Introducing the concept
In the Vedantasara, Sadananda begins by providing an invocation to Brahman, in which he describes it as ‘avanmanasagocharam’, ‘That which is beyond the reach of words and thought’. The 7th verse of the Mandukya Upanishad, which provides perhaps the most piercing pointer to Brahman, describes It as ‘adrishyam’ (‘That which cannot be seen’), ‘agrahyam’ (‘That which cannot be grasped’), ‘avyapadesyam’ (‘That which cannot be described in words’).
In our discussion of the central topic Chit (Consciousness), we saw that Consciousness is best described as ‘anidam chaitanyam’, the ‘not this’ to everything that can be pointed to as ‘this’. And we have seen that the sharpest description provided for Brahman in the Upanishads is ‘Neti, neti’ (‘Not this, not this’); in other words Brahman is That which is left over after discarding everything that we can point to with our words and concepts.
But if you discard everything that can possibly be conceived, then what is left over?
This is a question that you will encounter multiple times as you read through these pages. Students of Vedanta must embrace this question and stay with it until they get a strong intuition of the answer, which will provide the key to unlocking the treasure chest of Vedanta.
There is a subtlety involved here that seekers must grasp - we are on the path of knowledge, but knowledge can only tell us what Reality is not; knowledge can only move aside everything unreal, so that Reality can shine forth in Its own light.
Knowledge can be gained only about objects in the empirical world. How can one know the Atman, which is Consciousness itself, the Pure Subject? Anything I know will be part of the objective world, so how can I know the Subject?
If you have arrived at this page after going through many of the other fundamental building blocks of Vedanta, you will know the answer to this question, and you might also have started to obtain an intuition about the Reality it is pointing to. But before we provide Vedanta’s answer to this question, let us provide the skeptic’s perspective. Before we establish the poorna (full) nature of Reality, let us address the shunya (empty) perspective.
Going a little deeper
Nagarjuna was a great Buddhist philosopher who lived about 2000 years ago. Considered one of the greatest thinkers of all time, Nagarjuna put the entire objective world under sharp scrutiny and came to the conclusion that everything we examine is fundamentally unreal or empty (shunya).
He argued, with sharp logic, that everything in the World lacks essence or substance of its own. Read our page on Adheyata-Sambandha (Substance-Attribute) if you haven’t done so already. Nagarjuna found not just external objects to be empty but also all concepts and principles that we take for granted, such as space, time, causality, motion - examine all of these concepts sharply, he said, and you will find it to be empty of substance; touch them and they crumble into dust.
We will not go into Nagarjuna's reasoning in detail, but let us take one example to provide a flavor. Let us take the concept of ‘motion’. Things before us seem to be moving, we ourselves seem to move all the time. That there is a real principle called ‘motion’ is something we take for granted. But where is the action of motion happening, Nagarjuna asks, and who is moving?
Is the mover moving or is the non-mover moving? Would it not be a contradiction to say that the non-mover is moving? Which leaves us with only one option - the mover is moving. But the very fact that you called the person the ‘mover’ implies that motion is already a property attached to the person. So, if the ‘mover is moving’, there are now two motions one must account for, and who is this second motion attached to? You will see that it leads to an infinite regress.
Even a very simple and apparently obvious aspect of the World such as motion is found, on examination, to be without a solid ground. All concepts are like water bubbles blown by kids; touch them and they pop into emptiness. Nagarjuna is drawing our attention to the fact that the World is filled with paradox, with every object crumbling under its contradictions.
Nothing in the World has intrinsic substance. The World appears to us, but it is not fundamentally real.
Nagarjuna’s final position was that nothing positive can be said about anything, since whatever we say will be found to be empty. So Nagarjuna remained silent even on the question of Ultimate Reality.
Must Nagarjuna’s silence regarding Ultimate Reality be seen as an endorsement for a nihilistic position? Was he saying that Reality is a void, that nothing exists?
Nagarjuna's silence does indeed leave room for a nihilistic interpretation, though that might not have been what he intended to convey.
If you have come to this page after learning the fundamentals of Advaita Vedanta, you will realize that Nagarjuna's position matches what Advaita says about the nature of the empirical World. If you have read our page on Maya, you will find more illustrations of the fundamentally unreal nature of the World. Indeed, Advaita Acharyas including Adi Shankara and Gaudapadacharya have made use of Nagarjuna’s logical arguments to demonstrate the Mithya-nature of the World.
Shankara and Nagarjuna would be in complete agreement about the ultimate emptiness of everything in the World. But here is the crucial difference between Advaita Vedanta and Nagarjuna’s Shunyavada - While Nagarjuna stops with his emptiness doctrine and says no more, Shankara flips the mirror around to ask ‘To what does the World appear?’
Everything in the World might indeed be without substance, but the very fact that a World appears indicates beyond a doubt that there is a Real substance. Even emptiness requires a witness.
Advaita Vedanta takes the concept of shunyata and flips it around to reveal the infinite Self. We will never have knowledge of Brahman in the way we have knowledge of other things in the World, but every instance of knowledge - even false knowledge - points to the indisputable presence of the Knower.
Thus shunyata can be seen as a powerful tool in the Advaitic inquiry. If one is convinced that the World is real in itself, one might not find the need to look beyond. Nagarjuna’s logical methods help us to realize the shadowy nature of the World, so that we can set it aside and permit the poorna (full, complete, limitless) Brahman to reveal Itself.
Tying it all together
Reality is indeed avanmanasagocharam, beyond the reach of words and thought, but every word and every thought is an undeniable reflection of Brahman.
The Advaitic Acharyas found no need to keep silent about the nature of Reality; they did not hesitate to use words as powerful pointers to Reality. Every object in the world can be seen as a pointer to the Atman. The emptiness of the World reveals the fullness that grounds it.
Hinduism, thus, pushes us to see Divinity everywhere, in everything, at all times. We see the poornam in the shunya.
Reflect on this
We mentioned that even emptiness requires a witness. Even ‘nothingness’ is a concept that indicates the gaze of the Subject (‘To whom is it nothing?’).
Our page on Sushupti (Deep Sleep) addresses this idea in more detail. Dwell on this until you are comfortable, push yourself until the insight is very clear to you.
You should be able to see that any talk of ‘nothingness’ or ‘emtpiness’ or ‘void’ can only apply in the objective World; the Subject, your very Self, shines forever undimmed. You should be able to answer the question we posed earlier in this piece - ‘If you discard everything that can possibly be conceived, then what is left over?’ You will be left over.