Lights on the Upanishads with Sri Aurobindo Darshana

Back of the Book:

Lights on the Upanishads
It has become a practice to see the contents of the Upanishads purely from and intellectual viewpoint. According to the seers of the Upanishads, the truths in these books should be realized by every individual.

The process of realisation is termed as Sadhana. The Upanishads are manuals of Sadhana. The hints on Sadhana are called as vidyas. 'Lights on the Upanishads' contains a detailed discussion of the six vidyas.

Within the purview of the Six vidyas discussed here, Sri T. V. Kapali Sastry has hinted at several modes of consolidation of Sadhana. It will facilitate to Sadhaka to evolve himself to the stature whose range spreads from the mere materiality to the super human / super divine levels of the super consciousness.

Note to Readers

Dear Reader
We are pleased to present this new edition of, 'Lights on the Upanishads', by Sri T.V. Kapali Sastry. It has been out of print for quite some time; it is now available in print only as a part of the volume 1 of the Collected Works. The uniqueness of this book is that it deals with the practice of the spiritual truths.

Most of the books on Upanishads in print in English describe its contents purely from an intellectual viewpoint. However according to the seers of the Upanishads, the truths in these books should be realized by every individual. i.e., it is not enough to understand the key terms like atman or prana intellectually; these truths should be realized by a person. For instance, the Chhandogya Upanishad declares in (5.2.3) that, "if a realized person were to tell this (the truth of prana vidya) to a dried-up stump, sure, branches would shoot forth and leaves spring from it".

The process of realisation is termed as sadhana. The Upanishads do not give the details of Sadhana, they only mention a few hints. These hints are called as vidyas.

We may mention that the only help the sadhaka gets in learning about these vidyas is from the commentaries in Samskrt by the great teachers in Vedanta such as Sri Shankara, Sri Madhva, Sri Ranga Ramanuja. Sri Ramakrishna Math has published the English translation of the commentaries of Sri Shankara with word-to-word meaning of the Samskrt words.

This book gives a detailed discussion of the six vidyas, four from the Chhandogya Upanishad. We know of no other book which explains certain aspects of the ancient and voluminous Upanishad, Chhandogya, in such a great detail.

The author never aimed this book at the beginners. Some knowledge of the Sanskrit and of the Upanishadic thought of the great ancient teachers like Sri Shankara was regarded almost as prerequisites.

Obviously many readers without these prerequisites have been benefited by this book. Such readers have suggested that the book could be made more accessible to beginners, by giving some expository material, and by rearrangement of the sections, but retaining Sri Kapali Sastry's own words. This new edition is an attempt in this direction.

First we have reproduced the introduction by Professor K. B. Ramakrishna Rao to both the Upanishads and the contributions of Sri T.V. Kapali Sastry. It is the text of the Sri Kapali Sastry Memorial Lecture delivered by Professor Rao in 1985 in Pondicherry. These Lectures were delivered at the request of Sri Madhav Pandit, the great disciple of Sri Kapali Sastry. His lucid introduction is a great help to the reader. It may be noted that both Sri T.V.K. and Professor Rao are not with us today.

Next we have transferred all the quotations in Samskrt from the main body of the text to footnotes. The reader can get a good understanding of the book without having the knowledge of Samskrt or of Devanagari script.

Every chapter is divided into subsections with subtitles (assigned by us). Also we have made minor rearrangements in the text, transferring more specialized topics to appendices at the end of the chapters.

The chapter 6 of the original book has really two separate parts. The first part deals with the connection between Veda and Vedanta (or Upanishads). The second part deals with the Madhu Vidya proper.

The first part is clearly beyond the scope of a beginner, as the author of the note who read this book several decades ago can testify. Hence the chapter 6 in the old edition has been divided into two chapters, chapter 6 and 7. The chapter 7 is given the title of Madhu Vidya. Chapter 6 is entitled, 'Vedic Wisdom in the Vedanta'. We have also transferred to (the new) chapter 6 similar discussions from other chapters also.

Thus a beginner seriously interested in the six vidyas in the chapter1 through 5 and chapter 7 can get a good insight along with the introduction in Part A. To understand chapter 6, the introduction in Part A is also of great help.

There have been requests for the reference to a single book which is an introduction to Sri Aurobindo's thought referred in this book. In the part C of this book, we present 'Sri Aurobindo Darshana,' a short essay written by Sri Aurobindo in Samskrt. It was written sometime during (1910-14) in Pondicherry. The text was printed in the journal, 'Sri Aurobindo: Archives and Research', December 78. The journal has also an English translation due to Sri Jagannath Vedalankara.

We present the text in Devanagari and Roman script and its translation, phrase by phrase. It is exactly like and Upanishad having short pithy sentences and analogies reminiscent of the existing major Upanishads mentioned in this book.

Sri Aurobindo states that the foreign translators of the Upanishads and their Indian followers, 'seek to bring out the intellectual sense without feeling the life of thought vision and the ecstasy of spiritual experience'. He states elsewhere that his method is, 'to enter passively into the thoughts of the old Rishis, allow their words to sink into our souls, mould them and create their own reverberations in a sympathetic and responsive material - submissiveness, in short, to the Shruti." According to Sri Aurobindo, "the Chhandogya Upanishad is the summary history of one of the greatest and most interesting ages of human thought". But Sri Aurobindo never wrote in detail on the two ancient and voluminous Upanishads, Chhandogya and Brhadaranyaka.

We are happy to present the work of Sri T.V. Kapali Sastry in the light of the thought of Sri Aurobindo.

All the footnotes in a chapter are consecutively numbered. The same footnote number reference may be found in several places. If the reference to a footnote indicated by a number indicated in the text is not at the bottom of the relevant page, it means that it has occurred earlier in the chapter.

R. L. Kashyap
for Publisher

September, 2004

Table of Contents

	Note to Readers	v
	List of Abbreviations	ix
A.	Introduction (by K.B. Ramakrishna Rao)	1
1.	The Upanishads - An Integral Part of the Vedic Wisdom	1
2.	The Connection Between Veda and Upanishads	6
3.	The Vidyas: Their Esoteric Nature and Symbolism	8
4.	Select Vidyas Under Study	11
5.	From Sadhana to Siddhi	27
B.	Lights on the Upanishads (T.V. Kapali Sastry)	32
1.	Bhuma Vidya: (Chh. U. 7.26.2)	32
2.	Prana Vidya: (Chh. U. 5.2.3)	47
3.	Shandilya Vidya: (Chh. U. 3.14)	66
4.	Vaishvanara Vidya: (Chh. U. 5.11-18)	85
5.	Nachiketa Vidya: (Katha U. 6.4)	104
6.	Vedic Wisdom in the Vedanta	130
7.	Madhu Vidya - Doctrine of Mystic Honey: (Br. U. 2.5)	140
8.	Conclusions	161
C.	Sri Aurobindo Darshana	174
	(Samskrt text, transliteration and translation)
D.	References	192
	Index	193