Madhu Kanda. Adhyaya 2, Brahmana 5. The honey: the Self shining in all beings
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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.
The honey that is the Self
This Self is honey to all beings, and all beings are honey to this Self. The shining, immortal person who is in this Self, and the shining, immortal person who is this Self: this very one is that which is this Self. This is the immortal, this is Brahman, this is the All.
The Self (atman) and all beings nourish one another; each is sweetness to the other. The radiant, deathless person present in this Self, taken as the whole that gathers every element and deity, and the radiant, deathless person who is one's own individual self are one and the same, and that one is the Self. That Self is the immortal, is Brahman, is everything. This mantra is the hinge: all the prior pairings come home to the Self itself.
In the commentaries
Reaching the last pair, the cosmic self and the self within, Sankara lets the refrain close on itself. Every honey named so far, earth and water, fire and air, sun and moon, lightning and cloud, space, law, truth, the human being, has been resolved into this one. The shining person in the outer order (adhidaivata) and the shining person within the body (adhyatma) are not a god out there and a soul in here; they are the very same Self, the immortal, the Brahman, the all. With this the doctrine of mutual dependence is completed and surpassed: the interdependence was the ladder, non-difference is the roof, and what looked like a web of many honeys is found to be one.