking place therein. The objects of pleasure around and the activities of the body among them, cannot in any way affect the Pure Self with which the Man of Realisation has discovered his complete identity. The subtler is not conditioned by the grosser.