Upanishads and Their Philosophy - Links

The Upanishads constitute the end part of the Vedas. So they are also typically referred as Vedanta or the end of the Vedas. The aim of the Vedas is liberation. The ideas is that when you spend your entire life in the study of the Vedas and practice of the rituals, you will slowly gain transcendental knowledge of your Self and the Universal Self. Your knowledge and consciousness expands and you will come to know the truth about yourself and your existence.

When you finally arrive at the truth contained in the Upanishads through your personal experience, there is nothing else to learn. You become free for ever and shine in your own light. The Upanishads are found as the concluding parts of the four Vedas and were passed on to several sages at various times in the history of ancient India. There is also no certainty as to the actual number of the available Upanishads. Some of the Upanishads were composed as late as the medieval period, while some were composed probably a thousand or more years before the Buddha.

The Upanishads contain loosely held truths about various things just as our minds act in a rambling way during meditative contemplation, touching upon various subjects with no particular method. Some of the verses are couched in symbolic language and to understand them and their spiritual significance we need the guidance of an adept guru. The purpose of the Upanishads is to ennoble us and elevate us to a higher level of thinking and consciousness.

Any one who reads them with sincerity and concentration would admit that they do succeed in fulfilling these objectives. They deal with various aspects of Brahman, the universal soul, the nature of reality, atman or the individual soul, its bondage and liberation, how the body, the mind and the sense came into existence during creation and how they perpetuate the illusion of duality in our consciousness and limit our knowledge and wisdom. The following are some of the links we have gathered from the internet on the significance and philosophy of the Upanishads. We hope you will find them useful.

Jayaram V