Doing and Non-Doing are Both Fallacies (Ashtavakra Gita 12.6) - 24th November 2016

Doing and non-doing both arise from ignorance. I know this and I am here. Doing and non-doing are both conceptual and a product of ignorance. What ignorance? That I exist as a separate entity who is the doer of my actions, who is the speaker of my words, who is the thinker of my thoughts. Once it is seen that this belief in this separate entity itself is ignorance, and you see that doing and non-doing are both just fallacies, everything is just happening as a movement within Consciousness, within the play of Consciousness.

So the concept of doership itself is a big fallacy. And once you start to see in these experiments, when you let go—like she was saying, Maria, very beautifully—that actions are still happening. I still go to the ATM. It does not necessarily become a passive existence, but there is no concern about whether activity is there or not there. Both are seen, and the seeing remains untouched.

So, 'doing and not doing both arise from ignorance' means that the concept of doership itself is dropped. And this clarifies a lot because many times when I say you are not the doer, it can be taken to mean that I must do nothing; that means I must just become passive or just sit around. If that is happening, that is happening. Or if movement is happening, then movement is happening. I am saying that 'you' that you consider yourself to be is not doing anything because it doesn't exist. That which does exist, that which is existence itself, Consciousness, is the one Doer.

I know this and I am here. 'I know this' means I have dropped this false ignorance of doership and therefore I'm not believing myself to be that which is false, the ego. I'm abiding in the Atma.