MOST LYRICAL PHILOSOPHICAL TEXT
Shri Swami Jnana Swaroopanandaji has given a special gift to aspirants in the form of a very lucid, inspiring and readable paraphrase of selected portions of the most lyrical philosophical text of the world, the Yoga Vasishtha (YV).
No matter how many translations or paraphrases of this incredibly rich text may be composed they cannot reveal all its depths. These depths can be explored and discovered only (1) by having access to the complex beauty of Sanskrit language, and (2) by delving deep into a personal experience of the detailed and methodical processes of Vedantic contemplations (Manana and Nididhyasana) and Yogic meditations (Dhyana and Samadhi).
The text consists of gushing outpourings of the experiences of both the universal and the transcendent. The outpourings are the results of the Rishi(s), Valmiki and Vasishtha, and all others referred to in the YV stories, diving deep into the states, that are non-states, the very nature (svabhava), of consciousness.
It is impossible to list the contents of this text of 32,000 verses.
YV does not belong to any one religious thought or a particular school of philosophy. It syncretically combines the elements of Buddhism, Jainism, Vedanta, Sankhya, Shaiva Siddhanta (Tamil Shaivism), Kashmir Shaivism, Yoga, Tantra and many other spiritual resources.
It takes us on journeys in spaces within spaces and beyond spaces; time frames within time frames and beyond time frames. In each of these space and time frames, histories of universes and of empires, of sages and of the lost ignorant ones, of devas and of imaginary persons unfold, also as stories within stories. Each layer of these instructs us into some level of personal philosophical realisation.
These layers of philosophy merge with each other, demonstrating to us that no school of thought can represent full reality. Each school projects a facet; all the facets together make up the still incomplete picture of truth.
The text tells us in picturesque detail about the states of our awareness and all its different rungs. It is not satisfied with talking about three states, viz., wakefulness, dream and sleep and the Fourth (Turiya). It speaks of all different permutations of these such as wakeful-wakeful, wakeful-dream, wakeful-sleep and so on, and then the state of a yogi in daily life wherein the fourth is interwoven with all the other ones.
It speaks of these states at cosmic level; it tells stories and parables of cosmic wakefulness, cosmic dream, cosmic sleep and cosmic enlightenment.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
Vedas (1182)
Upanishads (493)
Puranas (624)
Ramayana (741)
Mahabharata (354)
Dharmasastras (165)
Goddess (496)
Bhakti (242)
Saints (1503)
Gods (1290)
Shiva (370)
Journal (187)
Fiction (60)
Vedanta (362)
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