You are free :: You are Boundless :: NO desire or pain or misery or fear can touch you if you yourself

----- from Ashtavakra Gita (अष्टावक्रगीता)

आत्मा साक्षी विभुः पूर्ण एको मुक्तश्चिदक्रियः ।
असंगो निःस्पृहः शान्तो भृमात्संसारवानिव ।। १-१२ ।।

आत्मा साक्षी, सर्वव्यापी, पूर्ण एक मुक्त चेतन, अक्रिय असंग, इच्छा रहित एवं शांत है । भृमवश ही ये सांसारिक प्रतीत होती है ।

ātmā sākṣī vibhuḥ pūrṇa eko muktaścidakriyaḥ ||
asaṁgo niḥspṛhaḥ śānto bhramātsaṁsāravāniva || 1 - 12 ||

The Self is the one perfect, free, and actionless Consciousness, the all-pervading witness, unattached to anything, desireless and at peace. It is an illusion that you seem to be involved in the world.



The Self is the Witness. It watches everything from a distance and is in no way involved in anything that appears and disappears. It is perfect and ever free and completely devoid of any sense of doership. The cause of suffering is the illusion that makes it seem as if “I am the doer”, or “I am the enjoyer” or “I am the one suffering”. The mind has projected all these illusions and we have identified with that falseness and have got trapped with its workings.

Sri Ramana Maharshi illustrated this wonderfully. He asked us to notice what happens during a movie show and how we get carried away with what is shown on screen. We look at the images that are projected on the blank screen and deem
them as real. These images can make us laugh or cry depending on what the screen shows us. We don’t see the light that projects it, or the screen on which the images are being projected. We only look at the images and identify with that and start to feel – on the basis of what is being projected on the screen. The images are
completely false and can’t exist without the screen. Only the screen is real as it always exists even when the images keep changing. It is not affected by anything which is superimposed on it. It is always the same. It receives all kinds of images – bad and good. It is pure and white even if the images show blood stains and violence. The screen remains untainted. And finally, when the lights are off (physical death), still the screen remains just as it was.

The screen is the SELF and the images are all the thought patterns, emotions, body forms and individual I-ness which are projected or superimposed on the Self.

A Jnani knows that all such superimpositions are unreal and are false appearances. He remains more and more in the background SELF as that blissful, desireless and actionless Consciousness