Ivan Frimmel presents

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What is Via Negativa
in Mysticism?

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What is Via Negativa?
 The way to God, Absolute, through negation: no predicates
attach to God, no words may be legitimately used to
describe “Him”, “Her” or “It”; “He”, “She”, “It” is ‘not
this, not that’; commonplace of all mysticism, Eastern and
Western:
 In Plotinus: the negative characterization of One
 In Christianity: Via Negativa (the katapathic way)
 In Vedanta: Neti-Neti (not this, not this)
 In Buddhism: Nirvana or Sunyata (voidness)
 In Taoism: Wu-Wei (non-doing way)
 In Science: Zero-Point Energy

 Converse of Via Affirmativa (the apopathic way)

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Plotinus on One
(205BC – 70AD)

 God – the One beyond all attributes:

 Immeasurably beyond the world, beyond reality
 Ultimate Being: Non-being, beyond all existing things
 Beyond personality
 Self-sufficient: needing nothing

The goal of the Mystical Path is the flight of alone to

the Alone (All-One).

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Christian Mystic Meister Eckhart
(1260 - 1328)

 God is

 God is Being, pure being, absolute reality (I am that I am)

 God is neither good nor bad, nor better, nor best

 Meister Eckhart speaks of the God as:

 the Wordless God

 the Naked God

 the Nameless Nothing

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Quotes from Meister Eckhart
 The eye by which I see God is the same as
the eye by which God sees me. My eye and
God’s eye are the same – one in seeing, one
in knowing and one in loving.
 Identity with God is still not enough; to
abandon all things without abandoning God
is still not abandoning anything. Man must
live “without why.” He must seek nothing,
not even God. - Talks of
Instruction
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Neti-Neti in Vedanta
 Neti - neti - Not this, not this – or Not this, not that – a famous
passage from the Brhadaranyaka Upanishads 2.3.6, giving answer to
questions as to the nature of Brahman, thus hinting at its ineffability.

 Neti-neti as a statement means that we are not anything separate as in

the disparate dualistic framework of a separate "I - it" context (versus
the sacred non-dual and transpersonal "I-Thou" context). It says: "not
ego - not ego“ and "not self - not self“…

 Neti - neti also means to convey that we are not egos, and that we can
never be defined as being separate from the Universe, Absolute Being,
One, One Mind… without introducing a delusion.

 Neti-neti (as all similar statements on the Via Negativa) can be

understood correctly only within a spiritual context of Mystical Union
with the Universal Spirit, One, One Mind, the Absolute…

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What is Nirvana?
 Nirvana is the “haven” of all Buddhism, beyond all “havens”, total extinction
of all desire & suffering…

 A state of ineffable peace and liberation from

 the world of space & time

 all craving and repulsion

 birth, death and rebirth

 all passion

 all that is transient…

 Uncompounded state, made of nothing at all; one cannot say of Nirvana that it
 arises or it does not arise

 is to be produced

 is in the past, present or future

 is cognizable by mind, or perceivable by any sense…

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What is Sunyavada? (1)
 Sunyavada is a Mahayana Buddhist theory (vada) holding that the
world, reality to be empty, void (sunya), or unreal.

 Sunyavada is also known as Madhyamika (“The Middle Way” School

of Buddhism).

 Sunyavada was founded by an Indian Buddhist philosopher

Nagarjuna (150 – 250 CE) and based on the Prajnaparamita Sutras,
expounding the philosophy of emptiness, voidness (sunyata), which
later also influenced Ch’an in China and Zen in Japan.

 Sunyavada (Nagarjuna) recognizes two forms of Truth, the relative

that can be spoken about and discusssed (Samvriti), and the Absolute
(Paramartha) – Sunyata, or the Voidness of all things, particulars,
phenomena – of which nothing can be said: Sunyata is neither relative
nor absolute, neither existent nor non-existent…

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What is Sunyavada? (2)
According to Sunyavada:
 the phenomenal world is said to have no reality; yet the
world “underlying” it (Noumenon?) defies all description,
because of our inability to see, grasp, comprehend “the-
thing-itself ” (svabhava);

 all we can see and know is “dependent origination” and

impermanence;

 so, if nothing is permanent and real, reality (including the

seeming reality of I, me) is empty (sunya) of any substance.

