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.
Hearing that can never be lost
That he does not hear in that state, that is because, though hearing then, he does not hear; for the hearer's hearing can never be lost, since he is imperishable. But there is no second thing apart from him, set off from him, that he might hear.
When we say he does not hear in deep sleep, it is not that the power of hearing is gone. Even then his capacity to hear can never fail, since the self is imperishable. What is absent is only a second thing, separate from him, to be heard.
In the commentaries
Sankara applies the same to hearing: the conscious hearer is indestructible and never stops being conscious; only a distinct sound-object is lacking, so the absence of hearing again signals the absence of duality.