The Upanishads

The Upanishads: one of three new editions of the books in Eknath Easwaran's Classics of Indian Spirituality series You are what your deep driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny. - Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (IV.4.5) Over two thousand years ago, the sages of India embarked on an extraordinary experiment. While others were exploring the external world, they turned inward - to explore consciousness itself. In the changing flow of human thought, they asked, is there anything that remains the same? They found that there is indeed a changeless Reality underlying the ebb and flow of life. Their discoveries are an expression of what Aldous Huxley called the Perennial Philosophy, the wellspring of all religious faith that assures us that God-realization is within human reach. The Upanishads are the sages' wisdom, given in intense sessions of spiritual instruction in ashrams, in family gatherings, in a royal court, in the kingdom of Death himself. And Easwaran shows how these teachings are just as relevant to us now as they ever were centuries ago.

The Upanishads were written in Sanskrit between 800 and 400 BCE by sages and poets, and form part of the Vedas - the holy and ancient sacred scriptures that are the basis of the Hindu religion.

The Hindu scriptures the Upanishads are, according to German scholar PAUL DEUSSEN (1845-1919), the culminating point of the Indian doctrine of the universe, an achievement that had been reached even before the arrival of the Buddha. In this work-originally published in German in 1906 and translated into English two years later-Deussen explores the place of the Upanishads in the literature of the Veda and explains the theology, cosmology, and psychology of that holy book. A landmark for East-West cross-cultural scholarship, The Philosophy of the Upanishads helped create the European understanding of the mind and heart of India, a philosophical and cultural endeavor that consumed both academics and armchair truth-seekers of the day. Today, it is still essential reading for anyone wishing to obtain a deeper knowledge of Indian spiritual wisdom.

Text, translation and Interpretation of selected Upanishads, Hindu philosophical classics.

The Upanishads are a great mine of strength for leading a tension-free and peaceful life. Today, most of us feel a lot of turmoil and tensions due to an overemphasis by leading a materialistic style of living. Meditation (Upasana) and looking into our pure consciousness and the Divine sitting inside us, has been forgotten altogether. Hence, the need for 'going back to Upanishads' has become quite relevant to be imbibed. There is also a growing urge in us to realize your 'true self,'' keenly feeling the need to make our knowledge flow into wisdom, and a yearning to know about the infinite and the eternal inspires us. The Upanishads form the core of Indian philosophy - a fantastic collection of writings, aptly described by Shri Aurobindo as "the supreme work of the Indian mind". The Upanishads are summits of thought on humanity and the universe. The Upanishads asks a man to cultivate righteousness (dharma) and to enjoy wealth (artha) and seek pleasures (kama), but with a sense of detachment. Meditation on OM and enquiry into our inner divine Self are some of the essentials of the Upanisads. Eleven Major Upanisads have been covered by Mr. Ved Bhatia in a lucid easy comprehensible style.

Donated by Sydney Harris.

The legendary Greek figure Orpheus was said to have possessed magical powers capable of moving all living and inanimate things through the sound of his lyre and voice. Over time, the Orphic theme has come to indicate the power of music to unsettle, subvert, and ultimately bring down oppressive realities in order to liberate the soul and expand human life without limits. The liberating effect of music has been a particularly important theme in twentieth-century African American literature. The nine original essays in Black Orpheus examines the Orphic theme in the fiction of such African American writers as Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, James Baldwin, Nathaniel Mackey, Sherley Anne Williams, Ann Petry, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, and Toni Morrison. The authors discussed in this volume depict music as a mystical, shamanistic, and spiritual power that can miraculously transform the realities of the soul and of the world. Here, the musician uses his or her music as a weapon to shield and protect his or her spirituality. Written by scholars of English, music, women's studies, American studies, cultural theory, and black and Africana studies, the essays in this interdisciplinary collection ultimately explore the thematic, linguistic structural presence of music in twentieth-century African American fiction.

The Upanishads are a collection of texts that contain some of the central philosophical concepts of Hinduism, some of which are shared with Buddhism and Jainism. The Upanishads are considered by Hindus to contain utterances concerning the nature of ultimate reality and describing the character of and path to human salvation. Paramananda was a swami and one of the early Indian teachers who went to the United States to spread the Vedanta philosophy and religion there. He was a mystic, a poet and an innovator in spiritual community living.