Ashtavakra Gita

Nothing arises and nothing ceases, for there is only the self, unborn, unmoving, and complete

States the Gita's most radical metaphysical claim outright — that from the standpoint of ultimate reality, the entire story of things coming into being and passing away never actually happened.

Chapter 11 shifts into the text's most uncompromising metaphysics, sometimes called the doctrine of no-origination. Ashtavakra asserts that birth and death, cause and effect, are categories that only make sense within the world of appearances; the self underlying all appearances is unborn, unmoving, and complete in itself, so nothing has ever truly arisen and nothing will truly cease. This is a stronger claim than ordinary teachings on impermanence, which still treat change as real; here change itself is treated as a kind of optical effect layered over changelessness. Janaka is asked to locate his identity in what does not arise and pass, rather than in the drama of arising and passing that consciousness happens to be witnessing.

Ashtavakra Gita