Life and Death: All that Exists is Total Awareness

By T S Sreenivasa Raghavan

Scriptures by themselves cannot make a person enlightened. They give knowledge, not wisdom. But the Ashtavakra Gita is different. This scripture negates every facet of life, except supreme consciousness.

Sage Ashtavakra says to Janaka: "My son, you recite or listen to countless scriptures, but you will not be established within until you can forget everything"(16.1). He stresses the import of knowing one's own self. A person may quote extensively from the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads. But only through self-knowledge can he even begin to discover the stainless truth.

Ashtavakra even questions the ways of the materialist, running helter-skelter on account of his hydra-headed ambitions: "Happiness belongs to no one but that supremely lazy man for whom even opening and closing his eyes is a bother" (16.4). No wonder, this Gita is not as popular as Krishna's. Ashtavakra asserts that in the forest of samsara, the mind never finds satisfaction in wealth, sensuality and good deeds (10.7).

Ashtavakra is the prophet of indifference who breaks every brick that has gone into the making of samsara where ambitions reign supreme. But, can man progress in the absence of ambitions? Your ambitions are spiritual taboo only if your aim is to outdo the other. But, if you better yourself for the love of perfection, then it is an exercise in absolute freedom. A painter who paints for love is indistinguishable from the painting - for, in the process, neither the painter nor the painting can exist as the two dissolve into each other!

Conflicts end when dualism is not. Awareness comes when oneness is. That is the message of Ashtavakra when he says: "Realising that 'I am not the body nor the body is mine. I am awareness', one attains the supreme state and no longer remembers things done or undone" (11.6).

But how can we have a goal without ambition? Goal means different things to different people. But can man have any further goal once truth dawns upon him? Yes, the ultimate goal is truth, which is in the plenitude of the present.

But, man is concerned with a future laden with anxiety and fear. He plans for tomorrow and is called intelligent, which gives him a feeling of reassurance. But, is he really intelligent? Intelligence comes when you've the courage to sacrifice everything for the sake of truth. However, for the frightened soul truth is a distant goal.

Ashtavakra insists, that the only way to establish oneself within is by unlearning what one has learnt so far (16.11). Janaka is portrayed as a mumukshu, seeker of truth, who is initially driven by a desire for liberation.

However, at the close, he learns that total liberation comes in a state of oneness when the mind becomes incapable of dividing any further. Janaka says: "For me who am blessed and without limitation, there is no initiation or scripture, no disciple or teacher and no goal of human life" (20.13).

It is difficult to say whether the master dissolves into the disciple or the disciple into the master.

Nevertheless, in a state of indifference, it is irrelevant, realises Janaka: "First of all I was averse to physical activity, then to lengthy speech and finally to thought itself which is why I am now established" (12.1).

Since thought is not when awareness is, any write-up on Ashtavakra is fraught with dangers as it's the result of a chain of thoughts. However, it can get justified when the writer and his writing merge into one entity. If this author has failed in it, Ashtavakra will forgive him.

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See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)