No Bragging about God or Enlightenment: Meditations on Ashtavakra Gita and Tradition

The Ashtavakra Gita is a classic of nondualism that appears shocking to many outsiders and quite offensive to literallyminded. However, when read in the context of tradition of which it is a flowering all the key reservations about it get dissolved. If we keep in mind the following points while reading it, it appears neither new nor unorthodox and it is no wonder that such great saints as Ramakrishna used to refer to it without any hesitation. It does appear addressed to elite intellectual and spiritual audience and presupposes certain basics to have been already cleared. These include transcendence of the attachment to senses or desires and thus removing of key hurdle of ego and passions that veil or distort truth. All the hard discipline of which traditions talk is presupposed by the sage Ashtavakra. What he questions is attachment to beliefs which we find in other sages as well such as Sankara, Ibn Arabi and Eckhart. What he emphasizes is freedom from imposed constructions that we find elaborately argued in Sankara. What he asserts about himself are attributes of a Spirit that is in him and not his and as such belong to supraindiviuadal transpersonal dimension in which we all participate, at least potentially. He is not subscribing to any spiritual megalomania and could be interpreted analogous to Rumi’s interpretation of Hallaj’s statement “I am the Real/I am the Creative truth” as evidence of extreme humility as it is God saying about Himself and no ego of Hallaj intervening in between. Now let us quote a few verses (here bold) from the text and note comments (not bold). 

The body, heaven and hell, bondage and liberation, and fear too, all this is pure imagination. What is there left to do for me whose very nature is consciousness? (2.20) 

We find, across traditions, statements to the effect that what is of primary or supreme consequence is light of awareness (consciousness). With attention to it we find every other category relativized. He explains elsewhere that “How wonderful it is that in the limitless ocean of myself the waves of living beings arise, collide, play and disappear, according to their natures” (2.25). That which stays or which is the unchanging background or on which these waves collide leaving it untouched in its pristine freedom is what counts for the sage. “For the wise man who is always unchanging and fearless there is neither darkness nor light nor destruction, nor anything” (18.78). 

Who can prevent the great-souled person who has known this whole world as himself from living as he pleases? (4.4). “The straightforward person does whatever arrives to be done, good or bad, for his actions are like those of a child” (18.49). 

This is echo of the traditional position that the Spirit lives playfully and is not under tutelage of bondage of any corrupting entity. 

For the yogi who has found peace, there is no distraction or one-pointedness, no higher knowledge or ignorance, no pleasure and no pain. (18.10) There is no delusion, world, meditation on That, or liberation for the pacified great soul. All these things are just the realm of imagination (18.14). 

Note the words “for the yogi who has found peace” and “for the pacified soul” describing requirement and in fact that is the achievement of the hard discipline that is presupposed. This peace comes after vanquishing the culprit disciplining which is the sine qua non of religious and ethical teachings. 

He by whom inner distraction is seen may put an end to it, but the noble one is not distracted. When there is nothing to achieve, what is he to do? (18.17) He who acts without being able to say why, but not because he is a fool, he is one liberated while still alive, happy and blessed. He thrives even in samsara (18.26). 

One may quote Eckhart here to explain what is this living without why.

If a man asked life for a thousand years, 'Why do you live?' if it could answer it would only say, 'I live because I live.' That is because life lives from its own ground, and gushes forth from its own. Therefore it lives without Why, because it lives for itself. And so, if you were to ask a genuine man who acted from his own ground, 'Why do you act?' if he were to answer properly he would simply say, 'I act because I act.'

This point we find further elaborated by the sage: “He who is beyond mental stillness and distraction, does not desire either liberation or anything else. Recognizing that things are just constructions of the imagination, that great soul lives as God here and now”(18.28). Again one may also note that the first qualification is mentioned and that is hard to get and requires lifework of attention – “being beyond mental stillness and distraction.” Given all bondage is imposed or imagined and the great soul assimilates divine qualities as find stated in Islamic tradition (takhallaqu biakhlaqi-lllah). The descriptions about exemplary ethics ad spiritual attainments of perfect man are echoed here. 

Some think that something exists, and others that nothing does. Rare is the man who does not think either, and is thereby free from distraction (18.42). Happy he stands, happy he sits, happy sleeps and happy he comes and goes. Happy he speaks, and happy he eats. Such is the life of a man at peace (18.59). The mind of the fool is always caught in an opinion about becoming or avoiding something, but the wise man's nature is to have no opinions about becoming and avoiding (18.63). There are no rules, dispassion, renunciation or meditation for one who is pure receptivity by nature, and admits no knowable form of being (18.71). 

