साक्षित्वोपदेशः
Chapter 1
Sākṣitvopadeśaḥ · 20 verses
Janaka, a king who has read everything, asks the question every honest seeker eventually asks. How is knowledge gained, how does liberation happen, where does dispassion come from. Tell me. Aṣṭāvakra answers without preface. Avoid the senses like poison. Drink the virtues like nectar. You are not earth or water or fire or air or space. Know yourself as the witness, *sākṣin*, whose nature is consciousness itself, and you are free now, this moment, without further work. This is the most radical opening in the Advaita corpus. There is no preparatory ladder, no graded path, no purification first and recognition later. The teaching is delivered whole on the first breath. The remaining nineteen chapters will unfold what this first chapter has already given. The seeker is told, in the first hand, that the bondage is only a misidentification, and that the witness who hears these words is already what the words are pointing at.
Janaka speaks
कथं ज्ञानमवाप्नोति कथं मुक्तिर्भविष्यति। वैराग्यं च कथं प्राप्तं एतद् ब्रूहि मम प्रभो
kathaṃ jñānamavāpnoti kathaṃ muktirbhaviṣyati vairāgyaṃ ca kathaṃ prāptaṃ etad brūhi mama prabho
Janaka asks. How is knowledge gained, lord. How does liberation come about. How is dispassion reached. Tell me.
Aṣṭāvakra speaks
मुक्तिं इच्छसि चेत्तात विषयान् विषवत्त्यज। क्षमार्जवदयातोषसत्यं पीयूषवद् भज
muktiṃ icchasi cettāta viṣayān viṣavattyaja kṣamārjavadayātoṣasatyaṃ pīyūṣavad bhaja
Aṣṭāvakra answers. If you want liberation, dear one, drop the sense-objects as you would drop poison. Drink forbearance, sincerity, compassion, contentment, and truth like nectar.
न पृथ्वी न जलं नाग्निर्न वायुर्द्यौर्न वा भवान्। एषां साक्षिणमात्मानं चिद्रूपं विद्धि मुक्तये
na pṛthvī na jalaṃ nāgnirna vāyurdyaurna vā bhavān eṣāṃ sākṣiṇamātmānaṃ cidrūpaṃ viddhi muktaye
Not earth, not water, not fire, not air, not space. To be free, know yourself as the witness of all these, of the very nature of consciousness.
यदि देहं पृथक् कृत्य चिति विश्राम्य तिष्ठसि। अधुनैव सुखी शान्तो बन्धमुक्तो भविष्यसि
yadi dehaṃ pṛthak kṛtya citi viśrāmya tiṣṭhasi adhunaiva sukhī śānto bandhamukto bhaviṣyasi
If you set the body aside and rest in pure awareness, in *cit*, you become happy, peaceful, free of bondage right now, this very moment.
न त्वं विप्रादिको वर्णो नाश्रमी नाक्षगोचरः। असङ्गोऽसि निराकारो विश्वसाक्षी सुखी भव
na tvaṃ viprādiko varṇo nāśramī nākṣagocaraḥ asaṅgo'si nirākāro viśvasākṣī sukhī bhava
You are not a brahmin or any caste, not a renunciate of any āśrama, not anything the senses can reach. You are unattached, formless, the witness of the world. Be happy.
धर्माधर्मौ सुखं दुःखं मानसानि न ते विभो। न कर्तासि न भोक्तासि मुक्त एवासि सर्वदा
dharmādharmau sukhaṃ duḥkhaṃ mānasāni na te vibho na kartāsi na bhoktāsi mukta evāsi sarvadā
Virtue and vice, pleasure and pain, all of these belong to the mind, not to you, all-pervading one. You are not the doer. You are not the enjoyer. You are always already free.
एको द्रष्टासि सर्वस्य मुक्तप्रायोऽसि सर्वदा। अयमेव हि ते बन्धो द्रष्टारं पश्यसीतरम्
eko draṣṭāsi sarvasya muktaprāyo'si sarvadā ayameva hi te bandho draṣṭāraṃ paśyasītaram
You are the one seer of everything, virtually free always. This alone is your bondage, that you see the seer as someone else.
