The Supreme Yoga : Yoga Vasistha

The Yoga Vasistha has been of favourite book of spiritual seekers in India these several centuries. Its special appeal lies in its thoroughly rational approach, and in its presentation of vedanta as a philosophy to bridge the gulf between the secular and the sacred, action and contemplation, in human life, through a comprehensive and lofty spiritulity.

     This monumental scripture is the greatest help to the spiritual awakening and the direct experience of the Truth. This is certain. If this is what you want, you are welcome to the Yoga Vasistha.

     An oft-recurring expression in this scripture is ‘kakataliya’-a crow alights on the coconut palm tree and at that very moment a ripe coconut falls. The two unrelated events thus seem to be related in time and space, though there is no casual relationship.

     Such is life. Such is ‘creation’. But the mind caught up in its own trap of logic questions why, invents a ‘why’ and a ‘wherefore’ to satisfy itself, conveniently ignoring the inconvenient question that still haunt an intelligent mind. 

     Vasistha demands direct observation of the mind, its motion, its notions, its reasoning, the assumed cause and the projected result, and even the observer, the observed and the observation-and the realisation of their indivisible unity as the infinite consciousness.

About the Author(s) 

SWAMI VENKATESANANDA, who has been working untiringly for decades to spread the life-giving message of Yoga and Vedanta in East and West, has done a great service to spiritual seekers far and wide by bringing out this translation of the Yoga Vasistha.

     The Swami has arranged the verses of the book in such a way as to convert them into a rosary of daily thoughts throughout the year, on the lines of his two other books published, namely The Srimad Bhagavatam or Book of God, and The Bhagavad Gita or The Song of God.

     In this book, Swami Venkatsananada has masterfully translated the Yoga Vasistha, the well-known Vedanta treatise in sanskrit so that it is understood not only by scholars but by laymen as well.