The Avadhuta takes hold of a single thread here and settles into it, and that thread is “एकनिरन्तरसर्वशिवम्”. In many voices the shrutis have said that from the sky outward this whole world is like the water of a mirage, shining from a distance, nothing at all once you draw near. Now the Avadhuta raises one subtle question, and under it the entire comparison collapses. A likeness asks for two, “this resembles that”, yet where only the one Shiva remains, what could be compared to what? The same question comes to rest next on yajna (fire-rite) and tapas (austerity), because action demands a split between doer and deed, and in the one Shiva there is neither doer nor deed. Then the same gaze turns toward the mind. The mind that was tested earlier, that same purified mind, is here called “सर्व-शिव”, for a clear mind is nothing other than the reflection of consciousness. And when that mind is everything, whom would it know, and to whom would it speak?

Now this same refrain moves on to touch each foundation of the world in turn. Let the split between day and night dissolve, let the split between rising and setting dissolve, and how are the sun, the moon, and fire to stand apart? Those that shine, how are they separate from the one light by which they are lit? Desire and desirelessness pass away, effort and stillness slip off, for in the Avadhuta’s state the pairs need not be dropped, they fall away on their own. Then where can a mind that divides outer from inner hold, when the supreme pervades all? Difference and non-difference, the knower and the known, once these are set aside and only the one Shiva remains, then how do even those states of the Mandukya stand, the third that is deep sleep and the fourth that is turiya, counted only by their difference from one another? Where there is no difference, no counting of states is left at all.

The whole process of knowing collapses here too. “What is spoken and what is unspoken” is not the truth, “what is known and what is unknown” is not the truth either. So object, sense, intellect, and mind all stand only on the ground of everyday dealing, and in the one Shiva no pair of a knower and a knowable is left. Then the same gaze turns to the five great elements. Space and air are not the truth, earth and fire are not the truth, and once that very foundation of the world is mere appearance, from where would the clouds and water made of it draw a separate existence? And when the imagined worlds and the imagined gods are struck down as well, the seven worlds, the many wombs of birth, the many gods, all falling within the bounds of imagination, then where does the moral frame of “this is virtue, this is fault” stand? In the one Shiva no category of virtue and fault is left at all.

Now the talk turns to “coming and going”. Death and deathlessness are struck down, doing and not-doing are struck down, so how could anyone speak of going and coming, that is, of that wheel of birth and death? “I will be born again”, “I will go to heaven”, such statements belong to the level of the body. The atman (self) comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. Then the two root principles of Samkhya are called out, prakriti and purusha, and they too dissolve into non-difference, and even the split between cause and effect does not remain. When that one alone is, then “the able and the unable”, “the person and the non-person”, these differences do not hold. And where the three kinds of affliction do not even arise, the physical, the divine, and the inner, and where no second thing arrives on account of a quality, there the old, the young, and the infant, these categories of age belong to the body. They do not touch the atman.

Now those social and natural identities fall away, the ones a person holds to most firmly. The supreme stands beyond stage of life and caste, beyond cause and doer, and this is why Dattatreya is called “अवधूत”, the one past student-celibacy, householding, forest retreat, renunciation, and the whole order of caste, past them all. So the thought of the destroyed and the undestroyed reaches only as far as the ground of prakriti. This is prakriti’s wheel: one thing swallows another and is swallowed, forms and is unmade. In the one Shiva there is no such wheel at all, so nothing perishable stands there, and nothing imperishable set against it. Even that category of woman and man, taken to be the deepest identity, is erased. And when identity itself is gone, where can joy and grief, those two motions of the mind, take hold?

Now the Avadhuta touches the seeker’s inner grips and loosens them one by one. If he stands beyond delusion and despair, beyond doubt and grief, then how can “I” and “mine” arise again? For aham and mama, “I” and “mine”, are the two roots from which delusion, despair, doubt, and grief are born. Once the root is gone, the growths that sprang from it drop of their own accord. Dharma and adharma, bondage and moksha (release), these old grips of the seeker also loosen, and suffering together with the wish to be free of suffering are two faces of one coin, with room for neither in the one Shiva. There is not even a division of the sacrificer and the sacrifice, of fire and oblation, so the Avadhuta asks outright, “वद”, tell me then, how will the fruits of karma come to be? Once that triad of doer, deed, and fruit is gone, the very base of ritual action collapses.

Now the first refrain moves toward its final utterance. He is free of both grief and grieflessness, free of both pride and its absence, so where is even the thought of attachment and detachment? To say “I have given up attachment, I am one of the detached” becomes a fresh grip of its own, and in the complete state there is nothing to be drawn to and nothing to turn from, that one alone remains. There is no distortion of delusion and its undoing, no distortion of greed and greedlessness, so how can there be even the thought of discernment and its lack? Right here the refrain of “एकनिरन्तरसर्वशिवम्” finds its last note. Up to this point the shlokas have gone on toppling one difference after another. From the next shloka the refrain will change to “अहमेव शिवः परमार्थः”, and the leap will carry from “there is one, unbroken Shiva” to “I alone am Shiva”, from a statement of philosophy to a direct declaration of experience.

Now the voice rises from within, “अहमेव शिवः परमार्थः”, I alone am Shiva, this is the highest truth. This is the loftiest declaration of Advaita, and from here the Avadhuta asks each time, then to whom shall I offer a greeting? The difference of “you and I” never once existed, and the notion of clan and birth is false. A greeting asks for two, one who bows and one who is bowed to, yet when that one is Shiva alone, to whom is the salute made, and from whom? The idea of guru and disciple has scattered, the idea of teaching has scattered too, into pieces. Dattatreya here lets go even of the claim “I am a guru”, for the one who teaches and the one who learns, the teaching and its receiver, all are dissolved into one. The body and the world are imagined as well, that is, without independent existence. Every bit of their being is borrowed from that one Shiva.

Now that same purity of one’s true nature is guarded from two extremes. I am never touched by rajas, and never free of it, I am always spotless, unmoving, and pure. Both senses of “रज” fall away here, the quality of rajas and dust alike, because in that which is itself stainless, tremorless, and unmixed, the presence or absence of rajas, neither one occurs. There is no alternative of the embodied and the bodiless, and it is also wrong to call false conduct true. “Our very falseness is the real thing”, this backward line of reasoning too the shloka rejects, for to accept anything and everything in the name of Advaita is its own kind of incompleteness. The state of one’s true nature lies beyond both extremes. I alone am Shiva, this is the highest truth, so here too, to whom shall I offer a greeting?

And then comes the same signature shloka on which chapters 4, 5, and 6 all three come to a close. Where nothing of gaining and not gaining is left, no rule of meter is left either. Sunk in even rasa, made pure by feeling, the supreme Avadhuta speaks the truth from that very place. The utterance of that state is not weighed on the scale of grammar and meter. It is the natural sound of an Avadhuta absorbed in even rasa, where the question of bondage never even arises.