अहं कर्तेत्यहंमानमहाकृष्णाहिदंशितः। नाहं कर्तेति विश्वासामृतं पीत्वा सुखी भव
ahaṃ kartetyahaṃmānamahākṛṣṇāhidaṃśitaḥ nāhaṃ karteti viśvāsāmṛtaṃ pītvā sukhī bhava
The huge black cobra of "I am the doer" has bitten you. Drink the nectar of the trust that says, I am not the doer, and be happy.
एको विशुद्धबोधोऽहं इति निश्चयवह्निना। प्रज्वाल्याज्ञानगहनं वीतशोकः सुखी भव
eko viśuddhabodho'haṃ iti niścayavahninā prajvālyājñānagahanaṃ vītaśokaḥ sukhī bhava
Light the single fire of certainty, the fire that says, I am the one pure awakening. Burn down the jungle of *ajñāna*. Be free of grief. Be happy.
यत्र विश्वमिदं भाति कल्पितं रज्जुसर्पवत्। आनन्दपरमानन्दः स बोधस्त्वं सुखं भव
yatra viśvamidaṃ bhāti kalpitaṃ rajjusarpavat ānandaparamānandaḥ sa bodhastvaṃ sukhaṃ bhava
That in which this universe appears, imagined like a snake upon a rope, that bliss, that supreme bliss, that awakening, you are. Be happy.
मुक्ताभिमानी मुक्तो हि बद्धो बद्धाभिमान्यपि। किंवदन्तीह सत्येयं या मतिः सा गतिर्भवेत्
muktābhimānī mukto hi baddho baddhābhimānyapi kiṃvadantīha satyeyaṃ yā matiḥ sā gatirbhavet
The one who takes herself as free is free. The one who takes himself as bound is bound. The saying holds true here: as the mind, so the going.
आत्मा साक्षी विभुः पूर्ण एको मुक्तश्चिदक्रियः। असंगो निःस्पृहः शान्तो भ्रमात्संसारवानिव
ātmā sākṣī vibhuḥ pūrṇa eko muktaścidakriyaḥ asaṃgo niḥspṛhaḥ śānto bhramātsaṃsāravāniva
The *ātman* is witness, all-pervading, complete, one, free, of the nature of *cit*, actionless. Unattached, without longing, at peace. It only seems caught in *saṃsāra* because of error.
कूटस्थं बोधमद्वैतमात्मानं परिभावय। आभासोऽहं भ्रमं मुक्त्वा भावं बाह्यमथान्तरम्
kūṭasthaṃ bodhamadvaitamātmānaṃ paribhāvaya ābhāso'haṃ bhramaṃ muktvā bhāvaṃ bāhyamathāntaram
Contemplate yourself as the immovable awakening, the non-dual *ātman*. Drop the delusion that you are an appearance, and drop both the outer and the inner sense of being a thing.
देहाभिमानपाशेन चिरं बद्धोऽसि पुत्रक। बोधोऽहं ज्ञानखड्गेन तःनिकृत्य सुखी भव
dehābhimānapāśena ciraṃ baddho'si putraka bodho'haṃ jñānakhaḍgena taḥnikṛtya sukhī bhava
By the rope of body-identification you have been bound for a long time, little son. With the sword of *jñāna* that says "I am awakening," cut it. Be happy.
निःसंगो निष्क्रियोऽसि त्वं स्वप्रकाशो निरंजनः। अयमेव हि ते बन्धः समाधिमनुतिष्ठति
niḥsaṃgo niṣkriyo'si tvaṃ svaprakāśo niraṃjanaḥ ayameva hi te bandhaḥ samādhimanutiṣṭhati
You are unattached, actionless, self-luminous, stainless. This alone is your bondage, that you sit down to practice *samādhi*.
