Chapter-7, Verse 2

Ashtavakra Gita Verse 7.2

मय्यनन्तमहाम्भोधौ जगद्वीचिः स्वभावतः। उदेतु वास्तमायातु न मे वृद्धिर्न च क्षतिः॥२॥

2. In Me, the limitless ocean, let the waves of the world rise and vanish spontaneously. I experience neither increase nor decrease (of Me) thereby. 

Janaka amplifies the significance of the metaphor that he has used in the previous verse. When the waves heave up in the ocean, each wave has a different form and an apparent identity of its own, sufficient to distinguish it from all other waves. Yet, in a sense, they are all nothing else but ocean water. If more waves settle down, because it has swallowed up all the waves, the ocean does not thereby get swelled up! 

The worlds of names and forms are nothing but a ripple upon the infinite Self. ‘I am the Self’, is the spiritual experience, the final wisdom. Naturally, in Me the spontaneous rise of the worlds or their dissolution, cannot bring any disturbance at all – I know, I am the changeless, immutable Self. 

To Aṣṭāvakra, māyā is not, it seems, a very attractive philosophic principle. He recognises and deals with only the concept of ‘ignorance' (avidyā or ajñāna). Due to the non-apprehension of the Self, there are the misapprehensions of the worlds and this ignorance manifests as the mind. 

Śaṅkara in Vivekacūḍāmaṇi clarifies it : ‘ There is no ignorance beyond the mind; the mind alone is ignorance, the cause for all the sorrows of change. When it is destroyed, all are destroyed; when it projects, everything gets projected.’ (na hyastyavidyā manaso'tiriktā mano hyavidyā bhavabandhahetuḥ, tasminvinaṣṭe sakalaṁ vinaṣṭaṁ vijṛmbhite'sminsakalaṁ vijṛmbhate.Vivekacūḍāmaṇi-169)