Yoga Vasistha

Vasishta Yoga Samhita is a historically popular and influential syncretic philosophical text of <a href="/facts/Hinduism/oxV9YvQh">Hinduism</a>, dated to the 6th CE or 7th CE — 14th CE or 15th CE. 
The text is attributed to <a href="/facts/Maharishi_Valmiki/FEhncSeN">Maharishi Valmiki</a>, but the real author is unknown. It is named after sage <a href="/facts/Vasishtha/IxxKffcB">Vasistha</a> who is mentioned and revered in the seventh book of the <a href="/facts/Rigveda/7dyqIlsJ">Rigveda</a>. The complete text contains over 29,000 verses, while the short version of the text, called Laghu yogavāsiṣṭham, contains 6,000 verses, translated into Persian by the 15th-century.
The text has a philosophical foundation similar to <a href="/facts/Advaita_Vedanta/7Md58suk">Advaita Vedanta</a>, and expounds the principles of <a href="/facts/Maya_(illusion)/I6lmhlnV">Maya</a> and <a href="/facts/Brahman/GM0QaQ9U">Brahman</a>, as well as the principles of <a href="/facts/Nonduality_(spirituality)/UUH82Pk9">non-duality</a>. and its discussion of <a href="/facts/Yoga/9chp89lL">Yoga</a>. The text is structured as a discourse of sage <a href="/facts/Vasistha/IxxKffcB">Vasistha</a> to Prince <a href="/facts/Rama/0FUIok3H">Rama</a>, and consists of six books, describing the search for liberation through self-effort and meditation, and presenting cosmology and metaphysical teachings of existence embedded in stories and fables.

Yoga Vasistha open-in-new

Yoga Vasistha