अष्टावक्र गीता is a 20-chapter dialogue of radical अद्वैत, alternating between अष्टावक्र's precise instruction and जनक's ripening recognition. Again and again it points to one correction that changes everything: you are the awareness that knows experience, not the body-mind that appears in experience. The work does not aim to create a new spiritual personality; it aims to dissolve the old habit of identification, so life can be lived with responsibility but without inner bondage.
Up to this point, the dialogue has moved through a clear arc. Chapter 1 answers जनक's questions about ज्ञान, मुक्ति, and वैराग्य, warning against compulsive attachment to विषयs while pointing to the witness (साक्षी). Chapter 2 expresses the "afterglow" of recognition through metaphors like wave-water and rope-snake, loosening fear and ownership.
Seen as a whole, Chapter 5 is the "laya chapter": it points to freedom as a collapse of false identification, not as a project of self-improvement.
अष्टावक्र उवाच ॥
न ते संगोऽस्ति केनापि किं शुद्धस्त्यक्तुमिच्छसि ।
संघातविलयं कुर्वन्नेवमेव लयं व्रज ॥ 5-1॥
Translation (भावार्थ):
Ashtavakra said: You have no real attachment to anyone. Why do you, being pure, wish to renounce? Dissolve identification with the aggregate, and in this way enter dissolution.
उदेति भवतो विश्वं वारिधेरिव बुद्बुदः ।
इति ज्ञात्वैकमात्मानमेवमेव लयं व्रज ॥ 5-2॥
Translation (भावार्थ):
The world arises from you like a bubble from the ocean. Knowing yourself as the one Self, in this very way enter dissolution.
प्रत्यक्षमप्यवस्तुत्वाद् विश्वं नास्त्यमले त्वयि ।
रज्जुसर्प इव व्यक्तमेवमेव लयं व्रज ॥ 5-3॥
Translation (भावार्थ):
Even though it is directly seen, the world has no independent substance in you, O stainless one; it is like the snake imagined on a rope. In this very way enter dissolution.
समदुःखसुखः पूर्ण आशानैराश्ययोः समः ।
समजीवितमृत्युः सन्नेवमेव लयं व्रज ॥ 5-4॥
Translation (भावार्थ):
Be even in pleasure and pain, full and complete; be even in hope and hopelessness, even in life and death. In this very way enter dissolution.
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