In plain words
It is its own natural state. It is not something new that we earn. Like fire covered with ash, like water covered with moss, like an eye covered with a film: just because it is the Ātma covered by the delusion of the Manas, we are unable to recognise this Jñāna. How did the ash come over this fire? Where did it come from? The ash that came from the fire itself has covered that very fire. Where did this moss covering the water come from? From the water itself. Where did the film that grew in our eye come from? Did it come from outside? No, it arose from our eye itself. Remove the film that covers it, and the principle that is our own svarūpa reveals itself to us.
So Jñāna is not gained from books. It is not granted by gurus, nor handed over by the Paramātma. One is oneself the Paramātma, oneself Jñāna. One is oneself the Ātma. But when we sit in solitude and ponder that this Jñāna is … in all, a sound that is eternal, true and unchanging arises from within us. All the substances in the world are changing. All forms are changing. Every substance is merely the working of atoms. The coming together of these atoms is itself the form of a substance. In the course of time these atoms too go on parting from one another. The svabhāva of these atoms is the very principle of joining and parting. But one divine voice, which does not change, in which no change arises, is one and the same in all. In childhood, in youth and in old age the body keeps changing, but that voice does not change. We experience three states, waking, dream and deep sleep, but this voice does not change. We experience the gross, the subtle and the causal, but this voice does not change. What is that voice? The inner voice that comes forth from the Ātma-principle. That itself is "I, I". "I". Aham. Aham. Aham. This alone is Satya. This Satya is far, far subtler than the atom. Truth is more fundamental than atom. Aham is of the very form of such Satya. The principle filled by this Aham is Soham. When this Aham becomes one with the body, it turns into Ahaṅkāra. This Ahaṅkāra is a feeling born of Prakṛti. Aham is the divine voice. To recognise it merely by scholarship or by power of intellect is impossible.