Neti Neti — Not This, Not This
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad's method of neti neti (not this, not this) progressively strips away all that Brahman is not — all qualities, forms, and descriptions — until only the indescribable remainder is left.
Neti neti ('not this, not this' — Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2.3.6) is the apophatic (via negativa) method of approaching Brahman by eliminating everything that Brahman is not. Since Brahman is infinite and beyond all categories, no positive description can adequately capture it — every quality attributed to Brahman necessarily limits it. The method: beginning with gross objects (not this body), moving through subtle phenomena (not this mind, not this intellect, not this bliss), until nothing remains that can be pointed to as 'this is it.' What remains after all negation is the self-luminous awareness that cannot be negated because it is the negator itself. Shankara interpreted neti neti not as the denial of Brahman's reality but as the denial of any limited description of that reality — Brahman exceeds all possible predication. This is one of the most sophisticated philosophical methods in any tradition: approaching truth by the elimination of falsehood rather than by positive assertion.
It is not this, not this. It is incomprehensible, for it cannot be comprehended. It is indestructible, for it cannot be destroyed.
Philosopher Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's apophatic theology — the mystical Christian tradition of approaching God through negation — shares a structural method with neti neti, suggesting that the apophatic approach to the absolute is a cross-cultural convergence of mystical insight.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
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- What Advaita Vedanta says about doubt
Neti neti runs doubt as a method — not this body, not this mind, not this intellect, not even this bliss — until nothing is left that can be pointed at. Shankara read it as denying every limited description of Brahman, not the reality being described.