It Is Done (Ashtavakra Gita 5.1) - 1st November 2016

So if you're ready for chapter five, we jump into it. It's really the most beautiful. Says the four ways, the four ways to dissolution. Verse number one: 'You are immaculate, touched by nothing. What is there to renounce? The mind is complex. Let it go. Know the peace of dissolution.'

So what is it that's touched by nothing? See, when we ask the question, 'Are you aware now?' where does it point? Let's go straight to this heart, to the core of what is being shared. Are you aware now? Stay with this question. What is it that is aware? What does it look like? What is its color, size, or shape? Who is witnessing everything, even your own existence? You are immaculate. You are beyond attributes, beyond labels. You cannot come and go. You are the Self, this awareness. Nothing can touch you because you are prior to time and space. For you, there is nothing that has ever happened. For you, there is nothing to renounce.

This attribute-less, non-phenomenal Self, awareness you are, there is no doing or not doing. This cannot change. You are the unborn one. And that which was never born and yet is all there is, can never die. Purest beyond pure, you are that. The sage says, 'You are immaculate, touched by nothing. What is there to renounce? The mind is complex, let it go.' Don't believe your next thought. How to let the mind go? Don't believe what it is saying. As true as it might sound, as well-dressed as it might appear, its only function is to convince you that the separation happened, that you are an individual entity. But what you're seeing is that you are not. You are this solitary witnessing.

In this, you know this peace of dissolution. Only the false is dissolving, and the false is only conceptual, given power by our belief, kept alive by our interest. Know that you are this non-phenomenal, attributeless, unlabelable one. Bondage and freedom do not apply to you. It is done. So this is the first verse. To see that awareness, it is self-aware, untouched by any appearance. Just in this direct recognition of the Self, the Self is realized.