त्वया व्याप्तमिदं विश्वं त्वयि प्रोतं यथार्थतः। शुद्धबुद्धस्वरूपस्त्वं मा गमः क्षुद्रचित्तताम्
tvayā vyāptamidaṃ viśvaṃ tvayi protaṃ yathārthataḥ śuddhabuddhasvarūpastvaṃ mā gamaḥ kṣudracittatām
This whole universe is pervaded by you. It is woven through you, truly. You are the pure awakened form. Do not fall into smallness of mind.
निरपेक्षो निर्विकारो निर्भरः शीतलाशयः। अगाधबुद्धिरक्षुब्धो भव चिन्मात्रवासनः
nirapekṣo nirvikāro nirbharaḥ śītalāśayaḥ agādhabuddhirakṣubdho bhava cinmātravāsanaḥ
Without dependence, without change, without burden, the inner reservoir cool. Of fathomless intellect, unagitated. Be that. Let your only dwelling be in *cit*.
साकारमनृतं विद्धि निराकारं तु निश्चलं। एतत्तत्त्वोपदेशेन न पुनर्भवसंभवः
sākāramanṛtaṃ viddhi nirākāraṃ tu niścalaṃ etattattvopadeśena na punarbhavasaṃbhavaḥ
Know all form to be unreal. The formless alone is unmoving. By this instruction in the truth, no further becoming arises.
यथैवादर्शमध्यस्थे रूपेऽन्तः परितस्तु सः। तथैवाऽस्मिन् शरीरेऽन्तः परितः परमेश्वरः
yathaivādarśamadhyasthe rūpe'ntaḥ paritastu saḥ tathaivā'smin śarīre'ntaḥ paritaḥ parameśvaraḥ
As the form held within a mirror is both inside and around the mirror, so within this body and around it is the *parameśvara*.
एकं सर्वगतं व्योम बहिरन्तर्यथा घटे। नित्यं निरन्तरं ब्रह्म सर्वभूतगणे तथा
ekaṃ sarvagataṃ vyoma bahirantaryathā ghaṭe nityaṃ nirantaraṃ brahma sarvabhūtagaṇe tathā
One single all-pervading sky, the same outside and inside the pot. So is Brahman, eternal, unbroken, in every being.
Janaka opens with three nouns. Jñāna, mukti, vairāgya. Knowledge, liberation, dispassion. He asks how each one is obtained. The question is intelligent and incomplete, and Aṣṭāvakra knows it. The very framing assumes that these are three different things to be acquired one after another. The answer will collapse the assumption.
In 1.2, Aṣṭāvakra speaks the only verse in this chapter that sounds like ordinary instruction. Viṣayān viṣavat tyaja. Drop the sense-objects as you would drop poison. Pīyūṣavat bhaja: drink forbearance, sincerity, compassion, contentment, truth as nectar. Tāta, dear one, dear son. The vocative is intimate. He is not preaching from a height. He is leaning toward Janaka.
Then 1.3, which is the gate. Na pṛthvī na jalaṃ na agnir na vāyur dyaur na vā bhavān. You are not earth, not water, not fire, not air, not space. The Sanskrit negates five elements in a single breath. No body is left after that line. Eṣāṃ sākṣiṇam ātmānaṃ cidrūpaṃ viddhi muktaye. Know the ātman, the witness of these, of the nature of cit, consciousness itself, for liberation. Sākṣin is the word the whole chapter rests on. Not actor, not enjoyer, not experiencer. Witness.
1.4 makes the timing explicit. Adhunaiva. Right now. Sukhī śānto bandhamukto bhaviṣyasi. You become happy, peaceful, free of bondage. Not someday. Adhunā, this very moment. Eva, emphatically. The conditional yadi hides the timing: if you separate the body and rest in cit, you are free now.
