ନିଜାତ୍ମାଷ୍ଟକ ସ୍ତୋତ୍ରମ୍

Eight verses in the bhujangaprayata metre, and what they praise is not a god at all. Every verse closes on the same line — let us worship our own nature, whose form is consciousness and bliss — so the object of the hymn is the reciter's own self, and the first person plural keeps it from being a private matter. The verses proceed by taking things away: without alternatives, without pairs of opposites, pure, utterly quiet, beyond the strands, one; self-luminous, without sorrow, immeasurable, formless, without division; known only by itself, beginningless, without any wanting. Later verses argue rather than describe, deriving that identity from the fact that the sense of I is always present and never divided. It is a piece of Advaita set to metre, and belongs with the doctrinal texts rather than the devotional ones.