Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

------------------------------------------- Saturday, August 29, 2020. 9:21.AM. 1.Introduction -13. ------------------------------------------- 1. In the beginning, there is an attempt to describe the Asvamedha Sacrifice by identifying the consecrated horse with the universe as a whole. The creation of the universe may be compared to a sacrifice which is symbolically performed by a ceremony through rituals; and when it is contemplated it becomes an attunement of consciousness with the ultimate nature of creation. This, in outline, is the description of the process of creation. The forms, names and phenomena which we see and pass through, are a reversal of the nature of Reality, a reflection, as it were, of the Original through some medium, so that we see everything topsy-turvy and never as it really is. This is a fact which escapes our notice often, that we can see a thing and yet it can be upside down in all the features presented to the perceiving senses. Though we may b

------------------------------------------- Thursday, August 20, 2020. 9:42.PM. 1.Introduction -12. ------------------------------------------- 1. The bondage of the self is intrinsically involved in the structure of the individual. We bring sorrow with us even when our birth takes place; and it is often said that we bring our death also together with our birth. The meaning is that all experiences – joys, sorrows, including our last moment of life all these are a fructification of circumstances with which we are born from the mother's womb. We are born under certain conditions, and they are the seeds of what will follow later, so that the entire life of ours may be said to be an unfoldment of that which is present in a seed-form at the time of our birth. We do not pass through newer and newer experiences unexpectedly, as it were, but they are all expected things only. Every experience in life is expected, as a corollary is expected from a theorem in mathematics. It fol

------------------------------------------- Tuesday, August 11, 2020. 1:40.PM. 1.Introduction -11. ------------------------------------------- 1. The Upanishad, to reiterate, is the science of the Self, studied not for the sake of a diversion of the intellect or a satisfaction of the understanding, but for freedom of the spirit and removal of sorrow, utterly. The Adhyatma-Vidya about which we hear so much in fields of spiritual living is not 'a kind' of Vidya, just one of the branches of learning, but the Mother of all the branches of learning, including every other learning that can be conceived of in this world of sense, understanding and social living. 2. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, particularly, attempts to explain the various processes of bondage and liberation. It tells us how we are bound and how we are to get free; and it goes to the very cause ultimate, of the bondage of the soul. Our bondage is not merely physical or social. It is a more deep-rooted condition which