Ashtavakra Gita

A king who owns the whole earth and a beggar who owns nothing are, in truth, equally free the instant both know themselves as awareness alone

This condenses several middle chapters' teaching about social rank into a single equation, treating ownership of "the whole earth" and ownership of "nothing at all" as functionally identical once awareness, not possession, is what actually defines a person.

Chapters twelve and thirteen build toward a claim that property and status are simply the wrong measuring stick for freedom: a king who owns the whole earth is still, by these chapters' logic, only as free as his degree of self-knowledge allows, and a beggar who owns nothing already has full access to that same freedom regardless of his empty hands. This matters practically as well as philosophically, since it removes any spiritual advantage to renouncing wealth as such — giving things up doesn't get you closer to freedom if the giving-up is still done by someone who believes possessions were ever what stood between them and it. The real variable, across both chapters, is whether a person has recognized themselves as awareness rather than as the collection of things, relationships, or titles that awareness happens to be surrounded by. It's a teaching aimed as much at ascetics tempted to feel superior to kings as at kings tempted to feel superior to beggars.

Ashtavakra Gita