Without the knowledge of the Self, no one seeks liberation in the darkness

The word mṛgayeta —to seek, to hunt— evokes the activity of the mṛga, the deer, an animal that in Sanskrit literature symbolizes the restless mind. The ordinary mind is a mṛga: swift, erratic, fascinated by sounds and movements. It seeks liberation (mukti), but without ātma-jñāna, it searches in darkness (tamaḥ). This darkness is not an absence of information but the fundamental ignorance that the seeker is the sought. Every effort to become free without this knowledge only reinforces precisely what it seeks to dissolve: the identification with a subject in need of liberation. Here, Vasiṣṭha insists on something the Aṣṭāvakra Gītā expresses radically (I.11): “If you believe you are free, you are free; if you believe you are bound, you are bound.” No intermediate process is of any avail. The knowledge of the Self is not cumulative—it is not added to other knowledge—but dissolutive: it dissolves the assumption that there is someone who needs to know. When this dissolution occurs, the search ceases not through resignation, but because it is seen that there never was anyone who sought, nor anything that was sought.

The word mṛgayeta — to seek, to hunt — evokes the activity of the mṛga, the deer, an animal that in Sanskrit literature symbolizes the restless mind. The ordinary mind is a mṛga: swift, erratic, fascinated by sounds and movements. It seeks liberation (mukti), but without ātma-jñāna, it searches in darkness (tamaḥ). This darkness is not a lack of information but the fundamental ignorance that the seeker is the sought. Every effort to become free without this knowledge only reinforces precisely what it seeks to dissolve: the identification with a subject in need of liberation. Here, Vasiṣṭha insists on something the Aṣṭāvakra Gītā expresses radically (I.11): “If you believe you are free, you are free; if you believe you are bound, you are bound.” There is no worthwhile intermediate process. The knowledge of the Self is not cumulative — it is not added to other knowledge — but dissolutive: it dissolves the assumption that there is someone who needs to know. When this dissolution occurs, the search ceases not out of resignation, but because it is seen that there never was anyone who sought, nor anything that was sought.