Consider the skin to be the wall of an empty body with nothing inside. By meditating like this, one reaches a place beyond meditation. Consider the body to be an empty shell, which has nothing inside. The skin is just an outer covering like a wall. Only air inside and air outside. Only God inside, and God outside. Then, one no longer identifies with the skin, with the body. One identifies with awareness, or the God inside.
Verse 48
The Ashtavakra Gita says, because we think we are the body, we are bound. Once we believe we are aware, we become free. When we believe that the body is nothing, it is empty, then we no longer believe we are the body. That is what this meditation is doing. If we consider the body to be empty, we realize that the body is insubstantial. Then we no longer believe we are the body.
Breaking the Pot
- We are something more substantial, something more permanent. This verse is also suggesting a subtle truth. Our body is nothing. It is insubstantial.
- When our attachment to our body goes, our ego dissolves, and we become free. It is our identification with our body that makes us feel that we are separate from God. Because we see ourselves as separate, we are bound.
- When we no longer think of ourselves as our bodies, we no longer consider ourselves to be separate. We become free. It is like the example of air inside a pot and air outside a pot.
- When the pot breaks, the air becomes one. Similarly, when our identification with the body breaks, we are no longer separate from God.
- We become One. One with God.
- By meditating like this, one reaches a place beyond meditation.
- Meditation is a means to an end. It is a means to liberation. It is not an end in itself.
- Once a person is liberated, they no longer need to practice meditation. By meditating like this, one is liberated. Then meditation is no longer required. One has reached a place beyond meditation.
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