Beyond Knowing and Not-Knowing
From the Haripath by Sant Dnyaneshwar
Certainty beyond knowing
The most epistemologically radical abhanga. In God, knowing and not-knowing dissolve. Even the Vedas cannot measure what happens there. Vaikuntha has been made everywhere: not a destination but where you already are.
Verse 1
जाणीव नेणीव भगवंतीं नाहीं | हरिउच्चारणी पाही मोक्ष सदा || १ ||
In God there is no knowing or not-knowing. In the utterance of Hari, see: liberation is always present.
In plain words
In God there is no knowing and no not-knowing. Say Hari and see: liberation is there, always.
What it means
Dnyaneshwar begins by taking away the mind's favorite project. God is not an object the intellect can seize, so knowing does not reach him; and he is not hidden either, so ignorance is not the obstacle. The whole axis of knowing and not-knowing does not apply. What remains is the mouth. In the utterance of Hari, liberation is not promised for later; it is present, always, in the sound itself. The seeker who feels too ignorant is not behind, and the scholar is not ahead. The door opens at the level of the tongue, where everyone stands equal.
Dnyaneshwar opens this abhanga by pulling the ground out from under you. In God, he says, there is no knowing and no not-knowing. The two things you spend your entire spiritual life chasing and fleeing, clarity and confusion, both dissolve in the divine. And then, in the same breath, he puts the Name on your tongue: in the utterance of Hari, look, liberation is always present. Not coming. Not earned. Always.
This verse is for the one who is exhausted from trying to get the spiritual life right. You have been reaching for understanding, measuring your progress, sorting your experiences into clarity and confusion. Dnyaneshwar says: both of those categories dissolve where you are headed. You do not need to achieve a state of perfect knowing. You do not need to escape your confusion. You need only to say the Name. The Name carries you past the place where the mind's sorting is useful, into a territory where liberation was never absent.
Verse 2
नारायण हरी उच्चार नामाचा | तेथें कळिकाळाचा रीघ नाहीं || २ ||
Where the Name of Narayana Hari is uttered, the dark age has no entry.
In plain words
Utter the name: Narayana Hari. Where that sound is, the dark age has no entry.
What it means
Kalikala is the dark age the world is said to have entered, the age of quarrel and forgetting, and the word carries the shadow of devouring time as well. Dnyaneshwar does not say the name helps you survive that age. He says the name makes a place the age cannot enter at all. Wherever Narayana Hari is being uttered, a small territory opens in which Kali has no writ. The corruption of the times, the shortness of memory, the thinning of faith: none of it crosses that threshold. The refuge is not in the mountains and not in another era. It is one utterance wide, and it stands wherever the utterance stands.
Dnyaneshwar names the one thing that can shelter you when the times are against you: the utterance of Narayana Hari. Where the Name is spoken, the dark age has no entry. Not fought off, not endured, not survived. It cannot get in. The Name is the wall. The sound itself is the fortress. And what presses against that wall, the scattering, the distraction, the heaviness of an age that works against depth, has no power there.
This verse is for the one who feels that something in the world itself resists the spiritual life. You are not imagining it. The noise is real. The pull outward is constant. Dnyaneshwar does not pretend otherwise. He says: the Name is stronger. You do not need to retreat from the world or wait for better times. You need to open your mouth. The Name you speak creates a space that the storm cannot enter, and it starts with a single utterance.
Verse 3
तेथील प्रमाण नेणवे वेदांसी | तें जीवजंतूंसीं केवीं कळे || ३ ||
Even the Vedas do not know the measure of that place; how then would living creatures understand?
In plain words
Even the Vedas do not know the measure of that place. How then would small living creatures understand it?
What it means
This is not said to humble the seeker; it is said to unburden him. The place the name opens has no measure that even the Vedas can take, and the Vedas are the measurers of everything. If they fall silent before it, then understanding was never going to be the entrance fee. Small living creatures, and Dnyaneshwar includes all of us in that phrase, do not need to grasp what they are being given. A child does not measure the house it is born into. The verse lets the mind admit its size without shame, because the name works whether or not the one saying it comprehends the result.
Dnyaneshwar says something staggering in this verse: even the Vedas do not know the measure of the place the Name opens. The highest scripture, the self-luminous word of divine origin, reaches toward what is there and cannot contain it. And if the Vedas cannot measure it, how would any living creature understand? The instruments of knowing, all of them, from the most exalted to the most ordinary, are not the right tools for this territory.
This verse is for the one who believes that understanding is the goal. You have been reading, studying, collecting insights, waiting for the moment when everything clicks into place. Dnyaneshwar says: the Vedas themselves have not achieved that click. Your not-understanding is not a failure but the correct response, the only honest response to something that exceeds every instrument designed to measure it. The Name does not ask you to understand. It asks you to speak. And the speaking carries you past the boundary of everything the mind can map.
Verse 4
ज्ञानदेव फळ नारायण पाठ | सर्वत्र वैकुंठ केलें असे || ४ ||
The fruit of Dnyandev's Narayana recitation: Vaikuntha has been made everywhere.
In plain words
The fruit of Dnyandev's recitation of Narayana: Vaikuntha has been made everywhere.
What it means
The abhanga ends by naming its fruit, and the fruit is not a journey. Dnyaneshwar does not say the recitation of Narayana will carry him to Vaikuntha after death. He says Vaikuntha has been made everywhere, already, as an accomplished fact. The name does not transport the singer to God's country; it turns the ground under the singer's feet into God's country. This is the natural end of the abhanga's logic: a God beyond knowing, a name the dark age cannot enter, a measure the Vedas cannot take, and so a heaven that refuses to stay in one location. Wherever Dnyandev walks reciting, that place is Vaikuntha. There is nowhere left to go.
Dnyaneshwar closes this abhanga by opening his hand and showing you what the Name has placed there. The fruit of the Narayana recitation, he says, is this: Vaikuntha has been made everywhere. The supreme abode of God, the place devotees spend lifetimes trying to reach, is not a distant heaven. It is here. The kitchen, the street, the hospital room, the cracked pavement under your ordinary feet. The Name does not take you somewhere else. It shows you where you have always been.
This verse is for the one who is looking for God in the wrong direction. You have been reaching upward, outward, toward some extraordinary experience that will confirm you have arrived. Dnyaneshwar says: the arriving has already happened. Vaikuntha is the ground you are standing on, not the destination. The Name did not build it. The Name uncovered it. And now the only thing left is to walk as someone who knows that every step falls on sacred ground.
Key Concepts
जाणीव नेणीव
jaaniv neniv
Knowing and not-knowing; both dissolve in God
सर्वत्र वैकुंठ
sarvatra Vaikunth
Vaikuntha everywhere; the divine abode is where you stand
For the Seeker
You do not need to understand this. That is the teaching. Understanding belongs to the realm of knowing and not-knowing, and God is beyond both. You only need to say the Name. The ground beneath your feet is already Vaikuntha.
The Refrain (धृवपद)
हरि मुखें म्हणा हरि मुखें म्हणा | पुण्याची गणना कोण करी
हरि मुख से कहो, हरि मुख से कहो | पुण्य की गिनती कौन करे
Say Hari with your mouth, say Hari with your mouth; who can count the merit of this?