महोपनिषद्

Summary

The Maha Upanishad is one of the longer texts of the Samaveda canon and is divided into six chapters that move from cosmogony to the inner discipline of the liberated-in-life sage. It opens with the declaration that in the beginning Narayana alone existed, from whom emerged Brahma and through Brahma the entire ordered universe, and it then turns to the question of how the embodied seeker is to recover the original unity behind that apparent multiplicity. Long passages in the later chapters describe the seven stages of wisdom culminating in turiyaga, the state of one who lives and acts in the world while inwardly absorbed in Brahman, and the text is one of the principal scriptural sources for the classical doctrine of jivanmukti. It draws frequent parallels with the Yoga Vasishtha, sharing several illustrative stories and verses, and it praises the sage who has crossed the ocean of becoming as one whose every breath has become a hymn to the supreme. The Maha Upanishad is most widely known in the modern world for a single verse in its sixth chapter declaring that for those of noble conduct the whole earth is one family, a sentence inscribed in the entrance hall of the Parliament of India and recited at countless interfaith gatherings as a Vedic charter of universal kinship. Together its cosmology, its psychology of the seven stages, and its ethical climax give the text a unique combination of metaphysical depth and visible social fruit.

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