The Concise Yoga Vasistha
by Swami Venkatesananda
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Book Summary Information
Author: Swami VenkatesanandaEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1985-05-31
ISBN: 087395954X
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Book Reviews of The Concise Yoga Vasistha
Book Review: Vasistha's Yoga and Modern Physics
Summary: 5 Stars
The Concise Yoga Vasistha. Swami Venkatesananda and Christopher Chapple. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984. Paperback, 430 pages. ISBN 087395954X
I was led to the Yoga Vasistha after becoming interested in a very pure and early Advaita text called The Ashtavakra Gita, a beautiful short work of just 300 couplets (for details see my Listmania list). The particular school of Advaita Vedanta represented by the Ashtavakra Gita is called Ajatavada. It propounds the fascinating notion that the universe was never created.
The Yoga Vasistha is a later and much more extensive elaboration, in 35000 couplets, of the Ajatavada theory that nothing has ever emerged and that the world of names-and-forms is merely an illusion. The complete Sanskrit/English edition of the Yoga Vasistha, which may be thought of as the main 'Scripture' of the Ajatavada school, runs to over 2400 pages in 4 large volumes. It is from this massive 70000-line text that Swami Venkatesananda has distilled the brilliant summary he has presented us with here.
The words 'Scripture', 'Doctrine', 'Philosophy', have an ominous ring for most of us. They suggest something dull, heavy, dreary, tedious, and quite the opposite of fun! Also, most of us would probably tend to agree with old Greek saying - Mega biblion mega kakon - A big book is a big evil!
Given this, the Yoga Vasistha comes as a very pleasant surprise. It's certainly 'Scripture', and it's said to be the third biggest book ever composed, but despite what some would think of as its disadvantages it turns out - with its huge cast of Gods and Goddesses, Angels, Kings, Queens, Ministers, Priests, Sages, Warriors, Laymen, Students, Mendicants, Yogis, Demons and Goblins, etc., all of them, for our edification, pursuing their various fates on a universal stage - to be one of the most fascinating things ever written and those of us who are lucky enough to have discovered it should count ourselves very lucky indeed.
The traditional Indian view is that the ideas we find expounded in the sacred texts of Hinduism should not be considered mere 'theories' that have been arrived at through the use of reason. The knowledge these texts hold is the product of insights achieved by a spiritual elite whose whole lives and entire energies were devoted to the search for truth. After heroic efforts they succeeded in their search and texts such as the Yoga Vasistha hold as much of the truth as could be embodied in words. But besides the truths it holds, what I also find fascinating is its scientific content.
I get the feeling that its author - after taking us on an amazing voyage through a cosmos pulsing with vibratory energies and holding an infinity of universes strewn with galaxies with their suns and planets and black holes and clouds of cosmic dust and with space vehicles darting about and an incredible variety of both material and immaterial life-forms teeming and swarming and pullulating through uncountable alternate dimensions - would have enjoyed himself hugely if he had been able to sit down and have a good chat with some of our modern physicists since, as John Lowry Dobson makes clear in his Beyond Space and Time, they certainly seem to have a great deal in common.
As I've already mentioned, the particular school of Advaita Vedanta represented by the Yoga Vasistha is called Ajatavada. It propounds the theory that the universe was never created, that nothing has ever emerged, that the world of names-and-forms is merely an illusion.
As for John Lowry Dobson, he is a Western scientist who, basing his theory on a careful examination of Einstein's equations, has arrived at the same conclusion: Neither the universe, nor you, nor I were ever created. In fact, we do not exist. So science and traditional Indian thought have finally met up, as indeed they inevitably had to since there can only be One Truth.
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