Ashtavakra Gita

I am indivisible, formless, all-pervading; I never came into being — how astonishing this is

This pushes self-inquiry further than "I am not the body" into denying that the self ever had a beginning in time at all.

This verse goes a step past merely disowning the body: it denies that "I" ever came into being at all, a stronger claim than saying I am not this particular body, since it rules out identifying with any birth, biography, or beginning whatsoever. "Indivisible" (akhanda) and "all-pervading" (vibhu) carry precise technical meaning in Vedanta, ruling out the self as one bounded thing among others — it cannot be divided into parts, and it cannot be located here rather than there. The exclamation "how astonishing" recurs across many of Janaka's verses, functioning almost as a refrain marking realizations too vivid to be delivered as flat propositions. Read alongside chapter 1's insistence that bondage is only imagined, this verse supplies the positive content behind that claim: what remains once imagined limits are dropped has no edges, no starting point, and therefore nothing that could ever have been born or could ever die.

Ashtavakra Gita