Introduction

'You are that.' In the Chandogya Upanishad the sage Uddalaka has his son put a lump of salt in water and take it out the next day; the boy cannot find the salt, but every drop he tastes is salty. That subtle essence, the father says, is the self of the whole world; that is the real; that is the Self, and you are that. The heart of the Upanishads is the teaching that the individual self, atman, and the ground of the universe, brahman, are one. This volume translates the most important: the brief and luminous Isha; the Katha, in which the boy Nachiketas questions Death himself about what lies beyond; the Mundaka, the Chandogya, and passages of the Brihadaranyaka. Schopenhauer said of them, 'They have been the consolation of my life, and will be the consolation of my death.'