The Bhagavad-gita is the main source-book on yoga and a concise summary of India's Vedic wisdom. Yet remarkably, the setting for this classic of spiritual literature is an ancient Indian battlefield. At the last moment, the great warrior Arjuna begins to wonder about the real meaning of his life. In the Bhagavadgita, Lord Krsna brings His disciple from perplexity to spiritual enlightenment. Bhagavad-gita As It Is is the largest-selling, most widely used edition of the Gita in the world.
NEW REVISED & EXPANDED EDITION The Secret Teachings of the Vedas provides one of the best reviews of ancient Eastern philosophy and summarizes some of the most elevated and important of all spiritual knowledge. This timeless and enlightening information is explained in a clear and concise way and is essential for all who want to increase their spiritual understanding and awareness. This is a book that can give you a new perspective of who you are and where you fit into the scheme of things. This book supplies the straightforward answers to questions that are not resolved in other religions or philosophies, and condenses information from a wide variety of sources that would take a person years to assemble. It also uses many quotations from numerous Vedic texts that will show you the lofty insight and wisdom they have held for thousands of years.
How did the universe come into being? What is the nature of God? Of the human spirit? All who seek understanding will find this book an illuminating presentation of India's oldest and most profound religious and philosophical tradition. The Wisdom of the Vedas was first published in 1931 by Kailas Press under the title India's Outlook on Life. The Theosophical Publishing House published a second edition in 1973, and again in 1980 under the Quest imprint. The present 1992 edition was edited to reflect the modern use of inclusive language, and includes an introduction by Vedic scholar David Frawley. Mr. Frawley explains to the Western reader, "The Vedas are the original scripture or source teaching of the Hindu tradition, from which its many branches of Vedanta, Yoga, and Tantra have emerged through time, and to which they all look back with reverence." The Vedas are also "..the background relative to which the Buddhist religion evolved, and Buddhism also preserves many Vedic terms and practices." The study then, of the Vedas is important to understanding many different Eastern teachings. The author is from India, and has an unusual ability to frame the subtleties of Eastern thought for the Western world.
"The Secret of The Veda" by Sri Aurobindo. This book is collection of Sri Aurobindo’s various writings on the Veda and his translations of some of the hymns, originally published in the monthly review 'Arya' between August 1914 and 1920. This book contains few scripts in Sanskrit language. If you are unable to read Sanskrit script don't worry all scripts are translated in English and with proper Sanskrit pronunciation in Roman character.
The Path of the Rishi is one of the first and most detailed books published in the West on the ancient Vedic origins of Yoga, including all aspects of its philosophy and practice. The book reveals secrets of the Vedic Yoga from the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, Ganapati Muni, Brahmarshi Daivarat, and Swami Veda Bharati as well as Vamadevas own insights. It challenges popular ideas of the meaning of Yoga and brings Yoga back to the vision of the ancient Himalayan Rights.
A fascinating look at India’s remarkable impact on Western culture, this eye-opening popular history shows how the ancient philosophy of Vedanta and the mind-body methods of Yoga have profoundly affected the worldview of millions of Americans and radically altered the religious landscape. What exploded in the 1960s, following the Beatles trip to India for an extended stay with their new guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, actually began more than two hundred years earlier, when the United States started importing knowledge--as well as tangy spices and colorful fabrics--from Asia. The first translations of Hindu texts found their way into the libraries of John Adams and Ralph Waldo Emerson. From there the ideas spread to Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and succeeding generations of receptive Americans, who absorbed India’s “science of consciousness” and wove it into the fabric of their lives. Charismatic teachers like Swami Vivekananda and Paramahansa Yogananda came west in waves, prompting leading intellectuals, artists, and scientists such as Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Allen Ginsberg, J. D. Salinger, John Coltrane, Dean Ornish, and Richard Alpert, aka Ram Dass, to adapt and disseminate what they learned from them. The impact has been enormous, enlarging our current understanding of the mind and body and dramatically changing how we view ourselves and our place in the cosmos. Goldberg paints a compelling picture of this remarkable East-to-West transmission, showing how it accelerated through the decades and eventually moved from the counterculture into our laboratories, libraries, and living rooms. Now physicians and therapists routinely recommend meditation, words like karma and mantra are part of our everyday vocabulary, and Yoga studios are as ubiquitous as Starbuckses. The insights of India’s sages permeate so much of what we think, believe, and do that they have redefined the meaning of life for millions of Americans—and continue to do so every day. Rich in detail and expansive in scope, American Veda shows how we have come to accept and live by the central teaching of Vedic wisdom: “Truth is one, the wise call it by many names.”
A leading astronomer proves that India had a thriving civilization capable of sophisticated astronomy long before Greece, Egypt, or any other world culture. • Provides conclusive evidence that the Rig Veda is 12,000 years old. • Establishes actual dates and places for many of the events in the Hindu epics. For more than a century scholars have debated the antiquity of the Vedas and their related literature, the Brahmanas and Puranas. Relying upon a host of assumptions from linguistic theory, anthropology, and archaeology, they have agreed upon 1500 b.c. as the earliest possible date for the Rig Veda, itself the oldest extant example of Indo-European literature. But in this groundbreaking book, astronomer B. G. Sidharth proves conclusively that the earliest portions of the Rig Veda can be dated as far back as 10,000 b.c. By deciphering the astronomical events and alignments contained in mythical and symbolic form in these ancient texts, Sidharth calls into question many if not all of the assumptions governing Indo-European prehistory. He explores such subjects as the astronomical significance of many Hindu deities and myths, the system of lunar asterisms used to mark time, the identity of the Asvins, and the sophisticated calendar of the ancients that harmonized solar and lunar cycles. Sidharth provides incontrovertible evidence that such "advanced" astronomical concepts as precession, heliocentrism, and the eclipse cycle are encoded in these ancient texts, passages of which make perfect sense only if these astronomical keys are known. Based on internal evidence in the Mahabharata and Ramayana, he also becomes the first to establish likely dates--and even places--for the events described in these famous epics. The Celestial Key to the Vedas is sure to astonish anyone concerned with astronomy, India, or the roots of civilization.
Three thousand years ago, deep inside the forests of India, a great 'thought revolution' was brewing. In those forest labs, the brightest thinker–philosophers contemplated the universe, reflected on ancient texts called the Vedas and came up with startling insights into questions we still don't have final answers to, like: • What is the universe made of? • How do I know I'm looking at a tree when I see one? • Who am I? And where did they put those explosive findings? In a sprawling body of goosebumpy and fascinating oral literature called the Upanishads! Intimidated? Don't be! For this joyful, fun guide to some of India's longest-lasting secular wisdoms, reinterpreted for first-time explorers by Roopa Pai, is guaranteed to keep you turning the pages.