1.5 dismantles the social identifications. Na tvaṃ viprādiko varṇo nāśramī. You are not a brahmin or any caste, not a renunciate or any āśrama. Nākṣagocaraḥ: not an object of the senses. Asaṅgo'si nirākāro viśvasākṣī. Unattached, formless, witness of the world. Sukhī bhava: be happy. The imperative comes again. Happiness is not promised at the end of a method. It is the recognition itself.
1.6 strips the moral categories. Dharma adharma sukha duḥkha, virtue and vice, pleasure and pain. Mānasāni na te. These are of the mind, not of you. Vibho, all-pervading one. Na kartāsi na bhoktāsi: you are not the doer, not the enjoyer. Mukta evāsi sarvadā: you are always already free. Sarvadā is the load-bearing word. Always. There is no moment when this is not already true.
1.7 introduces the binding. Eko draṣṭāsi sarvasya: you are the single seer of everything. Muktaprāyo'si sarvadā: virtually free, always. Then the sting: ayameva hi te bandho draṣṭāraṃ paśyasītaram. This alone is your bondage, that you see the seer as someone else. Bondage is a misperception of the seer's location. Nothing more.
1.8 names the disease. Ahaṃ kartā iti ahaṃ-māna-mahā-kṛṣṇa-ahi-daṃśitaḥ. The huge black cobra of "I am the doer" has bitten you. The cure: drink the nectar of trust nāhaṃ kartā, I am not the doer. Pītvā sukhī bhava: drink and be happy.
1.9 burns the forest. Eko viśuddha-bodho'haṃ: I am the one pure awakening. With the fire of conviction, niścaya-vahninā, burn down the jungle of ignorance, ajñāna-gahanam. Become free of grief.
1.10 names the screen. Yatra viśvam idaṃ bhāti kalpitaṃ rajju-sarpa-vat. The world appears upon you as imagined, like a snake upon a rope. Ānanda-paramānandaḥ sa bodhas tvaṃ sukhaṃ bhava. That awakening is bliss and supreme bliss. Be that.
1.11 is the proverb. Muktābhimānī mukto hi baddho baddhābhimāny api. The one who claims liberation is liberated. The one who claims bondage is bound. Yā matiḥ sā gatir bhavet. As the mind holds, so the going becomes. This is not magical thinking; it is the recognition that bondage was always an identification.
1.12 lays down the ātman in full. Ātmā sākṣī vibhuḥ pūrṇa eko muktaścidakriyaḥ. Witness, all-pervading, full, one, free, of the nature of consciousness, actionless. Bhramāt saṃsāravān iva: only by error does it appear as one bound in saṃsāra.
1.13 instructs the meditation. Kūṭastham bodham advaitam ātmānam paribhāvaya. Contemplate the immovable awakening, the non-dual ātman. Ābhāso'haṃ bhramaṃ muktvā: leaving the delusion "I am a reflection."
1.14 returns to the rope. Dehābhimāna-pāśena, by the rope of body-identification, you have been bound long, putraka, little son. The blade is jñāna-khaḍga, the sword of knowledge. Cut and be happy.
1.15 holds the paradox. Asaṅgo niṣkriyo'si tvaṃ sva-prakāśo niraṃjanaḥ. You are unattached, actionless, self-luminous, stainless. And then: ayameva hi te bandhaḥ samādhim anutiṣṭhati. This itself is your bondage, that you practice samādhi. Even the discipline of going inward is a residue, a holdover of the doer.
1.16 is the cosmic verse. Tvayā vyāptam idaṃ viśvam. By you this universe is pervaded. Tvayi protaṃ yathārthataḥ: in you it is strung, truly. Mā gamaḥ kṣudracittatām: do not fall into smallness of mind.
1.17 names the texture of resting. Nirapekṣo nirvikāro nirbharaḥ śītalāśayaḥ. Without dependence, without change, without burden, the inner reservoir cool. Agādha-buddhir akṣubdhaḥ: of fathomless intellect, unagitated. Cinmātra-vāsanaḥ: dwelling only in pure consciousness.
