Yajnavalkya
c. 800–700 BC · Hindu Darshanas · Known
Yajnavalkya was a Vedic sage whose dialogues fill the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. His answer to every description of the ultimate was neti neti, not this, not this. He used that refusal to strip away every limited image, leaving the self that does the looking and is never itself looked at. That inner witness, he taught, is the same thing as Brahman, the reality behind everything else.
Signature
The position Yajnavalkya is most identified with in the Profiler:
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable
- Knowledge
- Intuition
Positions on the 3 axes the sources answer
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable (83 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
17 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Yajnavalkya refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Knowledge
- Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge?