That which is persistent and permanent is abādha, undeniable and insoluble. What is always persistent and permanently present? That can only be me, consciousness. That which must always be present, for things to appear (from and in this consciousness).

The denial bādha is not motivated by nihilism, but by fullness. I deny the limitation of things in themselves. When I touch one thing, I touch everything. This is also called sublation (dissolving into a more subtle greater whole, German philosophical: aufheben).

Denial thus becomes something beautiful. It is the cessation of objects, by elevating them to their non-dual nature. You do this by recognizing their deeper substrate as ‘I am’. It is not the intention to cancel people, to erase or banish things I don’t like, or to hide myself in a cave.

In Vedantic methodology, bādhaka is any step that negates a previous statement, such as the methodology of apavāda vākya. By means of a statement (vākya), we take the individual seeker gently step by step (padapadam) towards the truth. When he or she takes a step further in his or her understanding, we negate the previous step by negating the previous statement (apavāda). Therefore, once in knowledge, there is no way back.

In the light of knowledge, the previous steps then disappear. That is how knowledge works. As soon as a child knows what an apple is, he sees an apple. As soon as you know that everything you see is consciousness, everything is just you, with apparent names, forms and functions. Why? Because your mind is anchored in this knowing.

Then it is just so, and you no longer need knowledge. Because you are no longer looking wrong. To get there requires trust, openness and flexibility of mind. This automatically brings even more trust, openness and flexibility of mind.

In Vedānta, knowledge (jñāna) corrects errors not only by denying them, but by sublimating them into the infinitely subtler perspective of Brahman, which is called sublation.

For example, we first build a human being by describing the five shells or husks (kośa’s) of a human being. Then it is proven that we are not all those things that we thought we were as a human being. We do this by stating that we are the seer of the seen (dṛg dṛśya), and by recognizing and acknowledging that they have a beginning (ādi) and an end (anta), and are therefore changeable (vikāra).

Thus we have detached ourselves from them by discrimination (viveka). Then we deny the duality of discrimination, with the following steps. We distinguish between satya and mithyā. This is the next step of negation (bādhaka): all objects are dependent on their real substrate consciousness. Ds they are not independently real.

Step 1. Because of their dependence, objects are not separate from the independent self. And they do not exist independently.

Step 2. By seeing that mithyā is also satya, just as the pot is actually clay, and the wave is water, we see that objects in themselves have no right to exist, but are their substrate: Their existence itself, shining as consciousness.

For example, I can start with the gross body, and then make myself step by step more subtle in tissue, organs, cells, molecules, atoms, quantum mechanics, space, information, intelligence, consciousness.

The last step of negation is then the knowledge that consciousness does not really change into an object, but apparently (vivarta pariṇāmi). There are no objects, there is no creation. There is only pure consciousness. Brahman remains brahman, and does not change into anything at all, into reality.

Negation can be called the dissolution of objects into truth. The last step is, together with all other objects, the letting go of knowledge, but that is a natural thing. It is just immediate being. As you previously took for granted to be so and so.

Conclusion: denial, neti neti or bādha is not simply denying everything. On the contrary, it is very precisely and subtly demonstrating that the objects are not what they seem to be, but expressions or appearances of myself.