Upanishad Vahini|Essence of Vedic Knowledge

Upanishad Vahini
(Essence of Vedic Knowledge)

Upanishad Vahini is a synoptic review of the ten principal Upanishads with a prologue and an epilogue on the rare text called the ‘Brahmanubhava Upanishad’. These Upanishads are esoteric and highly cryptic, but they elucidate the highest truths discernable to the intellect of Man.

Vedic literature is classified as ritualistic, consecrational and metaphysical (karma, upasana, jnana), and the Upanishads are grouped under the third category. But Baba says that each principal Upanishad deals with all the three and is, therefore, instructive for all types of spiritual aspirants. Besides special rites described in most of them, the adoration of preceptors or deities is also recommended.

Baba says, The Upanishads enshrine the whisperings of God to Man. About the ten on which Adi Sankara and other scholar saints have written detailed expositions, Baba says, Humanity stands to gain or fall by these ten. They are the synthesis of human thought, experience and aspiration at the highest. They confirm the possibility of human perfectibility, they declare and demonstrate that man can secure the awareness of God as his reality, if only he casts off the veil of ignorance that he now delights to wear.

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Vidya Vahini|Flow of Spiritual Education

Vidya Vahini
(Flow of Spiritual Education)

Baba has clarified that the word ‘Vidya’ used for this Vahini (Stream of Thought), means (Ya) that which (Vid) “illumines.” It is this sense that is highlighted in expressions like Atma Vidya, Brahma Vidya, etc., or even the name Vidyagiri given to the college campus of Prasanthi Nilayam which comprises the Institute of Higher Learning.

Baba makes us aware of the comparatively less beneficial lower learning which deals with theories, inferences, concepts, conjectures and constructions. The Higher Learning hastens and expands the universal urge to know and become Truth, Goodness and Beauty, Sathyam Sivam Sundaram. Baba has come as Man among men on a self-imposed mission to correct the wrongs inflicted on mankind through the fanatically blind pursuit of lower learning. The human race has to voyage on an even keel; it is leaning too alarmingly towards the briny grave; the lower learning is lowering it into the bottomless pit. ‘Vidya’ alone is the remedy.

From His childhood days, Baba has stood forth as an educator, a Guru as the villagers loved to address Him. He warned, without hesitation, elders at Puttaparthi, teachers in the schools, and headmen of castes against cruelty to animals and exploitation of labour, usury and gambling, pedantry and illiteracy, hypocrisy and pomp. Through gulps and jests, parody and satire, songs and plays, the young teenager Teacher ridiculed and reformed the society which honoured or tolerated such evils. Through Bhajans sung in chorus by groups of men and women, He reminded them of the universal human values of Truth, Morality, Peace, Love and Non-violence as early as 1943, when he was barely seventeen. These were the basic acquisitions that ‘Vidya’, the Higher Learning, can confer on votaries.

As Lord Krishna, He said to Arjuna, “Adhyaatma Vidya, Vidyaanaam” meaning, “Among all the types of knowledge, I am Atma Vidya - the search for Atmic Truth.” The world can be saved from suicide only through this knowledge. The search for Truth and Totality, for Unity and Purity is the means; the Awareness of the One is the consummation of the process.

This Message is the sum and substance of every Discourse of His, from the time He first spoke in the early 1950s. This precious book provides us the chance to peruse nineteen essays He wrote in answer to appeals for the elucidation of the principles which must guide us while rehabilitating Education as an effective instrument for establishing peace and freedom in us and on Earth.

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