Sacred Text · The Upanishads

The seed of the Nyagrodha tree

Chandogya Upanishad VI.12 · SBE vol. I · F. Max Müller

“'Fetch me from thence a fruit of the Nyagrodha tree.' 'Here is one, Sir.' 'Break it.' 'It is broken, Sir.' 'What do you see there?' 'These seeds, almost infinitesimal.' 'Break one of them.' 'It is broken, Sir.' 'What do you see there?' 'Not anything, Sir.' The father said: 'My son, that subtile essence which you do not perceive there, of that very essence this great Nyagrodha tree exists. Believe it, my son. That which is the subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it.'”
Chandogya Upanishad VI.12 (the Nyagrodha seed) · F. Max Muller, SBE vol. I

Translation: F. Max Müller, The Upanishads, Sacred Books of the East, Part I (vol. I, 1879) and Part II (vol. XV, 1884), public domain (Müller died 1900), via the Internet Archive (items upanishads00mlgoog and upanishads02mlgoog). Reproduced in context; Müller’s round-bracket insertions are his own clarifying additions, and optical-scanning artefacts were corrected against his printed wording. The key passages Chandogya VI.8-16 (Tat tvam asi, ‘that art thou’), the Isha opening, Brihadaranyaka I.4.10 (Aham Brahmasmi, ‘I am Brahman’) and IV.5.15 (neti neti), and Katha I.2.18-20 on the immortal Self were validated against the source before publishing. References follow the standard Upanishad numbering.

Christian comparison

How this connects to Jesus

The father breaks open a seed too small to see and says the great tree lives from that unseen essence, and so, he tells his son, that subtile essence is your very self. It is a beautiful picture of a hidden source of all life. The Gospel also speaks of the unseen source of all things, and gives it a face: in him all things were created, and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:16-17). Where the Upanishad says that hidden essence is your own self, the Gospel says the hidden Source is a Person who loves you, and who came near in Jesus so that you might know him.

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