Ashtavakra Gita

A man who neither wishes for the body's continuance nor fears its end has crossed to the farther shore of illusion

The test of liberation offered here isn't belief about an afterlife but the simple absence of grasping at continuation or dread of ending.

Ashtavakra doesn't ask King Janaka to hold any particular view about what happens after death — he points instead to a felt symptom of self-knowledge: the disappearance of both the wish to keep living and the fear of dying. Since the body was never who Janaka actually is, in this teaching, its continuation or cessation stops being personally at stake in the way it is for someone still identified with it. Crossing to the farther shore, a common image in Indian religious literature for reaching liberation, here specifically marks the point where mortality itself loses its grip on the mind. This is presented as one of the clearest outward signs that self-knowledge has actually taken hold, rather than remaining a philosophical position.

Ashtavakra Gita

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  Ashtavakra never asks Janaka what he believes about an afterlife. He points instead at a symptom: when both the wish to keep living and the dread of dying have gone, the knowledge has actually landed.