Now, the ascetics and brahmins who assert a self that is neither percipient nor non-percipient and healthy after death describe it as formed, or formless, or both formed and formless, or neither formed nor formless.

So they reject those who assert a self that is percipient and healthy after death, as well as those who assert a self that is non-percipient and healthy after death. Why is that? Because they believe that perception is a disease, a boil, a dart; that non-perception is a stupor; and that the state of neither perception nor non-perception is peaceful and sublime.

The Realized One understands this as follows. There are ascetics and brahmins who assert a self that is neither percipient nor non-percipient and healthy after death, describing it as formed, or formless, or both formed and formless, or neither formed nor formless. Some ascetics or brahmins assert the embracing of that dimension merely through the conditioned phenomena of what ought be seen, heard, thought, and known. But that is said to be a disastrous approach. For that dimension is said to be not attainable by means of conditioned phenomena, but only with a residue of conditioned phenomena. ‘All that is conditioned and crude. But there is the cessation of conditions—<em>that</em> is real.’ Understanding this and seeing the escape from it, the Realized One has gone beyond all that.