Astavakra Gita

Astavakra: An ancient wisdom that blasts shoddy little belief-systems organized as ‘religion’ and as big business under so many ‘spiritual’ banners and by ‘holy’ buffoons.

The text is big and baffling but blissful, blasting all becoming and thus bringing the energy of being. Only forty random selections are presented in this message and another random forty in the next (message 78), on the analogy of ‘Hanuman Chalisa’ of Saint Tulsidas. Also there are traditions of forty days’ fasting, forty days’ penance in several human religious practices on this planet. Thus forty is a sacred number representing fortification of deep religious consciousness.

In Kriya-Yoga retreats sometime in future in some countries, Kriyabans may enjoy the euphoric and spontaneous commentaries from the body of Shibendu on these two messages along with an interesting symbolic story about the genesis of this profound spiritual text of humanity.

1
Shun the pollutions of the mind.
See the purity of truth,
Of love and forgiveness,
Simplicity and happiness.

2
The witness of all these,
The heart of awareness,
Is to be completely awake,
Not asleep in concepts and conclusions.

3
No duties bind you, as you are
Formless and free,
Beyond the witness of all things, Without experiences and experiencer.
So be happy (Su-kha i.e. means near skyness; Du-kha means away from skyness)!

4
You (a natural state, the ‘no-mind’) are everywhere,
Forever free.
Forever and truly free.

5
“I do this. I do that.”
The big black snake of selfishness
Has bitten you!

6
With the fire of the comprehension,
Burn down the forest of ignorance.
Free yourself from sorrow,
And be happy.
Be happy!

7
The Self (natural state) is everywhere.
One.
Still.
Free.
Perfect.

8
Give up the illusion
Of the separate self.
Give up the feeling,
Within or without,
That you are this or that.

9
The separative consciousness is bound
Only by the habit.
Your nature is pure awareness.
You are flowing in all things,
And all things are flowing in you.

10
Your natural state is always the same,
Unfathomable awareness,
Limitless and free,
Serene and unperturbed.

11
Whatever takes form is false.
Only the formless endures.
When you understand
The truth of this teaching,
You will not be born again (birth & death of desires will cease).

12
Infinity is within the body and without,
Like a mirror,
And the image in a mirror.
As the air is everywhere.
Flowing around the pot
And filling it.

13
As a wave,
Seething and foaming,
Is only water
So all creation,
Streaming out of the Self (The existential, enduring, eternal emptiness),
Is only the Self.

14
When the Self is unknown
The psychological registrations arise,
Not when it is known.

15
And in Intelligence, psychological registrations dissolve,
As a bracelet melts into gold,
A pot crumbles into clay,
A wave subsides into water.

16
The whole world may perish,
From Brahma to a blade of grass,
But intelligence is still here.
Indeed how wonderful!

17
I am not the knower,
Nor the known,
Nor the knowing.
These three are not real.
They only seem to be.
When intelligence is not known.

18
Two from Indivisible!
This is the root of suffering.

19
Real ‘I’ lives beyond all diversity and divisions,
In unbroken meditation.
Indeed,
Real ‘I’ is neither bound nor free!
Because real ‘I’ is intelligence!

20
It is all groundless ground, the Space
For the whole of creation,
Though it rests in Me (Universal Intelligence),
Is without fragmentation.

21
The psychological registrations are nothing.
When you understand this fully,
How can they be invented?

22
Embodied consciousness is not separate.
It is awareness itself.

23
When thoughts spring up,
The thousand worlds arise.

24
Universal Intelligence is the unbounded deep
In whom all things
Naturally arise,
Rush against each other playfully,
And then subside to arise again.
And again and again!

25
But he who is truly wise
Always sees the absolute natural state,
Celebrated, he is not delighted.
Spurned, he is not angry.

26
The true enlightened being feels no elation
Even in that exalted state
Which Indra and all the gods
Unhappily long for!

27
From Brahma to a blade of grass,
Only the wise man is strong enough
To give up desire and aversion.
How rare he is!

28
Real You are one and the same
In joy and sorrow,
Hope and despair,
Life and death.
Real You are already fulfilled.
Let ‘yourself’ dissolve.

29
There is nothing to accept,
Nothing to reject,
Nothing to dissolve!

30
Nothing to hold on to,
Nothing to let go of,
Nothing to dissolve!

31
This is the truth.
There is nothing to grasp,
Nothing to spurn,
Nothing to dissolve!

32
This is the whole truth.
There is nothing to embrace,
Nothing to relinquish,
Nothing to dissolve!

33
Free from attachment,
Free from desire,
Still.
Even so am I, the Real One,
O how wonderful!
But in this Me,
There is nothing to embrace,
And nothing to turn away.

34
When there is no this shoddy little I,
There is freedom.
Where there is I,
There is bondage.
Consider this.
It is easy.

35
Rest in your own nature.
Set yourself free.
The world is just a set of false impressions.
Give them up.
Give up the illusion.
Give up the world.
And live freely.

36
Striving and craving,
For pleasure or prosperity,
These are your enemies,
Springing up to destroy you and your virtues.
Let all striving and craving go.

37
Enough of the pursuit of pleasure,
Enough of wealth and righteous deeds!
In the dark forest of the world
How you have toiled,
Pressing into painful labor
Your body and your mind and your words.
It is time to stop.
Now!

38
All sorrow comes from fear.
From nothing else.
When you know this,
You become free of it,
And desire melts away.

39
You have no thought
For success or failure
Or for mind’s inconsistencies.
Real You is pure.
Real You is still.
When you know this in your heart
That there is nothing,
You are very still, as you are finished!

40
Meditation is needed
Only when the mind is distracted
By false imagining.
Knowing this, mediation is here and now,
Spontaneously!

