Ashtavakra Gita

As waves, foam and bubbles are not different from water, so the universe is not different from the self

Stacking three images of differing solidity and duration makes the point cumulative: however varied phenomena look, none are ever a second substance alongside their source.

This verse widens the wave metaphor by stacking three examples of differing texture and lifespan, waves, foam, and bubbles, each looking and behaving differently yet being, without exception, nothing but water in a temporary shape. Using three examples rather than one makes the point cumulative: no matter how varied phenomena appear, from the most fleeting bubble to the most persistent wave, none of them ever constitutes a second substance alongside water. Applied to the universe and the self, the claim is not that the world is unreal but that it is never anything other than the one awareness in which it appears, exactly as foam is never anything other than water however unlike water it looks while foaming. This image gives philosophical precision to what chapter 1 stated more simply: that the world rises and falls in the self like waves on the sea.

Ashtavakra Gita