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Chapter I
  1. The Universe as a Sacrificial Horse
  2. The Creation of the Universe
  3. The Superiority of the Vital Force Among All Functions
  4. Creation from the Universal Self
  5. Prajapati's Production of the World as Food for Himself
Chapter II
  1. The Conversation of Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi on the Absolute Self
  2. Madhu-Vidya: The Honey Doctrine
  3. The Line of Teachers and Pupils
Chapter III
  1. Sacrificial Worship and its Rewards
  2. The Man in Bondage and His Future at Death
  3. The Resort of the Performers of the Horse Sacrifice
  4. The Unknowability of Brahman
  5. Renunciation, the Way to Know Brahman
  6. Brahman, the Universal Ground
  7. The Nature of the Inner Controller
  8. The Unqualified Brahman
  9. Many Gods and One Brahman
    Eight Different Persons and their Corresponding Deities
    Five Directions in Space, Their Deities and Supports
    The Self
    Man Compared to a Tree
Chapter IV
  1. Inadequate Definitions of Brahman
  2. Concerning the Soul
  3. The Light of Man is the Self
    The Different States of the Self
    The Self in Dream and Deep Sleep
    The Self at Death
  4. The Soul of the Unrealised after Death
  5. The Supreme Self and the Supreme Love
Chapter V
  1. Brahman, the Inexhaustible
  2. The Three Principal Virtues
  3. Brahman as the Heart
  4. Brahman as the True or the Real
  5. The Real Explained
  6. The Divine Person
  7. Brahman as Lightning
  8. The Veda Symbolised as a Cow
  9. The Universal Fire
  10. The Course after Death
  11. The Supreme Austerities
  12. The Via Media of Attitude
  13. Meditation on the Life-Breath
  14. The Sacred Gayatri Prayer
  15. Prayer to the Sun by a Dying Person
Chapter I (Continued)
  1. (Cont) The Threefold Creation
    The Self Identified with the Sixteenfold Prajapati, the Time Spirit
    The Three Worlds and the Means of Winning Them
    A Father's Benediction and Transmission of Charge
    The Unfailing Vital Force
  2. The Threefold Character of the Universe
Chapter II (Continued)
  1. A Progressive Definition of Brahman
  2. The Vital Force Embodied in a Person
  3. The Two Forms of Reality
Recapitulation
  1. The Absolute and the Universe
  2. The Supreme Goal of Life
  3. Divine Immanence and the Correlativity of all Things
  4. The Inner Reality
  5. The Principles of Meditation
  6. The Spiritual and the Temporal

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

by Swami Krishnananda

CHAPTER II

Sixth Brahmana:The Line of Teachers and Pupils

Here, the Upaniṣhad closes the preceding subject, and then gives a long list of Masters. It is a tradition in the Upaniṣhadic parlance especially, to conclude a secret teaching with enunciation of the list of the Masters through whose grace we have received this wisdom today. Otherwise, how would we know it? It has come through them. I need not repeat the list as it is a very very long list of great men - Pautimasya and others-all those great people who ultimately received knowledge from God Himself in intuition. Parameṣṭhinaḥ, parameṣṭhī brahmaṇaḥ, brahma svayambhu, brahmaṇe: Everyone received knowledge from someone else. God is the only one who does not receive knowledge from someone else. Until we reach that state of Self, complete knowledge, we are in a state of movement, in a process of aspiration.

Here ends the First Section of Two Chapters in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣhad, called the Madhu Kanda.