Chapter-1, Verse 15

Ashtavakra Gita Verse 1.15

निःसङ्गो निष्क्रियोऽसि त्वं स्वप्रकाशो निरञ्जनः। अयमेव हि ते बन्धः समाधिमनुतिष्ठसि॥१५॥ 

15. You are unattached, action-less, self-effulgent and without any taints. You are in Bondage as long as you need to practise meditation. 

As the Self, you are unattached with your body-mind equipments and with their perceived objects or entertained thoughts. The Self, being all-pervading and infinite, is ever ‘actionless’ (niṣkriyaḥ). Where will the all-pervading act, as It has no field other than Itself to act. In Its Supreme Perfection It can desire nothing, and without a desire how can action ever spring forth? As Consciousness, the Self is ‘self-effulgent’ (sva-prakāśaḥ) and this light of Consciousness is never dimmed as It is ‘without any taints’ (nirañjanaḥ). Beyond vāsanās, illumining them, revels the pure seat of Consciousness, the Self and as such It is stainless. The Consciousness in us illumines for us our gross, subtle and causal bodies.

The Self is ever free; therefore, It needs no meditation. So long as we are meditating, there are still traces of the ego in us, which alone can aspire for the Selfhood and practise meditation. One who is trying to sleep, so long as he is trying, he is not asleep. 

Once having reached sleep, the sleeper is no more trying to sleep. It is only the waker who can try to gain his sleep state. In the same way, so long as an individual is meditating, he has not apprehended the state of Pure Consciousness. Here Ashtavakra is alluding to the state of Constant Remembrance of the Self, following which the need to meditate falls away. 

Rare indeed are the seers of the calibre of Aṣṭāvakra, who has the audacity to declare, so openly, that to meditate upon the ever free and the ever liberated Supreme Reality is itself a symptom of the meditator's state of bondage. The limited alone will strive to reach the Unlimited; the bound and the shackled alone need struggle to attain Liberation. 

To a sincere student of meditation, this verse has a precious secret suggestion. When all other thoughts have subsided, the mind and, therefore, the ego survives itself with the subtle vanity, ‘I am meditating’. Even this idea must be finally given up. So long as one maintains the awareness that ‘I am trying to sleep’, he cannot enter the state of sleep. ‘I meditate’ is perhaps the last lingering thought in almost all the seekers in higher meditation. The moment even this vanity is given up, ‘the ego completely disappears into the vision of the Reality’. In short, in the supreme silence of meditation, a seeker should give up even the idea of ‘doership’ experienced within him, as ‘I am meditating’. This seems to be the mystic import of this direct advice.

In Yogavāsiṣṭha also we read verses indicating the same import. So too the awareness 'I am the Self’ is never broken in the man of samādhi. How can then he meditate? Upon what? And why should he? 

sādho samādhiśabdena parā-prajñocyate budhaiḥ, ajasramambuvahanād yathā nadyā na rudhyate. Yogavāsiṣṭha-5.62.9 

“By the word samadhi, the wise denote the Supreme State in which the mind is completely absorbed in the Self and thus becomes one with it. As a river disappears into its own current and yet remains wherever it flows, so does the mind lose itself in the Self and yet remains wherever it goes.” - Yoga Vasistha 5.62.9