This verse is the cornerstone of the entire text — the method of neti neti (“not this, not this”) applied systematically. Aṣṭāvakra strips away every layer of identity: the physical body (deha), the senses (indriya), the vital breath (prāṇa), the thinking mind (manas), and the discriminating intellect (buddhi). Each negation peels away one more covering until only the witness (sākṣī) remains. This is not a denial of experience but a reorientation of identity: you are not what you observe — you are the observer itself. The verse echoes the Kena Upaniṣad’s insistence that the Self is beyond all faculties, and anticipates the method Śaṅkara would formalize centuries later.