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.
Speaking that can never be lost
That he does not speak in that state, that is because, though speaking then, he does not speak; for the speaker's speaking can never be lost, since he is imperishable. But there is no second thing apart from him, set off from him, that he might speak.
When we say he does not speak in deep sleep, it is not that the power of speaking has perished. Even then his capacity to speak can never fail, since the self is imperishable. What is missing is only a second thing, separate from him, to speak to or about.
In the commentaries
Sankara extends the argument to speech: the self's nature is changeless and undying, and the silence of deep sleep is only the absence of a second object, not any loss in the self.