1.18 cuts in one line. Sākāram anṛtaṃ viddhi: know all form to be unreal. Nirākāraṃ tu niścalam: the formless alone is unchanging. Na punarbhavasaṃbhavaḥ: from this teaching no further becoming arises.
1.19 gives the mirror. Yathaivādarśamadhyasthe rūpe'ntaḥ paritas tu saḥ. As a form held within a mirror is both inside and around the mirror. So too in this body, inside and around it, is the parameśvara.
1.20 closes with space. Ekaṃ sarvagataṃ vyoma bahir antar yathā ghaṭe. One single all-pervading sky, outside and inside the pot. Nityaṃ nirantaraṃ brahma sarva-bhūta-gaṇe tathā: so is Brahman, eternal, unbroken, in all beings. The pot does not divide the sky. The body does not divide Brahman. The teaching ends on the image that the rest of the gītā will return to again and again.
Janaka has read the books. He has performed the rituals. He has earned the reputation of rājarṣi, the king who is also a sage. And he still asks, how does liberation happen. This is important. The chapter is not addressed to a beginner. It is addressed to the person who already knows the literature and has not landed.
Aṣṭāvakra does not give him a method. He gives him a recognition.
Notice the structure of 1.3. The verse names five elements and negates each one. Not earth, not water, not fire, not air, not space. The mind tries to follow each negation, looking for what remains. When all five are gone, there is nothing left to identify with. And in that moment, the verse names what is doing the looking. Sākṣin. Witness. Cidrūpa. Whose form is consciousness itself.
This is not a definition. This is a turn. The seeker has been looking outward at objects all his life, trying to figure out which one of them he is. Aṣṭāvakra rotates the searchlight. Stop asking which object you are. Notice the noticing. The consciousness in which the question itself is happening. That is you.
The whole chapter is the elaboration of this one rotation.
1.4 says adhunaiva, this very moment, you become happy, peaceful, free. There is no waiting room. No purgatory of practice. The seeker imagines liberation as something on the far side of the present. Aṣṭāvakra refuses that geography. The witness is here. The witness has always been here. There is no path to where you already stand. There is only the seeing.
1.6 makes the moral move that Advaita keeps making and that disturbs people who first encounter it. You are not the doer. You are not the enjoyer. This is not amorality. It is not permission to act badly. Aṣṭāvakra is not addressing your behavior in the world; he is addressing your identification with the actor. The actor is the ahaṃkāra, the I-maker. The witness sees the actor. The witness is not the actor. Mukta evāsi sarvadā. You are always already free. Notice the sarvadā. Always. There has never been a moment when this freedom was not the case. The bondage was an identification, never a fact.
1.7 names the precise mechanism of binding. Draṣṭāraṃ paśyasi itaram. You see the seer as someone else. You think the witness is somewhere over there, in some other state of mind, in some future awakening. The whole bondage is this displacement. You are searching for what is looking through your eyes right now.
1.8 puts a body on this. The huge black cobra of "I am the doer." The bite of ahaṃkāra. Most of the suffering in a human life comes from this single sentence: I did this. I am the one who must keep doing this. Aṣṭāvakra hands you a counter-sentence: nāhaṃ kartā. I am not the doer. Drink it like nectar.
He does not ask you to suppress action. He asks you to stop claiming it. The body acts. The mind thinks. The senses operate. Witness all of it. The claim that I am behind these operations is the bite. The nectar is the recognition that the witness was never the actor.
1.15 is the verse that catches the careful student off-guard. You are unattached, actionless, self-luminous, stainless. This alone is your bondage, that you practice samādhi. Read that again. Even the spiritual practice is bondage. Why? Because samādhi implies a practitioner moving toward a state. The witness is not in any state. It is the awareness in which all states arise.
This is the chapter's deepest move and the one that distinguishes Aṣṭāvakra from almost every other path. Most teachings tell you to do something. Aṣṭāvakra tells you that the doing is itself the residue of misidentification. You do not meditate your way to the witness. You recognize that the witness is already the one trying to meditate.
