The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

by Swami Krishnananda

Table of Contents

• Invocatory Prayer and Preface
• Introduction

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

Chapter IV

1. Inadequate Definitions of Brahman
2. Concerning the Soul
3. The Light of Man is the Self

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 1 (Continued)

5. (Continued) The Threefold Creation

6. 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

• Conclusion

Notes