Yajnavalkya Kanda. Adhyaya 4, Brahmana 3. The self-luminous Self: waking, dream, and the light of man
New to these pages?
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.
Touching that can never be lost
That he does not touch in that state, that is because, though touching then, he does not touch; for the toucher's touching can never be lost, since he is imperishable. But there is no second thing apart from him, set off from him, that he might touch.
When we say he does not touch in deep sleep, it is not that the power of touching is gone. Even then his capacity to touch can never fail, since the self is imperishable. What is absent is only a second thing, separate from him, to be touched.
In the commentaries
Sankara applies the principle to touch: the conscious self is undying and its capacity never lapses; only a distinct object is wanting, again showing deep sleep as non-duality rather than non-consciousness.