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A Scriptural Prophecy Regarding Nagarjuna
 As is written in the Manjusrimulakalpa, the Acarya
Nagarjuna lived for a total of 600 years:

After I, the Tathagata, have passed away

And 400 years have elapsed,
A bhiksu, "The Naga", shall appear, of
Great faith and benefit to the teaching.
He shall achieve the stage of Great Joy
And for 600 years remain living.

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Some Criticism of Sunyavada
 Classical Hindu and some Buddhist thinkers dismissed Nagarjuna's
extreme use of the Via Negativa as self-condemned:
 the negation of everything is inconceivable without implying an
affirmation, a positive ground to negate;
 nothing can be proved false if nothing is taken as true;

 therefore:

 the ultimate truth cannot be negative;

 absolute negation is impossible.

 One could also say that the act of negation itself requires the existence
of the negator.

 Total skepticism is a figment, since such skepticism implies the

acceptance of the validity of the skeptic's judgment.

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Sunyavada as Prajnaparamita
 The Sunyavada School considers all philosophy as prajna-
paramita = the supreme non-conceptual intellectual intuitive
awareness and wisdom.

 According to Sunyavada
 Prajna is the supreme, immediate, sudden, non-
progressive attainment of non-dualistic Knowledge
(known as Jnana in Sanskrit), through Enlightenment;

 Ultimate or Absolute Reality can be known only by

the removal of all views about It.

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Sunyavada as Absolutism & Nondualism
 Sunyavada teaches that
 The only absolute being is self-evident and real, here & now;

 The Absolute is transcendent AND immanent, being the reality of

(and not behind) the appearances;

 There is no difference between infinite and finite, between samsara

and nirvana; reality and illusion, etc;

 The duality of phenomenal and noumenal (absolute), as all

dualistic views, is ignorance (avidya);

 There are two truths: the illusory (dualistic) truth of the empirical
standpoint and the Ultimate (Nondual) Truth of the Absolute,
which cannot be expressed in any words or symbols.

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Sunyavada is not Nihilism

 It does not teach that there is no reality, but

that there can be no doctrine or views about
reality.

 Sunya is not the negation of the Absolute,

but the affirmation of its indescribability.

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Sunyata and Wu-wei, Wu-hsin & Wu-nien
 Sunyata or wu (kokoro or mu in Japanese)
= absolute emptiness, voidness

 Wu-wei = non-action

 Wu-hsin = no-mind

 Wu-nien = no-thought

Sitting quietly, doing nothing,

Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

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Zen Doctrine of No-mind (Wu-hsin)
 A Zen doctrine which goes back to at least Hui
Neng (637-713) the 6th Patriarch of Chan, and his
assertion From the first not a thing is.
 Hui Neng insisted that the object of Zen is ‘seeing
into ones own nature’ which thus becomes ‘seeing
into nothingness’.
 To see into one’s own nature requires no mind

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Two “kinds” of Sunyata, Voidness Buddha Taught

 Voidness (insubstantiality) of all things

 material, physical
 immaterial, non-physical, mental, spiritual

 Voidness (insubstantiality) of self - annata

 absence of “I” & “mine”
 total quenching of ego and egoism.

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Levels of Sunyata, Voidness

Supreme, unsurpassable voidness, nirvana

Experience that is neither experience nor non-experience

Experience of infinite nothingness

Experience of infinite consciousness & bliss

Experience of infinite space & timelessness

Experience of “just earth”

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Zero-point Energy in Science

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 Thank You

Ivan Frimmel
Cell: 082-454-0311

E-mail: ivan.frimmel@nanhua.co.za

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