Ashtavakra Gita

Even the destruction of the whole world would not disturb the self, which is indestructible by nature and without a second

Uses the extreme case of total cosmic destruction to test, and confirm, that the self's peace has nothing riding on the world's continued existence.

This teaching from chapter 9 is a deliberately extreme thought experiment: if even the annihilation of the entire universe could not touch the self, then no lesser event — illness, loss, failure — could touch it either. The logic depends on the chapter's core claim that the self is indestructible and without a second, meaning there is no external thing that could act upon it or damage it. Because ordinary grief always involves the loss of something regarded as separate from oneself, a self with no genuine "other" has literally nothing left to lose. Janaka is meant to feel the scale of this claim, not merely agree with it as an abstraction.

Ashtavakra Gita

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• What the Ashtavakra Gita says about grief

  Chapter 9 runs the extreme case deliberately: if the annihilation of the entire universe could not touch the self, no smaller loss can either. Since ordinary grief is always the loss of something taken to be separate, a self with no genuine other has literally nothing left to lose.