A section from the journey

Not This, Not This

How do you describe the one reality behind everything? You cannot. It is what does the seeing, so it can never be seen, the way an eye cannot look at itself. So the sage Yajnavalkya teaches by stripping away. Not this, not this, neti neti. Whatever you name, that is not yet it. What remains, beyond all names, is the goal.

Now we pick up a tool we will carry through the rest of this era. It answers a hard question. If there is one deep reality behind all things, how could anyone ever describe it? How do you put the whole into words?

Think about what words do. They name things. A tree, a river, a star. Each word lets you point at something and hold it apart from yourself, out there, to be looked at. That is how naming works.

But the reality the sages are pointing to is not a thing out there at all. It is the very one doing the looking. And that you can never quite catch. An eye sees everything except itself. A fingertip can touch all things, yet cannot touch its own tip. The seer cannot be turned into something seen.

The Upanishads say exactly this of the deepest reality. It is the seer that is never seen, the hearer that is never heard, the thinker behind every thought, the knower no one can stand outside of and know. It is always the subject, never the object. So no name will ever land on it.

So how does the great sage Yajnavalkya teach it? Not by describing it, but by clearing everything else away. To each guess about what it might be, he answers the same way. Not this. Not this.

In the old language those two small words are neti, neti. It is not coarse, and not fine. Not short, and not long. Not the thing you just named, nor the next one either. Whatever you can point to and say "there it is," the sage gently shakes his head. Not that. Keep going.

Hear what this is doing. It is not saying the reality is nothing. It is saying it is no thing, beyond every name we could pin on it. One by one the names fall away, like leaves clearing from still water, until what is left is the nameless itself, pointed to in silence. Hold these two words. We will use them again and again.

Try it once, gently. Whatever you take yourself to be, set it down for a breath. Not my name. Not my body. Not even my passing thoughts. When all of that is set aside, what is it that is still quietly aware?