नान्तःप्रज्ञं न बहिःप्रज्ञं नोभयतःप्रज्ञं न प्रज्ञं नाप्रज्ञं न प्रज्ञानघनमदृश्यं अव्यवहार्यं अग्राह्यं अलक्षणं अचिन्त्यं अव्यपदेश्यं एमेकात्मप्रत्ययसारं प्रपञ्चोपशमं शान्तं शिवं अद्वैतं चतुर्थं मन्यन्ते । स आत्मा स विज्ञेयः
nāntaḥprajñaṃ na bahiḥprajñaṃ nobhayataḥprajñaṃ na prajñaṃ nāprajñaṃ na prajñānaghanamadṛśyaṃ avyavahāryaṃ agrāhyaṃ alakṣaṇaṃ acintyaṃ avyapadeśyaṃ emekātmapratyayasāraṃ prapañcopaśamaṃ śāntaṃ śivaṃ advaitaṃ caturthaṃ manyante | sa ātmā sa vijñeyaḥ
Neither cognising the inner, nor cognising the outer, nor cognising both, neither cognising nor uncognising, not a mass of cognition; invisible, unusable, ungraspable, without marks, unthinkable, unindicable, whose essence is the certainty of the one Ātman, the quieting of the world, tranquil, benign, non-dual — him they hold to be the fourth. He is the Ātman; he is to be known.
20a90a6b0b11 · publicado 29 jul 2026, 5:15:19 UTC
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The fourth foot, turīya, and it is described by negations alone — twelve “not”s in a row.
First all three preceding feet are rejected: not waking, not dream, not oblivion; and even “not a mass of cognition”, that is, not the blissful forgetting just described.
Then — invisible, ungraspable, unthinkable, unnameable.
This is the strongest place in the whole Māṇḍūkya and the hardest. It seems that after such a list nothing remains.
But look how it ends: śāntam śivam advaitam — “tranquil, benign, non-dual”. Three positive words after twelve negations. And the chief of them is śiva, “benign”.
The negations, then, take away not being but the ways of grasping. The unthinkable does not mean the empty: it is good, and good is never no one's.
And one more word people pass by: ekātma-pratyaya-sāra — “whose essence is the certainty of the one Ātman”. Pratyaya means “certitude, conviction”. That is, the ungraspable has an essence, and that essence is indubitability.
Here one should recall that the sixth paragraph of this chapter has said already: the fourth is Rāma, “whose sole form is the bliss of Brahman”. The negations of the Māṇḍūkya are not the book's last word; they are what is said before the name.