Witnessing of All Things (Ashtavakra Gita 1.5) - 7th October 2016

Then the sage says in verse 5: 'You have no caste or duties. You are invisible, unattached, formless. You are the witness of all things. Be happy.' So we must remember that these words were written many years ago where something called the caste system was prevalent in the country. It sounds a bit archaic now, so let's look at the contemporary way to look at this. 'You have no caste.' If you have no real separation attributes, there is no distinguishing between what we are. We are one. Not only are we one, we also in the phenomenal play, we are the same. So we are not distinguishable.

Neither do we have duties because we are not the doers in the first place. That which we have presumed ourselves to be, if that doesn't exist, how can we do something? Imagine any person. Imagine some person, give it all kinds of attributes, really do it. You imagine some person, color it up nicely, give it all kinds of character. Imagine everybody here, the person in the imagination, yes or no? Now as they, I want to give you a glass of water. Can you ask? I want to pick up this glass of water. You also the... sounds trivial. This is what we are doing every day. We imagine ourselves to be a person and then we are saying, 'Okay, what should I do?' When we say, 'What should I do?' we are talking about this mythical, imaginary person. So that which does not exist cannot do anything. You cannot... even that one cannot lift a blade of grass, forget a glass of water. That's why the sense of doership is false.

All of this is one movement in consciousness. Even science is coming to these conclusions that every energy level of a single atom, the position of a single atom, changes all of the atoms in the universe. So everything is so deeply interconnected even in the realm of science for understanding these things. What is moving is moving on its own. So the sage said, 'You have no caste or duties.' And we looked at this duties part because this duties here implies doership. You are not the doer. You are invisible, unattached, formless. You are the witness of all things.

So this 'invisible' is different from our usual idea of invisible. Because our usual idea of invisible is like the Invisible Man or Mr. India. He wears a watch, rolls the dial, and he becomes invisible, but he still has some attribute, isn't it? So it's just that his physical attributes are no longer seen, but he still has weight, and if he slapped somebody, that one feels it. But this invisible is not that one. This means that you are attributeless. You have no color, shape, size. You can say about yourself in... non-phenomenally. And again I say, here is where the mind feels easy, you see.