Yajnavalkya Kanda. Adhyaya 3, Brahmana 8. Gargi again: the imperishable, the aksara
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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.
Knowing it, a knower of Brahman
Whoever, O Gargi, without knowing this Imperishable, offers oblations in this world, sacrifices, and practices austerity even for many thousands of years, his gain is but perishable. Whoever, O Gargi, departs from this world without knowing this Imperishable is miserable. But whoever, O Gargi, departs from this world knowing this Imperishable, he is a knower of Brahman.
Yajnavalkya draws the consequence for liberation: one who pours oblations, sacrifices, and undertakes austerity for thousands of years without knowing the Imperishable wins only a perishable, finite reward (antavat, having an end); one who leaves this world without knowing it is wretched (krpana, pitiable); but one who departs knowing it is a true knower of Brahman (brahmana).
In the commentaries
Sankara draws the sharp line. One may offer sacrifice and oblation and austerity for thousands of years, but if the Imperishable is not known, the fruit of all such acts has an end; it is spent, and the doer returns to the round of birth and death. The one who leaves this world without knowing this is kripana, miserable, a miser who held the highest wealth within reach and let it slip. The one who departs having known it is the brahmana, the knower of Brahman. The difference is not the quantity of works but the presence or absence of this knowledge; rites however vast remain inside time, and only the knowing of the timeless ends the round.