Sacred Text · The Upanishads

The one God hidden in all beings

Svetasvatara Upanishad VI.11 · SBE vol. XV · F. Max Müller

“He is the one God, hidden in all beings, all-pervading, the self within all beings, watching over all works, dwelling in all beings, the witness, the perceiver, the only one, free from qualities.”
Svetasvatara Upanishad VI.11 · F. Max Muller, SBE vol. XV

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

He is the one God, the Svetasvatara sings, hidden in all beings, all-pervading, the witness within each heart. This is among the clearest confessions of one God in the Upanishads, and Christians confess the same: one God, who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:6). The Gospel says this one hidden God stepped into the open in Jesus, no longer only the unseen witness within, but a Saviour with a face, who says, come and see (John 1:39).

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