---
type: Concept
bundle: upanishadic-core
bundle_version: "0.6.0"
id: nirguna-brahman
title: "Nirguṇa Brahman"
iast: "Nirguṇa Brahman"
devanagari: "निर्गुण ब्रह्म"
description: "Brahman without attributes — Brahman as it is in itself, prior to all relational description, not characterized by any quality, not an object of experience, not the negation of Saguṇa Brahman — the Pāramārthika (ultimate) description of the one non-dual reality that the Mahāvākyas point to"
darshana:
  - Advaita Vedānta
  - Vedānta
school_scope: "Characteristic of Advaita Vedānta; Viśiṣṭādvaita rejects Nirguṇa Brahman as the ultimate — arguing that Brahman is always Saguṇa (with qualities) and 'nirguṇa' means only 'free of defective qualities.' The Advaita reading is presented here."
text_source: "Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.9.26; 4.4.22; Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad 7; Brahmasūtra 1.1.4"
tags: [nirguna-brahman, advaita, pararmartha, brahman, neti-neti, mahavakya, saguna-brahman]
not:
  - term: "the negation of Saguṇa Brahman or a state reached by removing qualities"
    why: "Nirguṇa is not 'Saguṇa minus the attributes.' If it were, Nirguṇa Brahman would be a product of an operation — the removal of qualities — and would therefore be something less than Brahman-with-qualities. Advaita's claim is the reverse: Nirguṇa Brahman IS Brahman in its own nature. Saguṇa Brahman is Nirguṇa Brahman as it appears in relation to Māyā. The Upādhi does not add to Nirguṇa; the Upādhi creates the appearance of Saguṇa."
    instead: "Read Nirguṇa Brahman as the prior and complete reality; Saguṇa Brahman as the same reality seen through the Upādhi of Māyā — not Nirguṇa + attributes, but Nirguṇa as it appears in the relational framework"
  - term: "a void, emptiness, or absence"
    why: "Nirguṇa literally means 'without guṇas (attributes).' Western readers sometimes map this onto Buddhist Śūnyatā (emptiness) or onto the concept of mere negation. Nirguṇa Brahman in Advaita is not empty — it is the fullness of Sat-Cit-Ānanda. The absence of attributes does not mean absence of being; it means that Brahman's being is not constituted by or limited by any particular quality."
  - term: "an experience or a state that can be attained"
    why: "Nirguṇa Brahman cannot be an object of experience in the usual sense — experience implies an experiencer-object distinction, and Nirguṇa Brahman transcends that. The Mahāvākyas do not lead to an experience of Nirguṇa Brahman as an object; they lead to the recognition that the knower IS Nirguṇa Brahman. What is 'attained' is not a state but a recognition of what was always already the case."
  - term: "God without form (as in apophatic theology)"
    why: "Apophatic (negative) theology in Western traditions (Pseudo-Dionysius, Meister Eckhart, etc.) describes God via negation because God exceeds all categories. This is structurally similar but not identical. Christian apophatic theology still maintains the distinction between God and the soul; Advaita does not. Nirguṇa Brahman is the Ātman — the recognition collapses the creator-creature distinction entirely."
related:
  - /concepts/saguna-brahman.md
  - /concepts/sat-chit-ananda.md
  - /concepts/neti-neti.md
  - /concepts/laksana-brahman.md
  - /concepts/mahavakya.md
timestamp: "2026-07-01"
okf_version: "0.2"
license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

# Nirguṇa Brahman — निर्गुण ब्रह्म

**Not:** negation of Saguṇa Brahman, void or emptiness, an attainable state, God-without-form in the apophatic sense

## Etymology

Nir (निर्) = without, free from; guṇa (गुण) = quality, attribute, thread (from Sāṃkhya's three guṇas: Sattva, Rajas, Tamas). Nirguṇa = without attributes. The term covers two related claims: (1) Brahman has no qualities in the Sāṃkhya-guṇa sense — it is not composed of Sattva, Rajas, or Tamas; (2) Brahman has no limiting attributes of any kind that could distinguish it or define it as a particular kind of thing.

## The Structure of the Claim

Advaita holds that Brahman cannot be characterized because all characterization works by differentiation — "X has quality Q" means X is distinguished from things lacking Q. Brahman is not distinguished from anything; there is nothing outside it. Therefore, no positive characterization can capture its nature without falsification.

The Upaniṣads approach this in two ways:
- **Via negation**: Neti Neti (BU 2.3.6) — "not this, not this" — negating every proposed description
- **Via Svarūpa Lakṣaṇa**: Sat-Cit-Ānanda (Taittirīya 2.1-5) — not attributes Brahman "has" but what Brahman IS in its own nature

These two approaches are complementary: Neti Neti clears the field; Sat-Cit-Ānanda names the irreducible nature that remains.

## Why Nirguṇa Cannot Be an Object

The Taittirīya Upaniṣad (2.4) states: *yato vāco nivartante aprāpya manasā saha* — "from where speech returns, having not reached, along with the mind." The mind and speech are instruments of the Vyāvahārika domain; Nirguṇa Brahman is Pāramārthika. The instruments cannot reach it because it is the ground of those instruments.

The Māṇḍūkya (7) exhausts the descriptions of the three-state experiencers and then describes Turīya (= Nirguṇa Brahman) only through negation: "unseen, ungraspable, uncharacterizable." This is not evasion; it is precision.

## The Mahāvākyas and Nirguṇa

The Mahāvākyas point to Nirguṇa Brahman — not to Saguṇa Brahman (Īśvara). Aham Brahmāsmi ("I am Brahman") uses Brahman to refer to the attributeless, not the Lord of creation. Prajñānam Brahma ("Consciousness is Brahman") names the self-luminous awareness as the attributeless absolute, not a form of Brahman accessible to worship.

This is why the Mahāvākyas are not devotional formulas (which would point to Saguṇa) but jñāna-pramāṇa (knowledge-instruments) functioning at the Pāramārthika level.

## The Viśiṣṭādvaita Challenge

Rāmānuja argues that Nirguṇa Brahman is an incoherent concept: a Brahman without any attributes is indistinguishable from non-existence. He reads "nirguṇa" in the Upaniṣads as meaning "free of the three Sāṃkhya guṇas" or "free of auspicious-quality absence" — not as truly attributeless. For Rāmānuja, Brahman is the inner self of the universe and is eternally qualified by all its attributes.

The debate is live within Vedānta and OKF does not adjudicate it. Both readings engage the same texts; the difference is in the interpretation of what the Upaniṣads' negations are negating.

## Audience Metaphor

A cinema screen has no color of its own. A red scene appears on it — the screen seems red, but the screen itself has not become red; the projection creates the appearance. A blue scene appears — same screen, different appearance. When no film is projected, the screen is there, without any of the colors. Nirguṇa Brahman is the screen in this state: not colored by any particular quality, not made of any particular content, not absent — but not characterizable by what appears on it. The projected colors are real as projections; they do not belong to the screen.

## Citations

1. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.9.26 — Neti Neti as the approach to Nirguṇa; see [references/brhadaranyaka-upanishad.md]
2. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22 — "vijñātaraṃ are kena vijānīyāt" — by what would you know the knower?; see [references/brhadaranyaka-upanishad.md]
3. Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad 7 — Turīya as Nirguṇa; see [references/mandukya-upanishad.md]
4. Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.4 — yato vāco nivartante; see [references/taittiriya-upanishad.md]
5. Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya 1.1.4 (Śaṅkarācārya) — on the self-luminous and attributeless Brahman; see [references/brahmasutra-bhashya.md]
