Upanishads have revelations; The term revelation is not used much in English language articles and texts on Hindu scripture like Upanishads; Search on: Chandogya Upanishad revelation

Last updated on 14th Feb. 2020

In the context of spirituality and religion, what is the meaning of the English word, revelation?

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/revelation gives the meaning as: "The divine or supernatural disclosure to humans of something relating to human existence or the world." [Note that lexico.com is powered by Oxford free English dictionary, https://www.lexico.com/about.]

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/revelation states: "A divine revelation is a sign or explanation from God about his nature or purpose."

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation: "In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities."

The wiki page further states:

Some religions have religious texts which they view as divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired. For instance, Orthodox Jews, Christians and Muslims believe that the Torah was received from Yahweh on biblical Mount Sinai.[1][2] Most Christians believe that both the Old Testament and the New Testament were inspired by God. Muslims believe the Quran was revealed by God to Muhammad word by word through the angel Gabriel (Jibril).[3][4] In Hinduism, some Vedas are considered apauruṣeya, "not human compositions", and are supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are called śruti, "what is heard".

[Wiki References:]
1. Beale G.K., The Book of Revelation, NIGTC, Grand Rapids – Cambridge 1999. = ISBN 0-8028-2174-X
2. Esposito, John L. What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 7–8.
3. Lambert, Gray (2013). The Leaders Are Coming!. WestBow Press. p. 287. ISBN 9781449760137.
4. Roy H. Williams; Michael R. Drew (2012). Pendulum: How Past Generations Shape Our Present and Predict Our Future. Vanguard Press. p. 143. ISBN 9781593157067.
--- end wiki page extract ---

The term śruti is commonly used in context of Upanishads, which are part of the Vedas. But I think the word śruti when used in an English article or text on Upanishads may not communicate well enough to readers who are not exposed much to Sanskrit or other Indian languages using Sanskrit words, that these are revelations from the divine. The Mahavakyas in the Upanishads like Tat Tvam Asi (You are That) in Chandogya Upanishad are divine revelations. They are not just logical expressions of a learned sage's wisdom. They have been revealed to the sage by the divine after which the sage shares that with others.

I have read many Christian spiritual articles which use the term revelation, and communicate very effectively to the reader about content referred to in the article as revelations (e.g. verses from New Testament), being God's words - divine power's words - revealed to humanity. That led to me using the word revelation or the term 'divine revelation' in articles I wrote about Upanishads e.g. Chandogya Upanishad.

Recently I was unpleasantly surprised to see that Internet search engines gave one of my spiritual posts - Divine revelation gems from Chandogya Upanishad: Chapter 6 (Dialogue between Uddalaka and Svetaketu), https://iami1.wordpress.com/2018/04/08/divine-revelation-gems-from-chandogya-upanishad-chapter-6-dialogue-between-uddalaka-and-svetaketu/ - as a top result for the term:
Chandogya Upanishad revelation

Google - 2nd result, Bing - 1st result and DuckDuckgo - 1st result
See pics below.
[To open pic in larger resolution, right-click on pic followed by open link (NOT image) in new tab/window. In new tab/window you may have to click on pic to zoom in.]

Results on making the term:
Chandogya Upanishad revelations

Google - 4th result, Bing - 2nd result and DuckDuckgo - 1st result
See pics below.

These are inappropriately high result ranks as there is a lot of literature on Chandogya Upanishad in English written by many spiritual leaders, available on the Internet. Further my post is only on some verses including the vital Tat Tvam Asi verses in Chapter 6 of Chandogya Upanishad.

The search engines cannot be faulted though as they seem to have gone by the revelation or revelations word I have in my search query. I think it is just that the great literature on Chandogya Upanishad in English available on the Internet may have used the word sruti instead of revelation.

If the search term is changed to just:
Chandogya Upanishad
then the search engine results are more appropriate.

Google and Bing do not list any of my posts related to some verses in Chapter 6 of Chandogya Upanishad in the first forty results I checked. That is good and appropriate. DuckDuckGo lists one of my posts as the 35th result.

[14th Feb. 2020 Update: I should mention that adding chapter 6 to the term to make it:

Chandogya Upanishad chapter 6

gives one of my related posts in top-ten results as captured in this recent post of mine: Chandogya Upanishad – Chapter 6 (Dialogue between Uddalaka and Svetaketu) – Some Shlokas pdf document has been downloaded 526 times in past 6 months,  https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2020/02/chandogya-upanishad-chapter-6-dialogue.html, 10th Feb. 2020. end-update.]

The result ranks for my above mentioned post for search term:
Chandogya Upanishad Tat Tvam Asi
are as follows:

Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo do not list any of my posts in the first forty results. That is good and appropriate.

Including the name of Sathya Sai changes the results and brings my posts back into play. That's OK and appropriate. The result ranks for post(s) for search term:
Chandogya Upanishad Tat Tvam Asi Sathya Sai Baba
are as follows:

Google - 2nd result is my 'Some Shlokas from Chandogya Upanishad VI chapter including Tat tvam asi (You are That) Mahavakya, and comments on it', http://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2015/03/some-shlokas-from-chandogya-upanishad.html post
Bing - 1st result is my above-mentioned post
DuckDuckGo - 3rd result is my 'Divine revelation gems from Chandogya Upanishad: Chapter 6 (Dialogue between Uddalaka and Svetaketu)', https://iami1.wordpress.com/2018/04/08/divine-revelation-gems-from-chandogya-upanishad-chapter-6-dialogue-between-uddalaka-and-svetaketu/ post
See pics below.

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In response to a comment on my Facebook post, https://www.facebook.com/ravi.s.iyer.7/posts/2753470964869463, associated with this post, I wrote (slightly edited):
Noted your view --name-snipped--. Thanks. I would say that in terms of Bhakti/devotion and action dedicated to God, there is a lot of commonality between Christian practice and Hindu practice (even if there may be some underlying theological differences).

But the Vedanta part that Hinduism has, does not seem to have a corresponding side in key Christian scripture (esp. New Testament) from the little that I know of it. I don't know whether Christian theological doctrines that are built based on the New Testament, have something that is corresponding to Vedanta in Hinduism. Perhaps there are some mystical Christianity (gnostic Christianity) schools whose doctrines may have some correspondence.
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[I thank lexico.com, collinsdictionary.com and Wikipedia and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extract(s) (very small extracts from lexico.com and collinsdictionary.com) from their website on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]