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.
Tasting that can never be lost
That he does not taste in that state, that is because, though tasting then, he does not taste; for the taster's tasting can never be lost, since he is imperishable. But there is no second thing apart from him, set off from him, that he might taste.
When we say he does not taste in deep sleep, it is not that the power of tasting is gone. Even then he is, as it were, tasting, for the taster's capacity can never fail, since the self is imperishable. What is absent is only a second thing, separate from him, to be tasted.
In the commentaries
Sankara repeats the principle for taste: the conscious self is indestructible and its capacity never lapses; only a distinct object is wanting, so deep sleep proves not unconsciousness but the dropping away of duality.