Madhu Kanda. Adhyaya 1, Brahmana 4. In the beginning, the Self: I am Brahman
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Each mantra is given four ways: the Sanskrit in its Devanagari script, the same sounds in Roman letters, an English translation set in our own voice, and then the line once more in plain words, for a first and unhurried reading.
Not every passage is opened to the same depth. A few central mantras carry the full cross-school commentary, where the schools are set side by side. The rest are kept here whole and faithful, set in their place but not expounded, so the book stays entire and nothing is dropped for being thought minor.
Where the schools read a line differently, the difference is kept open. None is crowned and none is corrected. Each is met on its own terms, and where they contradict, the contradiction is left standing for you to sit with.
Wife, wealth, and the fivefold self
In the beginning this was the Self alone, one only. He desired: "Let me have a wife, that I may be born as offspring; and let me have wealth, that I may perform rites." This much indeed is desire; even if one should wish, one could not get more than this. Therefore even now a man who is alone desires: "Let me have a wife, that I may be born; and let me have wealth, that I may perform rites." So long as he does not obtain any one of these, he thinks himself incomplete. But his completeness is this: the mind is his self, speech his wife, the vital breath his offspring, the eye his human wealth, for with the eye he finds it; the ear his divine wealth, for with the ear he hears it; the body is his rite, for with the body he performs the rite. This sacrifice is fivefold; fivefold is the animal; fivefold is the person; fivefold is all this, whatever there is. He who knows this obtains all this.
In the beginning only the Self existed, all alone, and it desired: "Let me have a wife so I may be reborn through children, and wealth so I may perform sacred works." That is the whole of desire; one could not wish for more than these three (wife, offspring/progeny, wealth for rites). To this day a solitary person craves exactly this: a wife, children, and means to perform rites, and as long as he lacks even one of them he feels incomplete. But his real completeness lies within: his mind is his self, speech is his wife, the vital breath (prana) is his offspring, the eye is his human wealth (since he gathers wealth by seeing), the ear is his divine wealth (since by hearing he gains sacred knowledge), and the body itself is his rite (since with the body he acts). This makes the sacrifice fivefold (pankta); fivefold too are the animal, the person, and everything that exists. Whoever knows this gains all of it.
In the commentaries
Sankara reads this final mantra as laying bare the threefold desire, for a wife, for offspring, and for wealth to perform rites, that keeps the unenlightened person feeling incomplete and forever driven to act. The completeness he seeks outside himself, Sankara shows, is already present within as the fivefold self, mind and speech and breath and eye and ear, with the body as the field of action. So the knower attains the all not by acquiring a single thing but by recognizing that the totality he was reaching for is the very self he already is.