Chandogya Upanishad VI.13 · SBE vol. I · F. Max Müller
“'Place this salt in water, and then wait on me in the morning.' The son did as he was commanded. The father said to him: 'Bring me the salt, which you placed in the water last night.' The son having looked for it, found it not, for, of course, it was melted. The father said: 'Taste it from the surface of the water. How is it?' The son replied: 'It is salt.' 'Taste it from the middle. How is it?' 'It is salt.' 'Taste it from the bottom. How is it?' 'It is salt.' The father said: 'Throw it away, and then wait on me.' He did so; but salt exists for ever. Then the father said: 'Here also, in this body, forsooth, you do not perceive the True (Sat), my son; but there indeed it is. 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.13 (the salt in water) · 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.
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Christian comparison
How this connects to Jesus
Salt dissolved in water cannot be seen, yet it is present in every drop, and so, the father teaches, the True is present in you though unseen. The Gospel shares this confidence that God, though invisible, is truly present, nearer to us than our own breath, for in him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). Christianity adds that this present God is not merely our deepest self, but a Father who has made himself known and touchable in Jesus, so that we no longer only sense him, but can know and love him.