Waking Up to What Cannot Be Named.

Spirituality means waking up. 

Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. 

They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep, without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing we call human existence. (Anthony de Mello, Awareness, 1990, p. 5)

When the guru sat down to worship each evening the ashram cat would get in the way and distract the worshippers. So he ordered that the cat be tied up during evening worship. Years later, when the guru died, the cat continued to be tied up during evening worship. And when the cat died, another cat was bought so that it could be tied up during evening worship. Centuries later learned treatises were written on the religious significance of tying up a cat during worship.”

(Anthony de Mello, The Song of the Bird, 1982, p. 42)

To love people is to see all their magic and to remind them of it. To love is to liberate, not to possess. To love is to be sensitive to every thought, every feeling, every wish of the loved one, and to be in allowance of their expression, and to be in acceptance of your inner world too. (Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love, 1992, p. 18)

Hinduism → Mahavira (Jainism) → Buddha (Buddhism) → Aristotle → Jesus (Christianity) → Muhammad (Islam) This sequence reflects chronological proximity and shared human inquiry, not direct influence or succession. Each figure arose within distinct cultural, philosophical, and historical contexts.

The apophatic and cataphatic are two approaches that describe how humans make sense of what feels larger than words. The cataphatic is when we give shape to mystery, when we speak in descriptions, name its definitions and characteristics. It is when someone lights a candle, sings a hymn, recites a prayer, studies scripture, or explains what love or God means to them. It gives the invisible a language. The apophatic, on the other hand, is when we step into its mystic nature directly, into silence and its offerings. It is when we stop speaking and experience, experience. It is the stillness after the prayer, the space between two breaths, the quiet awareness that no name or idea can ever be complete. Both are ways of reaching toward meaning. The Christian mystic Pseudo-Dionysius called them two paths: one that speaks of God’s qualities and one that unspeaks them to preserve the mystery that words cannot hold. Hinduism expresses this through neti, neti, “not this, not that”, a way of letting go of every image until what remains cannot be described. Buddhism moves in the same current through the teaching of emptiness and non-self, dissolving attachment to any fixed identity. In Sufi Islam, the seeker experiences fanā, the soft erasure of self and all attributes, leaving only presence itself. These are philosophies with human gestures, one reaching through language, the other through silence, both necessary at different times, for different people, to access the “much, much more.”

Aristotle first introduced the terms apophasis and kataphasis, but he used them in the context of logic and grammar.

The spiritual and theological meanings, the ones used today in philosophy, mysticism, and comparative religion, were developed much later by Pseudo-Dionysius, who adopted Aristotle’s vocabulary and gave it a metaphysical and contemplative dimension.

I like this concept as we apply these approaches even in psychotherapy. It’s not about which is right or better, the question is which one brings safety for the ones we are in relation with. There are moments in the therapeutic encounter when silence, presence, and unknowing are the most honest responses, and there are moments when education, explanation, and structure are needed to anchor experience. Some people enter healing the way they enter water, by immersion, by feeling it directly; others begin by understanding the currents, taking a theoretical class, seeking safety through knowing before they enter. Both are legitimate expressions of human learning. Experience and information are not opposites, they are reciprocal ways of touching truth. The work is not to decide which is higher, but to recognise that contradiction is woven into the fabric of life. Whether we call it belief or perception, what we see depends on where we stand. From another position in the universe, even the moon is neither full nor new. Compassion grows when we remember that our view is one among many, that as we hold our truth, we can hold space for another’s truth too.

In Buddhism the approach between saying and un-saying, between affirmation and silence, plays out in rich variety. In Theravāda, the earliest surviving school, there is great care to preserve the original discourses (suttas) of the Buddha and to practice insight (vipassanā) into impermanence, suffering, non-self. One speaks, studies, reflects the cataphatic side is strong, description, rules, doctrinal clarity. But alongside that lies a deep apophatic approach too, the ultimate reality is emptiness; fixed views must be let go; one must see through appearances to what cannot fully be captured by words. Mahāyāna Buddhism, emerging later, leans more overtly into paradox and transcendence. Mahāyāna texts declare that all phenomena are empty (śūnyatā), that Buddha-nature pervades all beings, yet that nature itself eludes full description. The Ratnagotravibhāga is a Mahāyāna treatise describing buddha-nature as eternally present yet hidden by defilements. Mahāyāna speaks of that luminous ground affirmatively (cataphatic: buddha-nature, compassion, bodhicitta) and apophatically (emptiness, non-dual silence) in a single breath.

