Chapter-5, Verse 4

Ashtavakra Gita Verse 5.4

समदुःखसुखः पूर्ण आशानैराश्ययोः समः। समजीवितमृत्युः सन्नेवमेव लयं व्रज॥४॥

4. You are perfect and the same in pain and pleasure, in hope and disappointment and in life and death. Thus, in this way, enter into ‘laya’ – the state of dissolution. 

In this fourth and the last stage of ‘laya’, Aṣṭāvakra prescribes for the seeker a process by which all his intellectual estimates and responses are dissolved in the steady contemplation upon the nature of the Self. 

Pain and pleasure, hope and disappointment, life and death are all intellectual evaluations and its habitual concepts. To dissolve the intellect is to end its functions. In the Self there are none of these intellectual evaluations. They are all objects of Consciousness. 

Above the intellect and therefore, beyond its estimates, shines the Self that illumines the very intellect. ‘In this way enter into ‘laya’ – the state of dissolution’. 

To contemplate upon the Self as the one constant Witness of all agitations of the mind and intellect and all functions of the body, is to bring about complete dissolution of the ego and the world interpreted by the ego. 

These are the four stages prescribed by Aṣṭāvakra for accomplishing the total dissolution of the individualised Consciousness and for merging it into the Infinite Self.

End of Chapter-5