Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Read the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad at: http://www.bharatadesam.com/spiritual/upanishads/brihadaranyaka_upanishad.php

I must thank one of my friends, who in a debate of men vs women raised the point about women's contribution in writing Vedas. A little search in net made her factually wrong as she mentioned Maitreyi as one of the architect or RigVeda whereas Maitreyi had her contribution in knowing Brihadranyaka Upanishad from her husband Yajnavalkya.

Now this upanishad itself is one of the most elaborate one. It tries to discover Brahman- The God and finally arrives at Neti, Neti- neither this nor this. Most part of it is full of description of worldly bodies and narrating abode of gods in Human Body itself. Some descriptions are similar(but not exactly same) to the old testament type where the Atman creates the world and other Gods. There are description of Shashtrartha between Yajnavalkya and other brahmins where they try to give exaggerated examples, defining space in terms of earth, sky and heaven etc. Now in the 20th century world of Big-bang and Quantum Mechanics the above things may seem ridiculous, but to be fair with authors of Upanishads there must have been no other way to make fellow human beings understand these concepts in those days. Probably 1000 years later even our knowledge about the world would be seemingly as archaic as we look down the knowledge of our ancestors.

However the philosophies and the eternal questions about ultimate truth have never gone old.

Subchapter 14 in Chapter 3 is about Gayatri mantra. This was something I was looking for quite some time. Next is caste distribution as first there were only Brahmins, then the importance of Kshatriya was perceived, then Vaisya were created and the then Sudras as mother earth were created to nourish all. Also there is line for eating bull's meat for intelligent son. There are several religious rites for many occasions, even the prayer of the dying persons etc.

One funny thing is about how to perform sex in chapter 4. Near porno description of gyration and stroking woman to how to cajole her first with gifts and then with stick. Also how to get white, brown, black, male, female, intelligent or no child thru mantra at the time of sex or even how to get the paramour of your wife impotent thru another ritual. The lady is given certain importance as she needs to be worshipped and then put down below.

Let me have a wife and I experiment all these.