Madhu Kanda. Adhyaya 2, Brahmana 3. The two forms of Brahman: neti, neti
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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.
Neti neti, the Truth of truth
The form of this Person is like a cloth dyed deep with turmeric, like grey sheep's wool, like the scarlet insect called indragopa, like a tongue of flame, like a white lotus, like a sudden flash of lightning. To the one who knows this, splendour comes sudden as that lightning. Now therefore the teaching: not this, not this. For there is nothing higher than this, that it is not this. And the name: the Truth of truth. The vital breaths are truth; and this is the Truth of them.
The shining form of this inner Person, when it appears in vision, is likened to a turmeric-dyed cloth, to grey wool, to the bright-red indragopa beetle, to a flame, to a white lotus, to a flash of lightning. Whoever knows this gains glory as swift as lightning. But beyond every such image comes the final instruction: not this, not this (neti neti), for there is no truer description than the denial of every form. And Brahman's name is the Truth of truth (satyasya satyam): the vital breaths (prana) are real, and Brahman is the Reality behind even them.
neti neti
not this, not this. The naming of Brahman by negation: not this, not this, because nothing said of it is the whole of it. There is no truer name, and it is called the truth of truths.
Where the schools meet, and where they part
Every shining image the mantra offers, the turmeric cloth, the flame, the lotus, the lightning, falls short of Brahman; no form named here is the last word, and the seeker is turned past all of them toward what the forms only point at.
Brahman is satyasya satyam, the Truth of truth: the vital breaths and the world have their own reality, yet they are not the final reality, for they rest on Brahman, which is more real than they are.
Of this final reality the text says there is nothing higher, and the one who knows it is brought to a splendour sudden as the lightning the verse names.
Neti neti withholds every form and every limiting adjunct without remainder. Sankara reads the doubled denial as said twice for all-inclusiveness, so that whatever specification arises, name, form, action, species, quality, is set aside, since words reach a thing only through such marks and Brahman has none of them. What stands when all is denied is not a further object but the attributeless (nirvisesa) pure consciousness, the witness of every cognition, which Suresvara too unfolds by stripping the marks of the not-Self. And satyasya satyam means Brahman alone is absolutely real; the pranas and the world are real only as dependent, the way the silver is real until the shell is seen.
Madhva will not let neti neti empty Brahman of qualities. By his settled reading the denial means that Brahman's perfections are not exhausted by the forms just described, the sun-Person, the eye-Person, the gross and subtle: His auspicious qualities are countless, so no list closes Him. Brahman is savisesa, indivisible (akhanda) and at the same time full of infinite qualities (gunapurna), never the bare gunasunya of the rival reading; this Brahman is Vishnu, the independent real. So satyasya satyam sets the dependent reality of the world and the souls beneath the one independent reality of the Lord, who indwells the pranas as their ground and abides forever distinct from the soul that leans on Him.
For Ramanuja's school the negation denies limitation, not qualities. Neti neti says Brahman is not confined to the forms named, that His attributes are infinite, and the very next words, the name Truth of truth, confirm a Brahman possessed of innumerable auspicious qualities; passages that seem to deny attributes deny only evil ones, leaving suddha-sattva, the pure good. This Brahman is the antaryamin, the inner controller seated within sun and eye and breath, the Paramatman; the formed and formless cosmos and the indwelt Person are His body, His mode (sarira, prakara), held inseparably (aprthak-siddhi). So satyasya satyam names the higher reality of the indwelling Self over the real but dependent pranas it controls, and the knower comes to Him in communion, never melting into one essence.
Does neti neti cancel every attribute, so that what remains is the attributeless one reality, the witness with no second, as Advaita hears it? Or does the denial only refuse to let the named forms exhaust an infinitely qualified Lord, savisesa and distinct from the souls He indwells, as Dvaita and Ramanuja's school hear it? The same two words found both the emptied Absolute and the fullest Person, and the mantra does not decide between them.
On Sankara's reading, why is the negation doubled to neti neti rather than said once?
- Because the text is emphasising how beautiful the similes are
- To deny the existence of the vital breaths and the world outright
- To deny first the gross form and then the subtle form, and nothing further
- To convey all-inclusiveness, so that every specification whatsoever is eliminated, since words reach a thing only through marks Brahman does not have
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What is the live disagreement the schools leave standing at neti neti?
- Whether the similes refer to the sun or to the eye
- Whether the denial empties Brahman of all attributes, or only refuses to let the named forms exhaust an infinitely qualified Lord
- Whether the vital breaths are real
- Whether the verse belongs to the Upanisad at all
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Not this, not this
The mantra first gives the eye something to hold. The form of this inmost Person, it says, is like a cloth dyed deep with turmeric, like grey wool, like the scarlet insect in the grass, like a tongue of flame, like a white lotus, like a sudden flash of lightning. Each image is luminous, and each is offered only to be left behind. For then the teaching turns: athata adesho neti neti, now therefore the instruction, not this, not this. And the text adds that there is nothing higher than this denial, and that the name of what is denied into is the Truth of truth.
Sankara hears in the doubled word a complete withholding. It is said twice, he reads, for all-inclusiveness, so that no matter what comes to mind, name or form, action or quality, it is set aside; a word can only catch a thing by some such mark, and Brahman wears none, so of Brahman one can finally say only not this. What is left when every image is denied is no further image but the witness itself, the attributeless reality in whose light all the denied things appeared. And the pranas are real, he allows, but only as the lesser truth; Brahman is the Truth of their truth, the one reality that does not borrow its being from anything.
To Madhva the doubled denial empties nothing; it points past a fullness no list can hold. Neti neti, for him, does not say Brahman has no qualities; it says the qualities just named, the Person in the sun, the Person in the eye, do not exhaust Him, for His perfections are without number. Brahman is savisesa, undivided and yet full, the abode of infinite auspicious qualities, and this Brahman is Vishnu, the one independent real on whom the pranas and the souls depend. So the Truth of truth sets a dependent world beneath an independent Lord, who indwells all and stays forever other than the soul that rests on Him.
Ramanuja's school hears something close to Madhva on this point, though built on its own frame. The denial refuses limitation, not attributes; the very next breath of the text, the name Truth of truth, gives Brahman innumerable qualities, and where scripture seems to strip Brahman bare it strips only the evil, leaving the pure good. This Brahman is the inner controller seated within sun and eye and breath, and those forms are His body, His mode, never separable from Him. The knower does not dissolve into Him; he comes to Him, and abides.
So the same two small words open two ways that do not meet. One hears in not this the falling away of every attribute, until only the one reality stands, the witness with no second. The other hears a hand raised against any list that would fence the Lord in, leaving Him fuller than speech, savisesa, and distinct from the souls He holds. We give the mantra whole, with both readings standing, and we do not choose.
Whether not this, not this empties Brahman of all attributes, leaving the attributeless one reality, or only denies that the named forms exhaust an infinitely qualified Lord who stays distinct from the souls He indwells, the mantra does not decide.
When every image of the real has been set down with not this, not this, what remains: a fullness beyond all names, or a clearing where no name was ever needed?
In the commentaries
Sankara: the similes only point at the subtle Person and must then be cancelled; neti neti withholds every form and limiting adjunct, since no positive description reaches Brahman, and the name satyasya satyam marks Brahman as the truth standing behind the relative truth of the vital powers.