We readily find equivalent statements in Buddhism, Sufism, Taoism and some postmodern postmetaphysical mystic thinkers. We note here a description of “man at peace” who has already found refuge in that which gives peace. To be distracted by this or that is bondage. There is neither heaven nor hell nor even liberation during life. Giving receptivity itself is what ensures radical openness to experience which is salvation, what else is required and this openness is such a hard climb. Given enlightenment is not an object but a mode of receiving what is, an attitude of being available, vulnerable, receptive to the non-self/other, we find one can become free by freedom with respect to the what is non-self /other. 

The wise man does not dislike samsara or seek to know himself. Free from pleasure and impatience, he is not dead and he is not alive (18.83). The dispassionate does not praise the good or blame the wicked. Content and equal in pain and pleasure, he sees nothing that needs doing (18.82). 

Given the adage to know oneself is vulnerable to turn into a fetish and one may readily assume it to be a goal or object which is to be attained and thus anxiety to transcend the given which drives one to endless projections, the sage overturns it but thereby he doesn’t contradict Socrates or Ramana Maharishi or other traditional formulations calling for knowing oneself. Knowing oneself requires wisdom and that is already presupposed by the sage in “The wise man…” To be free from pleasure and impatience is what characterizes those who pursue wisdom and this is knowing oneself apart from the drives that cause bondage.

For Ashtavakra, the sage is characterized by “guileless sincerity” (18.92) and resolutely beyond binary thinking. “Neither happy nor unhappy, neither detached nor attached, neither seeking liberation nor liberated, he is neither something nor nothing” (18.96) and would deny even the binaries of stupidity and wisdom, truth and untruth, ignorance and knowledge for him. However, what is clearly and consistently maintained is the light of awareness that itself illuminates everything and conquest of bondage to senses and the realm of the mind and such things as fear, anxiety, this or that state, the hallowed terms like eternity, non-duality, joy, freedom from desire, self-knowledge, stillness of mind, detachment, truth etc. His project is to avoid all traps of language and concepts and distinctions that would give any anchoring for this or that distraction or fixation or hindrance for essential luminosity and freedom. “The seer is without thoughts even when thinking, without senses among the senses, without understanding even in understanding and without a sense of responsibility even in the ego" (18.95). 

“For me established in my own glory, there is nothing far away and nothing near, nothing within or without, nothing large and nothing small (19.6) For me established in my own glory, there is no life or death, no worlds or things of the world, no distraction and no stillness of mind (19.7). For me who am forever unblemished, there is no judge, no standard, nothing to judge, and no judgment (20.8). For me who am forever actionless, there is no distraction or one-pointedness of mind, no lack of understanding, no stupidity, no joy and no sorrow (20.9). For me who am blessed and without limitation, there is no initiation or scripture, no disciple or teacher, and no goal of human existence (20.13)For me who am forever pure there is no illusion, no samsara, no attachment or detachment, no living being and no God (20.11). For me who am always free from deliberations there is neither conventional truth nor absolute truth, no happiness and no suffering (20.10). 

In all these statements it is important to note “established in my own glory” “free from deliberations” “blessed and without limitation” “unblesmished” and “forever actionless” which have been key characteristics of the enlightened. We can find across traditions privileging of contemplation over action, freedom of spirit, purity, sincerity, detachment from attachment to beliefs, equanimity, resistance to fixation with any linguistic/conceptual absolutes and emphasis on pre-reflective awareness and here we see Ashtavakra is no exception. He resists move towards the notion of a separate existential or conceptual category and then the project of questioning, debating, relating to it. He resists holier than thou attitude, condemnation or absolutization of a particular ethical position. Absolute receptivity or innocence alone is demanded and discoveries of this state can’t be expressed in conceptual terms and this means that all ideological battles or appropriations of AsthavakranVedantic “position” are suspect. Neither knowledge nor ignorance but complete innocence is salvation. Radical questioning of every claim of reason and experience to resist all totalizing, absolutizing claims while advocating a mode of philosophizing that disowns philosophizing as ordinarily understood as attempt to discover truth or dissolve mystery at the heart of existence, Asthavakra propounds instead a psycho-spiritual shock therapy that results in absolute receptivity.