41
Meditation,
Controlling the mind,
These are mere distractions!
Now Intelligence is here.
Intelligence is meditation.

42
Doing, or not doing,
Both come from not knowing.
Knowing this fully,
Intelligence is here.

43
Thinking
Of what is beyond thinking
Is still thinking.
I give up thinking,
And Intelligence is here.

44
Bound to his body
And the embodied consciousness,
The seeker insists on striving
Or on sitting still.
But I no longer suppose
The body is mine,
Or is not mine.
And I am happy!

45
I sleep, I sit, I walk (totally free from past pretensions and from fancies of future),
And I am happy.

46 I have forsaken the joy of winning
And the sorrow of loosing.
And I am happy.

47
And I have forsaken good and bad,
And now I am happy.

48
I think of things without thinking.
All my impressions of the world
Have dissolved.

49
Know you are free,
Free of "I",
Free of "mine".
Be happy.

50
The body is confined
By its natural properties.
It comes,
It lingers awhile,
It goes.
But the Intelligence neither comes nor goes.
So why grieve for the body?
If the body lasted till the end of time,
Or vanished today,
What would You (Life) win or lose?

51
You are the clear space of awareness,
Pure and still,
In whom there is no birth, no death.
No activity of mind,
No "I".

52
Rid yourself of all purpose.
And be happy.

53
Never upset your mind
With yes and no.
Be quiet.
You are awareness itself.
Live in the happiness
Of your own nature,
Which is happiness itself.

54
Give up meditation!
Hold nothing in your mind.
You are the Intelligence,
And you are free.

55
You may read or discuss scripture
As much as you like.
But until you give up everything,
You will never live in your heart.

56
Striving is the root of sorrow.
But who understands this?
Only when you are blessed
With the understanding of this teaching
Will you find freedom.

57
But if you desire nothing,
And disdain nothing,
Neither attachment nor detachment bind you.

58
When desire persists,
Feelings of preference and aversion arise,
Of liking and disliking.
They are the root and branches of the world!

59
But the man of wisdom is a child.
He never sets one thing against another.
It is true!
He is a child.

60
Let Hari teach you
Or Brahma, born of the lotus,
Or Shiva himself!
Unless you give up everything,
You will never learn anything.

61
Some crave pleasure,
Some seek freedom.
But it is hard to find
A man who wants neither!

62
Without pride or humility,
Nothing disturbs him.
Nothing surprises him.
Because he is free,
He neither craves nor disdains
The things of the world.
He takes them as they come.
He is not concerned with meditation,
Or the absence of it,
Or the struggle between good and evil.
He is beyond all,
Alone.
No "I",
No "mine".

63
His mind has stopped working!
It has simply melted away…
And with it,
Dreams and delusions
And dullness have melted away.

64
Undistracted,
He does not meditate!
Unbound,
He does not seek freedom!
He sees the world,
But knows it is an illusion.
Even when he is busy,
The selfless man is still!
And this is meditation,
This is freedom.

65
The fool practices concentration
And control of the mind.
But the master is like a man asleep, but awake!
He rests in himself
And finds nothing more to do!

66
In this world
Men try all kinds of paths.
But they overlook the Intelligence,
The Beloved.
Awake and pure,
Flawless and Full.

67
But a man without desires is a lion.

68
Just by hearing the truth
He becomes spacious
And his awareness pure.
He is indifferent
To striving or stillness.
He is indifferent
To his own indifference.

69
By standing on his own
A man finds happiness.
By standing on his own
A man finds freedom.
By standing on his own
He goes beyond the world.
By standing on his own
He finds the end of the way.

70
For him there is no pain in pain,
No pleasure in pleasure.
Only those who are like him
Can know his exaltation.

71
The master goes about his business
With perfect equanimity.
He is happy when he sits,
Happy when he talks and eats,
Happy asleep,
Happy coming and going.

72
The master is like the sky.
He never changes.
What does the world matter to him,
Or its reflection?
What does he care about seeking,
Or the end of seeking?

73
Even after hearing the truth,
The fool clings to his folly.
He tries hard to look calm and composed,
But inside he is full of cravings.

74
Only the man without desire
Sees without seeing,
Speaks without speaking,
Knows without knowing.

75
He thinks without thinking.
He feels without feeling.
He is intelligent,
But he has no mind.
He has some reference points only.
But with no thought for himself.

76
Amid distractions,
He is undistracted.
In meditation,
He does not meditate.
Foolish,
He is not a fool.
Knowing everything,
He knows nothing.

77
What is yesterday,
Tomorrow,
Or today?
What is space,
Or eternity?
I sit in my own radiance.

78
I sit in my own radiance,
And I have no fear.
Walking,
Dreaming,
Sleeping,
What are they to me?
Or even ecstasy?
What is far or near,
Outside or inside,
Gross or subtle?
I sit in my own splendor.

79
I am always without thought.
What is happiness or grief?
What is here and now,
Or beyond?

80
For I have no bounds.
I am Shiva.
Nothing arises in me,
In whom nothing is single,
Nothing is double.
Nothing is,
Nothing is not.
What more is there to say?

Epilogue
Energy of understanding is perhaps the vast veracity of Emptiness wherein the embodied consciousness is so completely wakeful that there is no word at all which means no image, no experience at all ! Structure of experience is now held in abeyance for the sacred space of emptiness to be. This space is not the one with which we are familiar. It is not formed or formulated by the objects in the space, that is, not by the distance and time between the objects. In the SACRED SPACE, all distance, duality, and division in time totally disappear. This absolute and unconditioned freedom is the only enlightenment. Anything away from this, is separation and fragmentation, sorrow and frustration, burden and bondage of human conditon.

Jai Guru.