AVG 2.20

Chapter 2 (The Seekers Joy at Self-Cognizance): Verse 20

शरीरं स्वर्गनरकौ बन्धमोक्षौ भयं तथा ।

कल्पनामात्रमेवैतत्किंमे कार्यं चिदात्मनः ॥ २-२०॥

PURPORT:

The corporeal body, immortality, purgatory

enslavement and emancipation, as also trepidation;

all of these, are mere reveries. What do I have to do 

with all of these? I, whose essence is pure awareness.

TRANSLITERATION:

शरीरम् स्वर्गनरकौ बन्धमोक्षौ भयम् तथा ।

śarīram svarganarakau bandhamokṣau bhayam tathā ।

कल्पनामात्रम् एव एतत् किम् मे कार्यम् चिदात्मनः ॥ २-२०॥

kalpanāmātram eva etat kim me kāryam cidātmanaḥ ॥ 2-20॥

MEANING:

śarīram (शरीरम्) = corporeal body/physical person

svarganarakau (स्वर्गनरकौ) = immortality and purgatory/also translated informally as heaven and hell (compound of svarga (स्वर्ग) meaning heaven and narakau (नरकौ) meaning hell)

bandhamokṣau (बन्धमोक्षौ) = enslavement and emancipation/also translated as bondage and freedom (compound of bandha (बन्ध) meaning bondage and mokṣau (मोक्षौ) meaning freedom/absolution/deliverance)

bhayam (भयम्) = trepidation/alarm/fear 

tathā (तथा) = as also ।
kalpanāmātram (कल्पनामात्रम्)  = sheer fantasy/mere illusion/just a reverie (compound of kalpanā (कल्पना) meaning imagination/illusion and mātram (मात्रम्) meaning merely)

eva (एव) = assuredly/surely

etat (एतत्) = all this (‘this’ as in all of body, heaven, hell, bondage, freedom and fear)

kim (किम्) = what

me (मे) = my

kāryam (कार्यम्) = to be done/deserving to be done

cidātmanaḥ (चिदात्मनः) = whose nature is intrinsic awareness (compound of cit (चित्) meaning awareness or consciousness and ātmanaḥ (आत्मनः) meaning essence/nature/character/soul) ॥ 2-20॥

COMMENT:

In these verses, Janaka is primarily focussed on explicit physical entities like his corporeal body and implicit mental constructions like immortality, purgatory, bondage, freedom and fear and comes to understand these concepts for what they merely are - conceptual creations within ones mind whose imprints ossify over time (as recurring thought-movements that align with such mental constructions). The thought-movements themselves are a self-perpetuating cycle that bounces around the triad of experience, memory and knowledge. The individuals past experiences (colored by conditioning via external stimuli) is stored within the mind as memories and the sum of such memories inter-linked to experience is the knowledge possessed by the individual. Thought-movements can be envisaged as a resiliently elastic bouncing ball that constantly knocks, bumps and jounces within this triad. The triad of experience, memory and knowledge itself is constantly measured, equilibrated and modulated via the perception of what-is-all-around-us. Such perceptions themselves arise as a result of phenomena interacting with our sense organs resulting in contact and leading to the representational sensation of what-is-all-around-us. One should understand that even if all of the above is described in a relational manner and can mistakenly be construed as a cause and effect, the relational alliances between perception, contact and sensation and its subsequent feeding of such perceptional output to the triad of experience, memory and knowledge is co-dependent upon an ultimately indefinite range of causes and conditions and is accordingly a function neither of the subject (like an experiencer of perceptions like Janaka) nor of the world alone. Thus, Janaka sees that his self, his conceptual worlds like heaven, hell, enslavement, emancipation and his resultant thought-movements can be understood profoundly if he starts to see them not as autonomous entities that exist and prevail apart from each other (and only subsequently come together), but, in a certain degree, as expressions of intermittent arrangements of interaction that contemporaneously arise. He joyously proclaims thus within these beautiful verses.