3: The eye does not go there, nor speech, nor mind. We do not know (Brahman to be such and such), hence we are not aware of any process of instructing about it.
4: “That (Brahman) is surely different from the known; and again, It is above the unknown” - such was (the utterance) we heard of the the ancient (teachers) who explained it to us.
(Kena Upanisad I.3, 4 )
There is what seems a straightforward admission that the logico-empirical method cannot establish the existence of Brahman. Why might that be so? If Brahman is the Self then the Self cannot be grasped in the way that any object might be. The consciousness that is being grasped would have to grasp itself being grasped and that grasping of etc. Bertrand Russell noted this in a letter to Frege. There is inevitable infinite regress. Shankara in his commentary :
Though the mind thinks and determines other things, it does not think or determine itself; for of it, too, Brahman is the Self. A thing is cognised only by the mind and the senses. As Brahman is not an object of perception to these, therefore,na vidmah,we do not know.
How then is Brahman to be communicated or taught to a disciple? Brahman escapes all categories but there is deep wisdom embedded in the realised masters of traditional authority. Put the disciple in the vicinity of a realised sage and he will begin to resonate with the knowledge of “the Brahman that is immediate and direct - the Self that is within all” (Brhadaranyaka Up. III.iv.1)
In this way, the text, “Thus we heard” etc., states how through a succession of preceptors and disciples was derived the purport of the sentence which establishes Brahman that Self of all which is devoid of distinguishing features, and is the light of pure consciousness. Moreover, Brahman can only be known through such a traditional instruction of preceptors and not through argumentation, nor by study (or exposition), intelligence, great learning, austerity, sacrifices, etc.....
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