Chapter-6, Verse 2

Ashtavakra Gita Verse 6.2

महोदधिरिवाहं स प्रपञ्चो वीचिसन्निभः। इति ज्ञानं तथैतस्य न त्यागो न ग्रहो लयः॥२॥

2. I am like the ocean and the universe is like a wave: this is ‘True Knowledge’. There is nothing then to be renounced or to be accepted or to be destroyed. 

All scriptures are forced to talk of the Supreme through myth – through special metaphors, analogies and images, which express what It is like and not what It is. The Supreme is an experience that is inexpressible in language. It is beyond our thoughts and our speech. It is That because of which we are conscious of our thoughts and by which we are able to verbalise our thoughts. 

Such myths are extremely useful for communicating the spiritual knowledge to the prepared students. Don't we employ them often in interpreting science to the average man? Do we not explain electric forces by comparing them with the behaviour of water waves or air movements? Here electricity is neither water nor air; to confuse the image for the fact is as ridiculous as climbing up the signpost instead of pursuing the road! Such a warning is necessary, lest we are carried away by the impressive images rather than the truth that the images indicate. 

Here Janaka explains how from the State of Pure Self, he is like a shoreless ocean and the universes rising in him are like its waves. A wave, we can say, is a limited and conditioned ocean; yet the wave once merged back into the ocean is nothing but the ocean. The limitations and the conditionings in the wave are all apparent, temporary and of no great significance. What is the sense in asking the ocean to merge the waves to realise its own peaceful vastness and majesty? With this striking example, the idea that the Infinite gets conditioned is totally removed from the reflective mind of the contemplative student. 

Yet, the idea that the Infinite undergoes modifications, in expressing as the pluralistic phenomenal world, is not excluded from the picture of the ocean and the waves. Hence, the justification for the examples repeated in the following verse.