Philosophical Traditions vs Non-Duality
Most of the philosophical and spiritual traditions in human history build towards a conclusion, and mostly that conclusion is a God.
And sometimes that conclusion can be a truth or a state.
Then there is the philosophy of non-duality that doesn’t build towards anything. In fact, it does the opposite.
It demolishes everything, and in demolishing everything, it uses language to show language’s own limit. Today, we are going into that territory.
The Journey of Intellectual Understanding
I spent years trying to decode these lofty intellectual talks of Nisargadatta, Ramana, the Upanishads, and J. Krishnamurthy.
With time, my intellectual understanding became very sharp. My questions became very precise.
But underneath all of that, there was still suffering. There was still an aching for that oneness. There was still a longing for the truth.
And I believed that the right understanding of these concepts, of what all these teachers talk about, would somehow close the gap between what I understand and the final realization.
But the gap unfortunately didn’t close. With time, it refined itself. It became even more intellectually refined.
This is where understanding what Advaita is trying to do, or what non-duality or Nisargadatta is pointing at, becomes very important.
The Purpose of Advaita
The system is not designed to provide you answers.
This system is designed to dissolve the questioner.
The pointing that Advaita does, or even many Zen traditions do, instead of describing the truth, removes what is false.
It does not build a new belief system. It dismantles the old one, one concept at a time.
It’s like peeling an onion piece by piece. Then you come to the center, and what happens when you’ve discarded all the peels?
There is nothing. Nothing is left. The onion is no more there. The center is nothing. Zero.
It was just peels all along.
The Process of Elimination (Neti Neti)
Advaita starts with a very simple premise. All these teachers start with a very simple premise.
First, you are not the thoughts. Thoughts come and go. You can observe the thoughts, so you are not the thoughts.
So the first layer is discarded.
Then they say you are not the emotions. Emotions are like guests. You sometimes feel happy, then you feel sad. So of course you cannot be emotions.
So the second layer is discarded.
Then they come to the body. They say you can observe the body. Since you can observe it, you are separate from it.
Then the body is discarded.
Then it starts getting more subtle. What is left? If I discard my body, my emotions, my mind, and my thoughts, then what is left is the witness, the observer.
Many systems stop there. They rest with the observer, which is unattached, vast, and unmoving.
But Nisargadatta says no, look closer. Since the observer can be perceived, can be known, it is still an object arising in awareness.
What is that awareness?
So you are not even the witness.
Collapse of Language and Mind
This is where language and mind start collapsing.
It comes to a point, as Nisargadatta said, whatever you have understood, you are not.
So if I’m not the body, I’m not the mind, I’m not the witness, and I am whatever I have understood—if I’m not that—then what am I?
At this stage, any concept that the mind comes up with and says “this is what I am” is negated, because the first saying is you’re not this and you’re not that.
So if I’m not this and I’m not that, then what is this language being used to point at?
Limits of Language
Language has a subject and an object. It is a structure built entirely on subjects pointing at objects, on positions that require other positions to exist.
But the state, the absolute reality that all of them were trying to point at, was not described directly.
The only way they described it was through negation.
If you read any of these texts, they say it is timeless, spaceless, changeless, without attributes.
All these are negative terms: changeless, attribute-less, spaceless, timeless.
They were trying to point at it, not describe it, because you can only have subject and object when using language.
What they were trying to point to is the very ground, the very source of both subject and object.
Why Teachings Sound Paradoxical
That’s where the language becomes confusing.
Even J. Krishnamurthy says, “the observer is the observed.”
When I first read it, it made no sense. It didn’t make sense even after 10–15 years.
Every time I read it, it was like a question mark.
Observer is the observed—what does it even mean? What is choiceless awareness?
The language becomes paradoxical, abstract, mystical, or confusing because they are trying to point at something that language cannot capture.
The Intention of the Sages
The ancient sages and modern mystics were not avoiding intellectual difficulty.
They were very sharp. They had seen the truth firsthand and then tried to express it.
They asked: how can we show the limit of language itself?
Because whatever they were pointing at stood beyond language.
Nisargadatta said, whatever you can think of about the absolute is a concept. It is not that.
With this, he demolishes any conceptual understanding of reality.
The Paradox of “I Am That”
Many of you may have read I Am That.
I read it hundreds of times. There was a time I could quote most of it verbatim.
If you look at the cover, it says I Am That.
But if you go through the book, most of it says you are not this, you are not that.
Though the title says I Am That, the content says what you are not.
This is a beautiful paradox.
Throughout the book, Maharaj says you are not this. Whatever you can think of is not the truth.
Don’t grasp it with words. Don’t grasp it intellectually. Step beyond.
Go to the source, the awareness from which all concepts arise.
Nirguna Brahman and the Limits of Description
Ramana Maharshi approached this differently.
He said this final reality cannot be described by words because it has no attributes.
In Sanskrit, there is a word: Nirguna Brahman.
Nirguna means without qualities or attributes. Brahman means infinite consciousness.
So it refers to an infinite reality with absolutely no attributes.
Since it has no qualities, language cannot describe it.
And yet, hundreds of books have been written trying to point toward it.
The Method of Negation
Nisargadatta said something very beautiful: though no words can describe that, my talks are only about that.
So what do you do when language cannot describe it?
You create a system of negation. You say what it is not.
This is the Advaita method called Neti Neti—“not this, not this.”
Shankaracharya wrote extensively on this in Atma Shatakam.
He systematically says what I am not:
I am not relationships, not a parent, not a son, not a sister, not a brother.
I am not the body. I am not male. I am not female.
None of these attributes are mine.
What I am is that shining consciousness.
Then Maharaj goes further and says you are not even that shining consciousness. That too is a concept. Let go of it.
The Final Confusion and Turning Within
At this point, the seeker becomes confused.
They feel they had something to hold onto—a concept like infinite awareness—and now even that is taken away.
Then the question arises: who am I?
That question itself leads back to the source.
The source from which mind arises. The source from which language arises.
Language cannot describe it because language itself is a product of it.
The Final Pointing
From that source, the entire universe arises.
That source is not different from what you are.
This is what all the mystics were pointing to—not describing, but pointing in different ways.
That is what I try to do whenever we meet: to point directly to that infinite true nature of yours.
It is beyond words. Timeless. Spaceless.
It has no beginning or end because it contains both.
It is timeless because it gives birth to time.
It is spaceless not because it is infinite—because infinite is still a word—but because it gives birth to space itself.
And that is what we all are.