Laghu Yog Vasishta

THE LAGHU YOGA VASISTHA is a popular text on Advaita Vedanta, Puranic in form and philosophical in  content. It is also known by other names like Arsa  Ramayana, Jnana Vasistha, Maha Ramayana, Vasistha  Ramayana and is ascribed to sage Valmiki  himself.

The authorship or rather writership is attributed to  Rishi Valmiki, the author of the Ramayana who is said  to have related the whole of Yoga Vasistha to Rishi  Bharadwaja as having occurred between Sri Rama and  Rishi Vasistha.

It is a free translation trying to present the ideas contained  in the text in a lucid manner using at times the  explanations of the Sanskrit commentaries. There are  some peculiar traits in the feature of this work as contra  distinguished from other spiritual works in the Sanskrit  literature.

Yoga Vasistha has chalked out for itself a new and  distinct path. At first, it enunciates a doctrine in its  several bearings and then elucidates it with beautiful  stories. Therein it gives also rules of guidance for the  conduct of life in the daily world, these also finding  their illustrations in the stories given out. As in the Puranas, we have not to rack our brains over with the  slight hints thrown therein and to sometimes give up in  despair the problems before us.