You Are Already Free

Janaka: "If I am already free, as you say, then why do I not experience this freedom? Why does the world still seem to bind me?"

Ashtavakra: "Because you have imagined yourself into bondage. Through imagination alone you have created this prison. Thinking "I am bound," you became bound. Thinking "I am free," you are free."

Janaka: "But this is just playing with words—"

Ashtavakra: "Is it? Examine closely. Where is this bondage you speak of? Show it to me. Point to it."

Janaka: "I feel limited. I feel identified with this body, this role as king, these responsibilities—"

Ashtavakra: "The feeling is there. But are you the feeling? A cloud passes through the sky. Does the sky say "I am clouded"? The Self is beyond nature—pure, infinite, eternal. It is never bound. How could it be liberated?"

Janaka: "Then the talk of liberation—"

Ashtavakra: "Is only for those who imagine bondage. One who knows the Self knows there was never any bondage. And so there is no liberation either. Both are stories told in the realm of appearances."

Janaka: "What of virtue and vice? What of action and its fruits?"

Ashtavakra: "Virtue, vice, pleasure, pain—these pertain to the mind, not to you. You are not the doer. You never were. Actions arise, but you are the actionless one. Why do you worry?"

Janaka: "But surely I must do something—"

Ashtavakra: "You are that pure awareness in which the universe appears like a reflected image. You are consciousness itself. Why do you confuse yourself by seeking outside what is always present within?"

Janaka: "The universe appears in me?"

Ashtavakra: "Does a reflection exist apart from the mirror? The mirror does not create the reflection through effort. The reflection simply appears. You do not create the world through effort. It simply appears in you. And like the mirror, you are untouched by what appears."

Janaka: "This teaching feels like a sword cutting through all I believed—"

Ashtavakra: "It is meant to. What the sword cuts was never real to begin with. What remains is what was always true. Knowing this, dissolve into happiness."