The Ashtavakra Gita treats the notion of the world as illusion in a radical and uncompromising manner, presenting the entire field of experience as a dream-like projection of mind without independent reality. What is ordinarily called “world” is said to arise from ignorance and mistaken identification with body, mind, and ego; when this identification relaxes and thought subsides, only pure consciousness, the Self, remains evident. In this vision, the apparent multiplicity of objects and events is a mental superimposition upon the one undifferentiated Self, creating the false sense of subject and object. The text does not deny that appearances occur, but it denies that they possess any autonomous existence apart from consciousness itself.

To communicate this, the Ashtavakra Gita repeatedly turns to analogies such as dream and mirage. Just as dream-objects seem solid and convincing until awakening, the waking world appears real only so long as one remains unaware of one’s true nature as pure awareness. Similarly, the world is likened to water in a desert mirage or silver seen in mother-of-pearl: something is seen, yet what is taken to be there is not actually present in the way it appears. These images underscore that the problem lies not in the appearance as such, but in the interpretation that grants it ultimate reality.

A distinctive feature of this text is its insistence on immediate recognition rather than gradual dismantling of illusion through extended practice. Ashtavakra calls for a direct seeing that all perceived phenomena are illusory projections and that one is, even now, the unchanging witness in which they arise and subside. Liberation is thus portrayed as an instantaneous shift of understanding: when the Self is known as the only reality, the apparent distinction between world and Self collapses, and maya loses its power to bind. From this standpoint, the world may continue to appear, but it is regarded as insubstantial, like a magic show that no longer deceives the onlooker.

The practical consequence of this approach is a profound non-attachment and ease in the midst of experience. Gain and loss, pleasure and pain, honor and dishonor are all seen as fleeting modifications within awareness, lacking the weight they once seemed to carry. The sage who abides as witness-consciousness neither clings to nor rejects the world, recognizing that nothing in the realm of appearance can add to or subtract from the ever-free nature of the Self. In this way, the teaching on maya serves not as a call to escape the world, but as an invitation to see through its imagined solidity and rest in the peace of non-dual consciousness.