Dear Steve,
Vidya is method to know things as they really are. Brahma vidya is the method to know anything or everything as Brahman - The only Truth or Existence. When you know, any object or all objects known through senses and mind is an appearance of Brahman and continue to know in the same way always and all the time then you are Brahma -vidyarthi or Brahmacaari (student for Brahma vidya). Let me give you an example of how we know things and what the object really is. When you come to know a beautiful female body you know it as a female body and recognize the same as beautiful and so on. Let us see what is the content of so called female body. when you go to take food at your house or at restaurant, you are served with the food along with others including your own mother or any female member of your family or other family. When food is consumed and get digested food appears to be different in different bodies, i.e., the food that your body consumed appears as your body and the same consumed by a female body appears to be female body. As a matter of fact the consumed food is same for your body and another female body and body is nothing but food, yet, the same appears as male body in your body and female body in other female body. Now in the name of Brahma vidya what you need to do is that since you know that all bodies are nothing but food and while bodies appear to the senses as male and female, you need to know the bodies as only food in all circumstance, all times and never to know the bodies as male and female, etc., though you see them as bodies through senses, then you are a practitioner of Brahma vidya.
What if I see bodies as only males and females?
1. your are not able to recognize the immediate substratum of the bodies called food.
2. This leads to difference (bheda)
3. When you recognize bodies as bodies then you tend to have imaginary distractions (bhava vikara) such as thinking about the body and its parts as beautiful or ugly etc. then you tend to like or dislike the body depends on your determination that the particular body is beautiful or ugly respectively. Such raga (likes) and dvesha (dislikes) drive you to work towards achieving or against that resulting in suffering.
4. It is suffering that all living being do not wish to have.
What if you see the body through sense and recognize it as only food?
You will not have difference among the bodies. You will be stabilized without suffering.
It is just a simple example. You can further inquire into the next stage of knowing the immediate substratum of the given object for instance what is that appears as food? etc., then your difference gradually ceases though the difference still appears to the senses.
As you have named certain Brahma vidyas in Upanisads you need to : 1. get qualified to get into Brahma vidya by Trikarana suddhi which means while you live in the society you need to maintain equanimity of your speech, thought and action by body, or by practice of four fold qualifications mentioned by Sankaracharya, or by the practice of Patanjali Yoga as mentioned in the text Yoga Sutras, etc. 2. Find a teacher who can elaborate the Brahma vidya. Any one practice of Brahma vidya is enough for all the Brahma vidyas in the Upanisads lead to the realization of yourself as Brahman, 3. Have strong determination to be absolute bliss.
Brahma vidya practice is neither social, spacial, spychological nor even temporal though all these get you qualified for Brahma vidya, it is just knowing the absolute substratum of all objects which is non difference of all while your senses let you know the difference. In other wards it the knowledge of non difference between the world and Brahman that is yourself.
If you have asked this clarification for fun or just to know and not for practice so be it. Else, if it is for the purpose of practice then understand, adjust and sacrifice your previous ways of seeing and thinking and modify the same as Brahma vidya directs. If you have further doubts you may contact me on my e-mail. Yet I am not promising you immediate reply for my own reasons.
Regards
mprao
