Madhu Kanda. Adhyaya 2, Brahmana 4. Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi: for the sake of the Self
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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.
I speak nothing bewildering
Then Maitreyi said: Here, sir, you have bewildered me, in saying there is no knowing after departing. Then he said: I speak nothing that bewilders. Truly, what I have said is enough for understanding.
Maitreyi said, 'Now you have confused me, sir, by saying there is no knowing after departing.' Yajnavalkya answered, 'I am saying nothing confusing. What I have told you is fully enough to understand.'
In the commentaries
To Maitreyi's alarm, that no consciousness after departing sounds like extinction, Sankara answers with Yajnavalkya: there is nothing bewildering, because the two things, Pure Intelligence and the absence of particular consciousness, were never said of the same entity. The particular consciousness, bound to the body, is destroyed with its limiting adjuncts; the transcendent Intelligence, the Self of all, remains. Modifications are but names, an effort of speech; the Self is imperishable.