Methods of knowing Brahman

There are two sources by which you can know the Truth. One is to go on negating the Truth and the other is to accept the Truth as infinite. Vedanta Acharyas recommend the practice of neti-neti search to know about the absolute reality by first understanding what "not Brahman" is. The question "Who am I?" is an enquiry that is unanswerable because Brahman cannot be conceived by the mind. The practice of neti neti will point to the reality of "neither this nor that". It is a meditation technique that helps the practitioner to understand Brahman as something different from the normally identified things like feelings, relations, prestige etc. In this way, neti-neti can also be interpreted as "beyond this, beyond that". The seeker reject the body as I am not body, I am not mind, I am not intellect and like. Finally arrives "I am pure consciousness".

When you constantly inquire inside: "Who am I? Who am I?", your mind will supply many answers. All those answers have to be rejected. Your mind will say: "You are the essence of life. You are the eternal soul. You are divine," and so on and so forth. All those answers have to be rejected. When you have denied all the possible answers that the mind can supply and devise, when the question remains absolutely unanswerable, when all the faces have been rejected and emptiness is left, you have found the original face. Emptiness is the original face. Zero is the ultimate experience or more accurately no-thingness. That is the essence of Shanti Mantra or Vedic Peace Chants, widely used as part of hymns, chants and verses.

Taitriya upanishad tells us about Pancha kosha viveka, to help discriminate between "I" ( Atman) and the mortal body. Atma is Panchakoshatitaha (beyond the Pancha Koshas). The real problem in knowing our real self is that we see the mortal body made of Pancha Koshas as the real "I".

If water in a vessel is stirred, the sun reflected in that water also appears to be agitated. Like wise Atma appears to be bound by trigunas through superimposition. But the real self is untainted and beyond the influence of trigunas. The real self does not identify with these gunas and stand only as a witness (Sakshi). Knowing that it is only the Gunas that act, he remains unconcerned, unperturbed by the Gunas. Such a person who has gone beyond the three gunas is called a Gunatita (Bhagavad Gita 14.24-25). Established in the self, he remains the same amidst pleasant or unpleasant events and attain supreme peace, immortality and eternal bliss.