No Differences or Separation (Ashtavakra Gita 2.21) - 25th October 2016

So, verse 21: 'I see no differences or separation; even the multitudes appear as a single formless desert. To what should I cling?' And we've been checking this, isn't it? Saying that when we look, we don't label. We don't make labels, we don't interpret anything, we don't judge anything. We just see as the impersonal witness and we see that all of this is one appearance. I see no differences or separation in this one appearance. Then, without the interpretive mind, without the subtitles of the movie, it is just seen as one appearance. And separation needs for us to make a concept, to use our mind.

Even the multitudes appear—whatever might be appearing. You could have an experience where you see the entire multiverses, infinite in number, and you transcend time and space, you transcend the body, and everything is possible. But even the appearance of these multitudes, they appear just as if it is one single formless desert. So when we don't make the distinction between grains of sand, then everything is seen to be one screen on which this movie is playing. 'Appearance to what should I cling?' This is very important because remember what the question was. Janaka's question—who remembers what the original question was?

What is the question?

In the first verse: knowledge to be attained and detachment achieved, liberation to be found. So, detachment and like this, 'to what should I cling?' And you see that all of this is just one. There is no separation unless I start this mental process of labeling mental ideas. Then what can we be attached to? There can be no mind, there can be no sense that 'this is mine'—I want this as a desire—and there can be no sense that 'I don't want this' as an aversion.

So it is attachment; it plays in this world. And the minute we fall into this trap of 'this is mine,' then it is the root for suffering. Why? Because once we attach to something and say it is mine, you feel that this should be with me forever. See all these love stories that we read: 'Will you be mine forever and ever?' Not even this lifetime, but all lifetimes, forever. So we are searching for something eternal, but we are looking in the wrong direction. And the looking in the wrong direction is that we attach to an appearance and say, 'You be mine forever.' And then you see that, no, it's not. After a while, maybe we don't even want it forever; it just felt like that right now, but right now I just need some space.