Ashtavakra Gita

Janaka reflects: the world does not exist apart from me, nor do I exist apart from the world; knowing this, I rest without doubt, pure and quiet

This is a stronger claim than earlier chapters made: not just that the world depends on the self, but that neither exists apart from the other at all.

Most of the Gita's earlier imagery states a one-directional dependency, the world depends on the self the way a wave depends on water, or a pot depends on clay, but this verse makes the stronger, reciprocal claim that neither term exists apart from the other. That reciprocity matters: a strict one-way dependency would still leave room for a subtle hierarchy, self as more fundamentally real than world, but mutual non-existence-apart-from-each-other pushes toward outright identity rather than a graded relationship between a more real substance and a less real appearance. "Without doubt" is worth noting too, since chapter 7 opens with Janaka in a reflective, settled register rather than earlier astonished exclamation, knowledge reported as fully absorbed rather than freshly discovered, consistent with the text's arc from question, through realization, toward settled abiding. The stillness described, "pure and quiet," is offered as the natural resting state once this particular doubt, whether self and world are really two things, has nothing left to attach to.

Ashtavakra Gita