The Upanishads Demystified

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.

Composed in Sanskrit between 900 and 600 BC, the Upanishads are man's oldest works of philosophy. The translations presented here are the oldest and most important of those that exist.

THE UPANISHADS Made Easy to Understand We have tried our best to make study of the Upanishads easy for the BEGINNER LEVEL readers who want to get introduced to the Upanishads. One does not have to leave home and go to Rishikesh or anywhere!! we even provide free e-mail support to help your study: www.gita-society.com/contactus write a Blog or send a review: www.gita-society.com/review. And get any one book of your choice as our gift. HERE IS WHAT YOU GET IN THIS BOOK: Seven illustrations, abstract, explanatory rendering (without Sanskrit verses) of all verses in simple, modern English; copious notes and gloss on difficult verses; simpler important verses are printed in underlined-bold for the first time readers; quotations from the Bhagavad Gita; Chapter and Section headings and references. Glossary, cross reference and references and a basic Meditation technique. Free download Link for all 108 Upanishads with commentaries.

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.

‘Religion is a tool in the hands of the oppressor against the oppressed solely because he frames the commandments and calls them the God’s’, is an apt description of the Hindu social order. The book rips open the raw nerve of Hinduism—its invidious castes, positioned as a ‘God-ordained’ institution, commandeered by its freebooter priestly class while clandestinely establishing its religious, social and political hegemony through interpolation of its pristine and effulgent scriptures. The author boldly analyses this imbroglio through a microscopic analysis of these and more related issues: • How priests controlled the Hindu religious, social, educational and political apparatus? • How the dominant priestly class fractured the society into mutually antagonistic subordinated hierarchical segments, and ruled it by reserving all elite jobs for itself? • How the fiendish priesthood emasculated shudras by depriving them of the ‘shaastra and shastra’ (education and arms) and made them permanent ‘village servant classes’? • How the pretensions of attaining siddhis through 'meditation and penances' established priests as the ‘gods on earth’ for their assertions of ‘purity and effulgence’? • How ‘karma’, ‘reincarnation’ and ‘84-lakhs births’ theories were devised to justify fatalism and hierarchical gradation of varnas? • Can India be rightfully called the ‘vishvaguru’ and the mother of all civilisations? • How Buddhism effeminated Hindus and made them the doormats for the ruthless? • Why Hindus had to abandon their own, to adop foreign institutions of governance? • Why Hinduism should become a universal and proselytising faith and fight demographic challenges posed by Islam and Christianity?

The book is journey through 5000 years of evolution of Hinduism, and is outcome of seven years of study to understand the roots of Hinduism. Tracing the genesis of Hinduism to pre-Indus Valley period, the book explains Hindu, Hinduism and Sanatana Dharma, before it takes one through Hinduism’s oldest scriptures - the four Vedas, the four components of each Veda, and what they contain. How all original translations of Vedic texts were done by Western Sanskrit scholars, and why their works have left scope for doubt about the fidelity of translations. The yajnas (yagya) like Ashvamedha, Rajsooya, Vajpeya, etc., about which we only hear on TV serials and talk shows, have been demystified. The reader will be taken aback reading the sheer size and scale of Soma yajna, described step by step, in great detail. Hinduism’s journey to the Age of Reason, the Upanishads, its encounter with Buddhism, and its transformation into idol worshipping society with many gods and a multitude of stories about its millions of gods is lucidly explained. Puranas, what they contain and what was the reason they were created, has been described and explained next. Hinduism's journey to its modern form - idol worship, the modern puja, detailed description of puja and Sanskaras like Vivaha, their detailed description, the meaning of each action and how they are conducted, the gift to the priest, types of idols, their consecration, all are explained to help a reader understand the why and the how of what we do as a Hindu. The book concludes with a discussion of - Do mantras have power? & Do rituals have meaning?