Upanishads · Mahāvākya p7
॥
Devanāgarī
नैषोऽन्धकारोऽयमात्मा
Transliteration (IAST)
naiṣo'ndhakāro'yamātmā
Word-by-word
SanskritIASTMeaning
न एषः अन्धकारः अयम् आत्माna eṣaḥ andhakāraḥ ayam ātmānot this darkness is this self
Translation
«Not this darkness is the self.»
Version
7a4ae71b3a3d · published Aug 12, 2026, 5:00:00 AM UTC
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The line is short and is, in essence, the turning point of the whole book: naiṣo'ndhakāro'yam ātmā, “not this darkness is the self.” Everything listed above — the body, the worlds from Brahmā to grass, the ritual round — is dismissed in a single word. This device is the famous neti neti, “not this, not this,” of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka (2.3.6); it has been discussed more than once.
It is worth examining what this negation does and does not do. What it does is this: it cuts off identification. A person accustomed to considering himself as his body, position, and circumstances hears that none of this is him.
What it does not do is what is often ascribed to it: it does not deny the existence of what is dismissed. To say “I am not my body” is not to say the body does not exist. This distinction is, to my mind, the chief thing to bear in mind when reading any negative theology, and it is constantly blurred.
The Vaiṣṇava side insists on it, and notes that the Bṛhadāraṇyaka itself, after all the negations, does not stop: it goes on to speak of the Ātman in positive words — that He is “ungraspable, for He is never grasped; indestructible, for He is not destroyed; unattached, for He does not attach” (3.9.26) — and further still speaks of love, of wife and husband, of the fact that “not for the wife's sake is the wife dear, but for the sake of the Self” (2.4.5). Let us add, too, what follows it in its own course. Negation is half the path: it clears the ground. What appears on the cleared ground is not established by negation; and the book will speak of this in the lines that follow.