Mandukya Karika, verse 3.33

Text

अकल्पमजं ज्ञानं ज्ञेयाभिन्नं प्रचक्षते ।
ब्रह्मज्ञेयमजं नित्यमजेनाजं विबुध्यते ॥ ३३ ॥

akalpamajaṃ jñānaṃ jñeyābhinnaṃ pracakṣate |
brahmajñeyamajaṃ nityamajenājaṃ vibudhyate || 33 ||

33. The knowledge (Jñānam) which is unborn and free from all imaginations is ever inseparable from the knowable. The immutable and birthless Brahman is the sole object of knowledge. The birthless is known by the birthless.

Shankara Bhashya (commentary)

If all this duality be illusory, how is the knowledge of the Self to be realised? It is thus replied:—The Knowers of Brahman describe knowledge, i.e., the mere essence of thought, which is unborn and free from all imaginations as1 non-different from Brahman, the ultimate Reality, which is also the object of knowledge. This is supported by such Scriptural passages as, “Like heat from fire, knowledge (Jñānam) is never absent from the knower (Ātman),” “Brahman is Knowledge and Bliss,” “Brahman is Reality, Knowledge and Infinity,” etc. The knowledge of which Brahman is the object, is non-different from (the know-able) Brahman, as is the heat from the fire. The Essence of the Self, which is the object of knowledge, verily knows itself by means of unborn knowledge, which is of the very nature of Ātman. Brahman which is of the nature of one homogeneous mass of eternal consciousness, does not depend upon another2 instrument of knowledge (for its illumination), as is the case with the sun, which being of the nature of continuous light (does not require any instrument to illumine itself). 1 As non-different, etc.—The Jñānam or knowledge is the same as Brahman; otherwise no knowledge would be able to tell us what Brahman is. Darkness cannot illumine the sun. Only the light of the sun which is the sun itself, can illumine the sun. 2 Another instrument—Such as scripture, etc., which only tell us what is not self. To the Jñāni, even when he acts in this empirical world, the knower, the knowledge and the object of knowledge are all Brahman. And yet all these, being of the nature of Brahman, are without birth (Aja).