The significance of neti neti

In Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, god is questioned by his students to describe God. He states "The Divine is not this and it is not that" (neti, neti).

Thus, the Divine is not real as we are real, nor is it unreal. The divine is not living in the sense humans live, nor is it dead. The Divine is not compassionate as we use the term, nor is it uncompassionate. And so on. We can never truly define God in words.

All we can say, in effect, is that "It isn't this, but also, it isn't that either". In the end, the student must transcend words to
understand the nature of the Divine.

In this sense, neti-neti is not a denial. Rather, it is an assertion that whatever the Divine may be, when we attempt to capture it in human words, we must inevitably fall short, because we are limited in understanding, and words are limited in ability to express the transcendent. The original texts shed light on the practice of neti neti as a tool to Self-realisation aka Brahman.