Sharing Pointings from Ashtavakra Gita 1.6 (Day 2) - 28th September 2016

There was one, 1.6. Chapter 1, verse 6 is: 'Right and wrong, pleasure and pain exist in the mind only. They are not your concern. You neither do nor enjoy; you are free.' He says right and wrong, which is just the realm of interpretation, judgment, you see. Pleasure and pain—this might be a little different from the definitions we use in Satsang. I like to say that the mind is nothing but a bundle of thoughts and similar energies like imagination, memory. Sometimes we say that let's include all the other perceived sensations like emotion, pain; let's also for a moment include that in the definition of the mind. So the sage is using the broader definition. So he is saying all of these thoughts, all of these sensations, all pain, all the pleasure—let's look at that as the mind. The witness of the mind, you are apart from this. These do not touch you. Although they happen within you, they only exist as I saw earlier in our play, you see. Only that which we are aware of at all, only that which has our attention, only that which is perceived seems to exist in this realm of Maya.

So the sage says all of this interpretation and also the sensations, either through our sense of objects or seemingly felt internally, let's see that that is not original to us. It is in the realm of the mind. They are not your concern. So let's look at this. You are now... 'no concern' is speaking to us directly as awareness itself. This awareness is unconcerned. Often in Satsang we use the term 'unconcerned' to this awareness. It is unconcerned with this play of itself called consciousness. Then he says, 'You neither do nor enjoy.' So this is directly again pointing to what we speak in Satsang, which is 'akarta' and 'abhokta.' You are not the doer and you are not the experiencer. Yeah? What is this? Prior to consciousness. But usually, the prayer is made from the perspective of a person: 'That I am nothing, O Lord, You are the doer and You are the experiencer.' So when he says 'enjoy' here, he's talking about experiencing. 'You neither do nor enjoy.' But here he's not referring to the 'you' as a person. He is saying you are this awareness, see? So an aspect of you, which is consciousness, is doing and it is enjoying. You are the unconcerned witness, witnessing, unconcerned with the movement of doing and experiencing, you see.

So from the perspective of the person, this is called surrender: 'You, O Lord, our consciousness, are the doer and You are the experiencer.' And from the perspective of awareness also, you are not the doer or the experiencer, although consciousness is also your own aspect, an aspect of you, is it? So because you neither do, you neither do nor enjoy, the sage says, 'You are free.' So in the fallacy of doership and the fallacy that 'I am the experiencer of this life'—mostly 'I am the victim of this life' also, another very strong leg of the ego. 'Why me? Look at what has happened to my life.' A victim or a very popular ego-wish. So when this fallacy of doership and being the experiencer of what is happening—the sufferer would be a better term of this life—and to see that I am the primal witnessing, the primal witness of this entire play, then even to say 'you are free' is actually underselling it because you can never be bound. This one which is formless, invisible, unattached, is neither the doer nor the experiencer. It is impossible to find any attributes of it to even bind, you see? How would it be bound? And it is talking about you. You are free. You are free.