Does this mean stop everything. No. It means notice what is already free. The body will continue. Practices will continue if they continue. But the location of identity moves. You are no longer the one practicing. You are the awareness in which practice arises.
1.20 closes with the image that returns throughout the gītā. Ekaṃ sarvagataṃ vyoma bahir antar yathā ghaṭe. One sky, all-pervading, both outside and inside the pot. The pot's walls seem to enclose a piece of sky and divide it from the sky outside. But space is not divided by clay. The boundary is provisional. The sky in the pot and the sky around the pot are one sky.
The body is the pot. The witness is the sky. The walls seem to make a separate self. They do not. Nityaṃ nirantaraṃ brahma sarva-bhūta-gaṇe tathā. Eternal, unbroken, Brahman in every being.
This is the chapter delivered whole. You are not a fragment moving toward the totality. You are the totality wearing a body for a while. The wearing does not divide you.
What does the chapter ask of you, then. Not effort. Not striving. A pause. A turn of attention. The question that the chapter places in your hand is: who is the one reading these words. Whose consciousness is the page appearing in. That one is the sākṣin. That one is not waiting to be liberated. That one is the liberation.
Ramana Maharshi sat in silence on Arunachala for fifty years, and the question he handed to anyone who came was a single question: who am I. That question is Aṣṭāvakra's first chapter compressed to four words. When Ramana asked it, he was not asking the seeker to find an answer. He was asking the seeker to turn the searchlight around. He told visitors that the ātman is sākṣin, the witness, present in every state, asleep and awake and dreaming. He pointed to the I-thought as the rope by which the false self holds itself together. Trace it back, he said. Trace the I-thought to its source. Whatever is there before the thought arises is who you are.
Ramana's instruction atma-vicāra, self-inquiry, is the operational form of Aṣṭāvakra 1.3 and 1.7. Sākṣiṇam ātmānaṃ cidrūpaṃ viddhi: know the witness as the form of consciousness. Eko draṣṭāsi sarvasya: you are the one seer of all. Ramana's whole life was the embodiment of these two lines.
Nisargadatta Maharaj sold beedis in a small shop in Khetwadi, Bombay. He had no monastery, no organization. He sat in a small upstairs room and met whoever came. And what he said, over and over, was that the witness is prior. Prior to body. Prior to mind. Prior to even the sense "I am." He would say: the body is born and the body dies. The personality is born and the personality dies. You are neither. You are the witnessing in which all of this is happening.
When seekers came to him asking how to attain awakening, Nisargadatta refused the framing. He would say something close to Aṣṭāvakra 1.15: the very seeking is the obstacle. The witness is not attained. The witness is recognized. The recognition is not a future event. It is the immediate fact of consciousness right now, in this room, before any practice begins.
Nisargadatta and Aṣṭāvakra speak with the same impatience. They do not flatter the seeker. They refuse the seeker's preferred story of slow progress toward eventual liberation. They place the witness in the seeker's hand right now and ask why the seeker is still pretending not to have it.
Adi Śaṅkara, eight or so centuries before, wrote the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi and the commentaries on the Brahmasūtras and the Upaniṣads. His method was different from Aṣṭāvakra's. He worked through inquiry, through discrimination, viveka, between the real and the apparent. He taught the four qualifications and the careful step-by-step. He is the great architect of Advaita as a tradition.
But at the heart of Śaṅkara's teaching is the same recognition Aṣṭāvakra delivers in the first chapter. The Self is sākṣin, the witness. The body is not the Self. The mind is not the Self. The world is mithyā, a provisional appearance, real as the appearance, unreal as a separate substance. Śaṅkara's verse that the ātman is aparokṣa, not at a distance, immediately present, not requiring any further proof, is the architectural form of Aṣṭāvakra's adhunaiva, right now.
The difference is rhythm. Śaṅkara teaches through structure. Aṣṭāvakra teaches through recognition. The two are not in opposition. They are the same teaching arriving through different temperaments. Read both. Aṣṭāvakra opens the door. Śaṅkara walks you through the rooms.
