Sat-darshana Bhashya (translation)

Verse 31.

मौनेन मज्जन्मनसा स्वमूल-
चर्चेव सत्यात्मविचारणं स्यात् ।
एषोऽहमेतन्न मम स्वरूप-
मिति प्रमा सत्यविचारणाङ्गम् ॥

The mind through calm in deep plunge enquires. That alone is real quest for the self. "This I am not ’mine is not this’. Ideas such help forward the quest.

When the mind becomes calm, free from all thoughts other than the single thought of the Self and begins to search for it in silence, then alone real quest for the Self vicara may be said to begin. Shastraic discussions and intellectual discrimination leading to the conviction “I am the Self, the seer, am never the seen, this body is not I or mine” are indeed a help to the quest, but not the quest itself. As they can be of help, they are not to be despised.

[There is a time-worn view in scholastic circles that Shastraic knowledge in this life or in a previous one is a condition of competency adhikara for Brahmavidya, knowledge of Brahman. This view receives no support here].

When as the result of the fading of the ego, the apparent self on the surface, one gets liberated from the bonds of ignorance, the Real T, the self as the basic consciousness and support of the individual in which the ego has its play, comes up to the surface. This ’I’ is not the ego, but an unceasing flash of the Supreme I-consciousness, of the Supreme Itself.