Pages: 747 Preface The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, or the great forest of knowledge, as the significance of this title would suggest, is a veritable mine of wisdom, with its six chapters touching upon the internal meaning of almost every phase of human life. The word "Upanishad" is supposed to connote a secret instruction or a hidden doctrine, secret and hidden in the sense that it purports to reveal the invisible background or reality behind the visible forms of temporal existence. It is evident that things are not what they seem. And the Upanishad is a record of the unfolding of the mystery that lies behind phenomena. The subject of the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad rises into a crescendo of importance, heightening its encompassing gamut of theme after theme, right from the very commencement until the conclusion of the Fourth Section of the First Chapter, rising in its pitch at this stage somewhat like the Ultimate Revelation at the level of the Eleventh chapter of the Bhagavadgita, which blossoms gradually through its earlier chapters. Literally as a wide-ranging forest, one can discover in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad new visions through its different sections or cantos, and perhaps we can find it anything anywhere. However, since the student might well feel more at home through teachings presented in the form of a well-tended garden rather than a thick jungle of information, the arrangement of the lectures, which form the substance of this book, is patterned to follow a logical ascent o subjects, keeping aside matters of a secondary character or importance to a later consideration as a sort of a sequel, so that the thread of the narration of similar themes is maintained without breaking the same with an interruption by some other subject which is not very relevant to the contemplation hand. Thus, these lectures follow a procedure as detailed below: There is a cont