Enter the Peace of Dissolution | Ashtavakra Gita

The Ashtavakra Gita. Four Ways to Dissolution.

"You are immaculate, touched by nothing.

What is there to renounce?

The mind is complex.

Let it go.

Know the peace of dissolution."

"The universe arises from you like foam from the sea.

Know yourself as One.

Enter the peace of dissolution."

"Like an imagined snake in a rope, the universe appears to exist in the immaculate Self but does not.

Seeing this, you know: There is nothing to dissolve."

"You are perfect, changeless, through misery and happiness, hope and despair, life and death.

This is the state of dissolution."

Janaka said:

"I am infinite space; the universe is a jar.

This I know.

No need to renounce, accept, or destroy."

"I am a shoreless ocean; the universe makes waves.

This I know.

No need to renounce, accept, or destroy."

"I am mother-of-pearl; the universe is the illusion of silver.

This I know.

No need to renounce, accept, or destroy."

"I am in all beings; all beings are in me.

This I know.

No need to renounce, accept, or destroy."

Let us contemplate on this higher knowledge from beyond the struggle to renounce and fix, or accept and let go. The mind is complex, conditioned, a product of its environment. But you are not the mind or anything in it. You are this Sentience, this Awareness — only that which makes perception possible.

The body and the brain are the substrate on which the mind's activity takes place. But then, that activity is known without any additional organ or structure, without any additional expenditure of energy, without any physical contact. This mental world appears within a space of pure subjectivity. That is You, the Aware-ness.

Your only relation to this mental world is in making its conception possible; in making perception possible.

"You are immaculate, touched by nothing.

What is there to renounce?

The mind is complex.

Let it go.

Know the peace of dissolution."

Awareness itself is primal, unchanging, untouched by anything that happens to pass by. The mind is conditioned and complex. Knowing the Self, knowing the Nature of Reality in this way, there's nothing to renounce, nothing to fix, nor even to let go. Just let the mind be and know the peace of dissolution.

The more the sense of self detaches from the mind, the more you know this peace, and the peace itself becomes your guiding light. The less you identify with anything in particular, the more the clarity and the contentment. Knowing this, the way is clear. The mind is complex.

Leave it be. Leave behind the old conceptions of self, and be guided by the peace of dissolution. Now, without referring to the mind and its concepts, what is all this?

"The universe arises from you like the foam from the sea.

Know yourself as One.

Enter the peace of dissolution."

Everything that is known is, in fact, just the perceiving of it. The seeing, hearing, sensing, feeling, and knowing; all of the mind, body, world, can only ever appear as perceptions.

And each perception is inseparable from Awareness. The Awareness is not apart from all this, some quality possessed by an imaginary entity. Whatever happens, you are not something to whom it is happening. You are the Happening of it. The Happening is itself the Awareness, the actual fact of any moment.

Knowing this, all distinctions are insubstantial and conceptual. The mind is complex. Let it be. Enter the peace of dissolution.

Know yourself as One. Enter the peace of dissolution. Having seen that nothing exists apart from Awareness; that any observable thing can only be a passing movement of Awareness, what is the universe?

"Like an imagined snake in a rope, the universe appears to exist in the immaculate Self but does not.

Seeing this, you know: There is nothing to dissolve."

The world that appeared as separate to you is, in fact, entirely subjective. In the pure Awareness that is the Self, the world is but a mirage, an illusion. Any fear is through falling for the illusion; seeing a snake where there is only a rope. The separation of subject and an objective world is the illusion.

And knowing this, there is nothing to dissolve. Thus, you come to know the peace of dissolution. Now, without any concept of a separate self, no objective universe, and no reference to the states of the mind,

"You are perfect, changeless, through misery and happiness, hope and despair, life and death.

This is the state of dissolution."

This has always been the state of Reality. There is no point where an individual self dissolves and a new and perfect state is found. There is no individual self. Wisdom is in realizing the State that has remained perfect and changeless throughout the inner search, throughout this life, and any life.

It is just this awareness. The waves of the mind-universe are but ripples that are known in contrast to this Ground State. They are the movements against the backdrop of Stillness. The cycles that sum up to Zero.

The Self remains as ever, most solid and real. In this permanent and changeless state — this pure Awareness.

"I am infinite space; the universe is a jar.

This I know.

No need to renounce, accept, or destroy."

What was thought to contain the Self is just an empty container.

Permeated by this space; the Space of Pure Subjectivity, in which even the container must exist. The pure Awareness in which all perception appears. The container of the body and world does not contain any sentient entity. It is instead the container which is contained and permeated by the Sentience, which is the Self.

Like the space that is present both inside and outside the jar, and which is also the very basis of the jar itself. Knowing this all-pervading nature of Self, how can there be anything to renounce, accept, or destroy?

"I am a shoreless ocean; the universe makes waves.

This I know.

No need to renounce, accept, or destroy."

There are no shores in this Ocean; no real boundaries in Awareness.

Any boundary is only in reference to a passing experience. But what the next perception may bring is unlimited; an infinity of possibilities. What may happen in this particular universe may be described in terms of initial conditions and cause and effect. It may seem all very ordered and deterministic.

But this universe itself is but one sample in Infinity; within the inexhaustible possibility of Awareness. Knowing the true scope of Reality, how can there be anything to renounce, accept, or destroy?

"I am mother-of-pearl; the universe is the illusion of silver.

This I know.

No need to renounce, accept, or destroy."

The universe in its totality is but an appearance in this more fundamental Reality.

Prior to the universe, before the first stirring of the mind, is just this Silence that is aware, this Stillness that is sentient, the perfect Peace of complete dissolution. Once you know this Absolute Nothing, it is perfectly clear that whatever appears is entirely an illusion, as insubstantial as a dream world. Knowing the emptiness of forms, what is there to renounce, accept, or destroy?

"I am in all beings; all beings are in me.

This I know.

No need to renounce, accept, or destroy."

Knowing that you're not an individual, a person, there's no possibility of one person being more enlightened than any other person. The Self is the Awareness that shines in every life, the Heart of every being, and the basis through which there can be any concept of separate little beings. In fact, there are no separate beings. There is the one Self in All, and All is the Self.

Knowing this, there is no need to renounce, accept, or destroy. So remember,

"You are immaculate, touched by nothing.

What is there to renounce?

The mind is complex.

Let it be.

Let it carry on.

Know the peace of dissolution."

"You are perfect, changeless through misery and happiness, hope and despair, life and death.

This is the state of dissolution."