It is not born nor does it die, it is neither white nor pale.

This negation of attributes is neti neti in practice. The Ātman is neither white (śukla) nor pale (pāṇḍara)—these being colors—but it is also not black nor red. The partial negation points toward total negation: it has no color, no form, no perceptible quality. Na jātaḥ na mṛtaḥ: it is not born nor does it die. This contradicts our most basic intuition: everything I see is born and dies. But the Ātman is not “seen” in the ordinary sense; it is the seer. The seer is not born when the seen is born; it does not die when the seen dies. Just as the spectator is not born and does not die with the film.

The sādhaka who fears death—and who does not?—finds radical consolation here. It is not that something survives “after” death; rather, there is no death because there was never any birth of the ātman. What was born was upādhi, a conditioning; what will die is upādhi. The ātman remains, not as an entity persisting in time, but as that for which time is a vṛtti, a modification, not a vastu—not a substantial reality.