 Castes Dictionary:
Spiritual Theosophical
Dictionary on
Upanishad
Upanishad (Sanskrit). Translated as "esoteric doctrine ", or interpretation of the Vedas by the Vedanta methods. The third division of the Vedas appended to the Brahmanas and regarded as a portion of Sruti or "revealed" word. They are, however, as records, far older than the Brahmanas the exception of the two, still extant, attached to the Rig -Veda of the Aitareyins. The term Upanishad is explained by the Hindu pundits as "that which destroys ignorance, and thus produces liberation" of the spirit, through the knowledge of the supreme though hidden truth; the same, therefore, as that which was hinted at by Jesus, when he is made to say, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free " (John viii. 32). It is from these treatises of the Upanishads - themselves the echo of the primeval Wisdom-Religion?that the Vedanta system of philosophy has been developed. (See "Vedanta".) Yet old as the Upanishads may be, the Orientalists will not assign to the oldest of them more than an antiquity of 600 years B.C. The accepted number of these treatises is 150, though now no more than about twenty are left unadulterated. They treat of very abstruse, metaphysical questions, such as the origin of the Universe; the nature and the essence of the Unmanifested Deity and the manifested gods the connection, primal and ultimate, of spirit and matter ; the universality of mind and the nature of the human Soul and Ego. The Upanishads must be far more ancient than the days of Buddhism, as they show no preference for, nor do they uphold, the superiority of the Brahmans as a caste. On the contrary, it is the (now) second caste, the Kshatriya, or warrior class, who are exalted in the oldest of them. As stated by Professor Cowell in Elphinstone’s History of India - - "they breathe a freedom of spirit unknown to any earlier work except the Rig Veda. . . The great teachers of the higher knowledge and Brahmans are continually represented as going to Kshatriya Kings to become their pupils." The " Kshatriya Kings" were in the olden times, like the King Hierophants of Egypt, the receptacles of the highest divine knowledge and wisdom, the Elect and the incarnations of the primordial divine Instructors - the Dhyani Buddhas or Kumaras. There was a time, eons before the Brahmans became a caste, or even the Upanishads were written, when there was on earth but one "lip ", one religion and one science, namely, the speech of the gods, the Wisdom-Religion and Truth. This was before the fair fields of the latter, overrun by nations of many languages, became overgrown with the weeds of intentional deception, and national creeds invented by ambition, cruelty and selfishness, broke the one sacred Truth into thousands of fragments.
(See also: Upanishad , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul,
Spiritual Dictionary,)
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