Can You Define Yourself by Saying What You Are Not?

Yajnavalkya's Neti Neti method and the power of negation.

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad vs Spinoza and Hegel. Strip away every label until only the undeniable remains.

The Morning Maitreyi Refused the Gold

The morning Yajnavalkya planned to leave his household for good, his wife Maitreyi would not let him go quietly. The scene is in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, chapter four. Sometime in the seventh century BCE, in the kingdom of Videha in what is now Bihar, the old rishi had sorted his property into two piles in the courtyard. Gold on one side. Cattle on the other. He called his two wives and told them he was leaving for the forest, and he would split the piles equally between them.

His other wife, Katyayani, accepted. Maitreyi sat still and asked a question. 'If I had all the wealth in the world, would I become immortal through it?'

'No,' said Yajnavalkya. 'Your life would be the life of the rich. There is no hope of immortality through wealth.'

The courtyard was quiet except for the birds in the pipal trees and the sound of cattle shifting in the pen. Maitreyi looked at the gold piled in the dust, then at her husband. 'Then what is the good of things that cannot make me immortal? Tell me what you know.'

What Yajnavalkya said in reply would be repeated three times across the Brihadaranyaka, to three different questioners. Each time the answer was the same two words. Neti neti. Not this. Not this.

Yajnavalkya's Two Words

Yajnavalkya was the foremost teacher of his age, a man who could win debates by remaining silent. He had already been crowned champion at King Janaka's great assembly in Videha, where he had defeated every other rishi in turn and walked away with a prize of a thousand cattle. When his students and opponents asked him to describe the imperishable Self, he refused every positive description. The Self is not the body. Not the mind. Not the senses. Not thought. Not even the witness as you currently imagine it. Anything you can name as that immediately disqualifies itself, because the Self is the one doing the naming.