You are not walking toward liberation. You are standing in it and learning to notice.
Scriptural References
Two birds on the same tree: one eats the fruit, the other watches without eating. The watcher is the Self.
द्वा सुपर्णा सयुजा सखाया समानं वृक्षं परिषस्वजाते । तयोरन्यः पिप्पलं स्वाद्वत्त्यनश्नन्नन्यो अभिचाकशीति ॥
dvā suparṇā sayujā sakhāyā samānaṃ vṛkṣaṃ pariṣasvajāte | tayor anyaḥ pippalaṃ svādvatty anaśnann anyo abhicākaśīti ||
Two birds, companions and friends, cling to the same tree. One of them eats the sweet fruit. The other looks on without eating.
The canonical Upanishadic image of the witness-self. The watching bird is Aṣṭāvakra's sākṣin. The eating bird is the jīva caught in identification. The same chapter 1 teaching: you are the one who watches, not the one who is bitten by experience.
The Self in the body neither acts nor is tainted, like space which pervades but is untouched.
अनादित्वान्निर्गुणत्वात्परमात्मायमव्ययः । शरीरस्थोऽपि कौन्तेय न करोति न लिप्यते ॥
anāditvān nirguṇatvāt paramātmāyam avyayaḥ | śarīra-stho 'pi kaunteya na karoti na lipyate ||
Beginningless, without qualities, this Supreme Self is imperishable. Though seated in the body, Kaunteya, it does not act and is not stained.
Krishna's direct echo of Aṣṭāvakra 1.6: na kartāsi na bhoktāsi, you are not the doer, you are not the enjoyer. The Self in the body, untouched. The whole chapter 1 teaching delivered in one Gita verse.
As space, being subtle, is everywhere and yet uncontaminated, so the Self in the body is untouched.
यथा सर्वगतं सौक्ष्म्यादाकाशं नोपलिप्यते । सर्वत्रावस्थितो देहे तथात्मा नोपलिप्यते ॥
yathā sarvagataṃ saukṣmyād ākāśaṃ nopalipyate | sarvatrāvasthito dehe tathātmā nopalipyate ||
As the all-pervading space, by its subtlety, is not stained, so the Self, present everywhere in the body, is not stained.
The exact image Aṣṭāvakra closes the chapter with at 1.20: one sky, outside and inside the pot, undivided. Krishna's verse is the Gita's articulation of the same gestalt.
If liberation is your desire, shun sense-objects as poison and cultivate forbearance, sincerity, compassion, contentment, truth as nectar.
मोक्षस्य काङ्क्षा यदि वै तवास्ति त्यजातिदूराद्विषयान्विषं यथा ।
mokṣasya kāṅkṣā yadi vai tavāsti tyajātidūrād viṣayān viṣaṃ yathā
If indeed you have a longing for liberation, shun sense-objects from far off as one shuns poison.
Śaṅkara's verse is almost a paraphrase of Aṣṭāvakra 1.2: viṣayān viṣavat tyaja. The continuation in Vivekacūḍāmaṇi names the same nectar-virtues that 1.2 names. Śaṅkara is reading Aṣṭāvakra and reformulating in the meter of a teaching-poem.
The Self is unborn, eternal, ageless. Not destroyed when the body is destroyed.
न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचिन्नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूयः । अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे ॥
na jāyate mriyate vā kadācin nāyaṃ bhūtvā bhavitā vā na bhūyaḥ | ajo nityaḥ śāśvato'yaṃ purāṇo na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre ||
The Self is not born, nor does it die at any time. Having once been, it does not cease to be. Unborn, eternal, lasting, ancient, it is not killed when the body is killed.
The Gita's foundational verse on the immortal Self. Aṣṭāvakra's chapter 1 carries the same unconditioned ātman: niḥsaṅgo niṣkriyo, untouched, actionless, present throughout.