Yoga Vasistha

The Yoga Vasistha is a massive Sanskrit work of non-dual teaching cast as the sage Vasistha’s instruction of the young Rama on the nature of the world, mind, and liberation. A shorter version, the Laghu Yoga Vasistha, circulates widely.

Content

In roughly 29,000–32,000 ornate verses, Vasistha answers Rama’s despair before his princely duties with a radical idealism: the world is a creation of mind (manomayam jagat), bondage is the belief in its externality, and liberation is the settled recognition that awareness alone is. The teaching proceeds through a tower of nested stories — Lila, the sage and the hunter-king, the tale of the seven sages’ sons — each dissolving the reader’s sense of scale and time. Six books (upashamas? — the six prakaranas: Vairagya, Mumukshu, Utpatti, Sthiti, Upashama, Nirvana) organize the whole.

Significance

The Yoga Vasistha is the great literary vehicle of Kashmir-rooted Advaita with tantric coloration, prized by householders and renouncers alike. Ramana Maharshi and modern Vedantins have commended it; its story-craft influenced medieval narrative literatures.

Verification notes

• Composition is layered; scholarly dating spans several centuries (c. 9th–14th CE), with authorship anonymous.
• Audited against Wikipedia (September 2026).