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From the Katha Upanishad
Death said: "God made sense turn outward, man therefore looks outward, not into himself. Now and again a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself.
- "The ignorant man runs after pleasure, sinks into the entanglements of death; but the wise man, seeking the undying, does not run among things that die.
- "He through whom we see, taste, smell, feel, hear, enjoy, know everything. He is that Self.
- "The wise man by meditating upon the self-dependent, all-pervading Self, understands waking and sleeping and goes beyond sorrow.
- "Knowing that the individual self, eater of the fruit of action, is the universal Self, maker of past and future, he knows he has nothing to fear.
- "He knows that He himself born in the beginning out of meditation, before water was created, enters every heart and lives there among the elements.
- "That boundless Power, source of every power, manifesting itself as life, entering every heart, living there among the elements, that is Self.
- "The Fire, hidden in the fire-stick like a child in the womb, worshipped with offerings, that Fire is Self.
- "He who makes the sun rise and set, to Whom all powers do homage, He that has no master, that is Self.
- "That which is here, is hereafter; hereafter is here. He who thinks otherwise wanders from death to death.
- "Tell the mind that there is but One; he who divides the One, wanders from death to death.
- "When that Person in the heart, no bigger than a thumb, is known as maker of past and future, what more is there to fear? That is Self.
- "That Person, no bigger than a thumb, burning like flame without smoke, maker of past and future, the same today and tomorrow, that is Self.
- "As rain upon a mountain ridge runs down the slope, the man that has seen the shapes of Self runs after them everywhere.
- "The Self of the wise man remains pure; pure water, Nachiketas, poured into pure water."
From The Ten Principal Upanishads, translated by W.B. Yeats and Shree Purohit Swami (New York: Macmillan, 1937).
Copyright © 1937 by Shree Purohit Swami and W.B. Yeats
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