A unique song of the self,
born of the deeps of contemplation
verbalizing the mystical experience of the adept
who has gone over the way of the supreme transcendence
in bliss everlasting and perfect equipoise of being to abide.
It sings of the ultimate reality
being the Supreme self as seen by the in seeing eye,
expresses spontaneously the ebullition of delight
on seeing it as the unending ocean of light.
A work of dialogic imagination
like the dialogues, of the Tao, the king,
the Bhagwat Gita and Plato, this song
of Ashtavakra records the universal vision,
emanating from insight and revelation.
Ashtavakra presents the supreme realization
in respect of the cosmic self
in the form of dialogues with Janaka,
the scholar king of Videha.
Ashtavakra is that eight-curved bodied sage
so glowingly celebrated in the Mahabharata.
Janaka, his disciple here, is the king seer of Videha
whose daughter was Rama’s loved wife,
who stimulates a metaphysical debate
with Ashtavakra, the highest of the sage teachers.
Ashtavakra Gita is the song celestial
it is all about the quest and the vision of the Self, boundless as space
in comparison to which the phenomenal world is like a water pot,
it instructs the king seer in the truth of the Supreme Self.
Ashtavakra sees the Self as all-pervasive
subtle, formless, undecaying, undying
that great unborn immortal fearless Brahman
boundless and stainless as the sky.
The Ashtavakra Gita provides the goal of a truly liberated man,
be he a king or a beggar,
in his unattachment and dispassion he shines,
a Jivanmukta, the liberated in life.
