Ashtavakra Gita

As the pot is nothing but clay, so all this is nothing but the self, once truly examined

This reworks a much older Upanishadic image, applying it directly to the self doing the examining rather than to an abstract cosmic principle.

The clay-and-pot analogy has deep roots in earlier Vedantic literature, most famously the Chandogya Upanishad's teaching that by knowing one lump of clay, one knows every object made of clay, since the many modifications are name and form while clay alone is real. The Ashtavakra Gita redeploys the image with a sharper focus, not as an argument for a distant metaphysical principle but as a direct pointer to the self doing the examining right now. "Once truly examined" is an important qualifier: the pot's shape is obvious to casual observation, and only closer scrutiny reveals that nothing besides clay was ever there. The same, the verse claims, holds for the entire perceived universe relative to the self — ordinary attention registers the shapes, people, objects, events, and only sustained inquiry reveals that no substance beyond the self was ever actually present.

Ashtavakra Gita