Yajnavalkya Kanda. Adhyaya 4, Brahmana 3. The self-luminous Self: waking, dream, and the light of man
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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.
Smelling that can never be lost
That he does not smell in that state, that is because, though smelling then, he does not smell; for the smeller's smelling can never be lost, since he is imperishable. But there is no second thing apart from him, set off from him, that he might smell.
When we say he does not smell in deep sleep, it is not that the power of smelling has perished. Even then he is, as it were, smelling, for the smeller's capacity can never fail, since the self is imperishable. What is missing is only a second thing, separate from him, to be smelled.
In the commentaries
Sankara applies the same reasoning to smell: the self's nature never ceases, and the apparent absence of smelling is only the absence of a separate object, confirming that the self remains the unfailing conscious smeller even where nothing is given to smell.