King Janaka strides into the heart of the forest, robe brushing dew-kissed grass, a monarch seeking more than crowns and courts. Ashtavakra greets him not with flattery but with razor-sharp truth, slicing through the illusion that “self” and “world” are separate. Their back-and-forth reads like a cosmic ping-pong match, each volley revealing that awareness itself is the only real player—and there’s no opponent.

Janaka, accustomed to issuing commands, finds himself overturned by questions such as “Who is this ‘you’ that’s afraid or delighted?” In one striking exchange, Ashtavakra declares that the wise are “always happy, never upset, unmoved by sorrow, untormented by joy.” With that, the dialog flashes the core of Advaita: thoughts and feelings ebb and flow on the surface, but the witness—pure consciousness—stands untouched. No “other” exists to disturb that stillness.

A modern parallel springs to mind in the current craze for mindfulness apps: daily reminders to “just observe.” Yet the Ashtavakra Gita goes further, insisting observation and observer are one and the same—no separation, no distance. It’s like realizing the dreamer and the dream aren’t distinct; once that click happens, the entire landscape shifts.

Another moment captures it perfectly: Janaka marvels at liberation while still seated on a throne. Liberation hasn’t whisked him off to some celestial realm; it’s simply a change of perspective. Every tree, birdcall and passing stranger is reincarnated in consciousness itself. No duality, no “this versus that.”

Such a revelation feels refreshingly countercultural today—just as jaw-dropping in Silicon Valley boardrooms as it did in ancient India. The back-and-forth between king and sage doesn’t merely teach non-duality; it incarnates it, inviting a lived experience that’s as electric now as it must have sounded then.