Sanskrit: not this, not this. The Upaniṣadic formula for approaching Brahman — the highest reality named only by the systematic removal of every positive predicate. Ask what it is and the answer strips another description away. Not form. Not formlessness. Not being. Not non-being. Each “not this” is a guard against caging the summit inside a category it exceeds.
Chapter 13 places neti neti as one of four independently-attested apophatic disciplines — alongside the unspoken Tetragrammaton, the Daodejing’s opening refusal, and Buddhist śūnyatā — that converge on the same structural move: at the top of the reference chain, set the handle down. The chapter dates the Upaniṣadic layer to roughly the 8th–6th century BCE and treats it as contact-independent from the Hebrew and Daoist legs. (Four legs that stand clean, the chapter insists — not the round dozen a hasty surveyor might boast.)
It is careful about what “emptiness” means in this company. The apex reached by neti neti is not nothing — it is the fullness no vessel is wide enough to hold. Mishearing it as a void and trying to orient by it produces not enlightenment but drift: the high-penalty wandering of the opening chapters in mystical robes. The stripping-away is the last discipline, not the first.
Sources. The neti neti (“not this, not this”) formula — Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (2.3.6; 4.5.15), ~8th–6th c. BCE. Paired in the chapter with the unspoken Tetragrammaton, the Daodejing’s opening refusal, and Buddhist śūnyatā. Search: neti neti Brihadaranyaka Upanishad not this not this Brahman.
Appears in: The One Thing I Will Not Name · Notation & Glossary