From within this Mahāyāna movement sprang Vajrayāna (tantric or esoteric Buddhism), which adds ritual, mantra, visualization, and direct transmissions as potent tools toward awakening. Vajrayāna holds cataphatic forms like chanting mantras, visualizing deities, invoking sacred images as skillful means. Yet it simultaneously demands entering into apophatic ground like recognizing the empty nature of mind, dissolving the self-form, awakening through silence beyond images. In Vajrayāna there is a union of generation (affirmative visualization) and completion (dissolution into pure awareness) stages. The ritual initiation (abhiseka) grants authority to use these forms. 

“The Tao that can be named is not the Tao.”

— Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu)

I believe the above line echoes Alfred Korzybski’s insight that “the map is not the territory”; that any description is not the thing itself. In Urdu, Fārid Ayāz put it beautifully, “shabdo se hum khel rahe hain, shabdon se hum bahel rahe hain”, with words we play, and with words we entertain ourself. In one of his shows he changed the word ‘bahel’ to ‘beh (drown)’;  And yet, we need both these approaches. We begin by crafting rituals, language, imagery, creed and simultaneously we must remember; these are not the experience itself.This brings us back to “the Tao that can be named is not the Tao”, a line so simple, yet laden with implication. The more time you spend with it, the more it dissolves and expands in you. Every time we define, we also limit. And yet, without words, how would we share, teach, or make meaning together? This paradox lies at the heart of every faith, philosophy, and human encounter.

Spiritual traditions and psychotherapy repeatedly work through two functional modes. One mode uses language, structure, explanation, and shared concepts to organise experience. The other mode relies on direct awareness without verbal interpretation. Both modes serve different regulatory and relational purposes. Language provides shared understanding, cognitive orientation, and psychological stability. It supports reflection, ethical positioning, and the ability to make sense of internal experience, which for many people is necessary for safety and trust. At the same time, there are limits to what explanation can hold. Certain experiences exceed conceptual description and become distorted when over-analysed. In these moments, non-verbal attention allows experience to be contacted without adding interpretation. Psychotherapy moves between these modes continuously. Some moments require naming, framing, and explanation to support coherence. Other moments require presence, restraint, and tolerance of uncertainty to prevent interference with the client’s process. Effective work depends on recognising which mode reduces threat and supports engagement in a given moment. No single approach is sufficient on its own. People differ in how they learn, regulate, and establish trust, shaped by temperament, history, and context. Compassion develops when practitioners recognise the partial nature of any single perspective and remain flexible in how understanding is offered or withheld.

Consider these texts, in the Bible, God reveals Himself as “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14), a name that both names, and refuses to fully name; God. In the Qur’an, God is described by the “Most Beautiful Names” (al-asmāʾ al-ḥusnā), yet His essence is beyond all comparison; “There is nothing whatever like Him.” In the Bhagavad Gītā, Krishna says “I am the origin of all; from Me everything proceeds” (BG 10.8), a positive affirmation, yet also urges Arjuna to let go of all mental constructs to dwell in pure awareness.

The line from Lao Tzu reminds us that every tradition, every scripture, every prayer speaks, and also un-speaks. It points toward the boundary where language bows out, where the heart must feel. As therapists, students, seekers, we sometimes need definitions, structure, and doctrine. And at other times, we need silence, presence, and unknowing. Speaking shapes the world; falling silent returns us to its source. The Tao that can be named is not the Tao; and perhaps our work is to dance between those two, to name, and to let go.

Have a good retreat, See you on the other side !