a few thousand years ago the sage ashtavakra said to king janaka

to be liberated, know yourself as consisting of consciousness, the witness of these, if only you will remain resting in consciousness, seeing yourself as distinct from the body, then even now you will become happy, peaceful and free from bonds, you are unattached and formless, the witness of everything, so be happy, you are neither the doer nor the reaper of the consequences, so you are always free, you are the one witness of everything and are always completely free, the cause of your bondage is that you see the witness as something other than this, your real nature is as the one perfect, free, and actionless consciousness, the all-pervading witness, unattached to anything, desireless and at peace, it is from illusion that you seem to be involved in samsara, meditate on yourself as motionless awareness, free from any dualism, giving up the mistaken idea that you are just a derivative consciousness or anything external or internal, you are really unbound and actionless, self-illuminating and spotless already, the cause of your bondage is that you are still resorting to stilling the mind, you are unconditioned and changeless, formless and immovable, unfathomable awareness, imperturbable, so hold to nothing but consciousness, recognize that the apparent is unreal, while the unmanifest is abiding, through this initiation into truth you will escape falling into unreality again, just as a mirror exists everywhere both within and apart from its reflected images, so the supreme lord exists everywhere within and apart from this body, just as one and the same all-pervading space exists within and without a jar, so the eternal, everlasting god exists in the totality of things, waves, foam, and bubbles do not differ from water, in the same way, all this which has emanated from oneself is no other than oneself, when you analyze it, cloth is found to be just thread, in the same way, when all this is analyzed it is found to be no other than oneself, the sugar produced from the juice of the sugarcane is permeated throughout with the same taste, in the same way, all this, produced out of me, is completely permeated with myself, all this appears in me imagined due to ignorance, just as a snake appears in the rope, the mirage of water in the sunlight, and silver in mother of pearl, all this, which has originated out of me, is resolved back into me too, like a jug back into clay, a wave into water, and a bracelet into gold, truly it is in the infinite ocean of myself, that, stimulated by the colorful waves of the world, everything suddenly arises in the wind of consciousness, in the infinite ocean of myself, the wind of thought subsides, and the world boat of the living-being traders is wrecked by lack of goods, how wonderful it is that in the infinite ocean of myself the waves of living beings arise, collide, play, and disappear, in accordance with their nature, from ignorance of oneself, the world appears, and by knowledge of oneself it appears no longer, truly dualism is the root of suffering, there is no other remedy for it than the realisation that all this that we see is unreal, and that i am the one stainless reality, consisting of consciousness, i am pure awareness though through ignorance i have imagined myself to have additional attributes, by continually reflecting like this, my dwelling place is in the Unimagined...