by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad
This is the last part of our discussion on the culture of limits (Part I, Part II, and Part III). In Hindu thought limits that define finitude and infinity were never opposed in a simple or antagonistic way. Instead, they were understood as mutually implicated. One could even say that they were woven together through cycles of manifestation and withdrawal, form and formlessness, appearance and return. The infinite was not something to be reached beyond the world, it was something already present within it. It was always unfolding rhythmically through time, consciousness, and matter. Philosophical expressions of Hinduism resisted the idea that ultimate reality could be exhausted by conceptual knowledge. The Upanishads repeatedly returned to the intuition that what is most real is also what is least graspable. Brahman, the ground of all being, was not an object among other objects, nor even the highest object of thought. It was that in which all objects, thoughts, and selves already participated. To know Brahman was not to acquire information, but to undergo a transformation of orientation. It was meant to be an inward turning in which the knower, the known, and the act of knowing were gradually revealed as inseparable.
The Upanishads, rather than offering systematic doctrines, offered sustained interrogations into the nature of self, reality, and knowledge, repeatedly returning to what resists articulation. Their method was deliberately indirect: aphorism, dialogue, paradox, and negation were used not to obscure meaning, but to prevent it from hardening into concept. Brahman was described as “not this, not that” (neti neti), not because it was inaccessible, but because any positive description would prematurely limit what was fundamentally unbounded. Knowledge, in the Upanishadic sense, did not accumulate toward mastery. It is supposed to turn inward, loosening the distinction between knower and known until insight emerged as recognition rather than discovery. In this respect, the Upanishadic discipline of unknowing closely paralleled later Sufi practices of ḥayra and self-refinement, where the failure of conceptual grasp was likewise treated not as an impasse, but as a necessary condition for deeper apprehension of reality.
This inseparability reshaped how limits were understood. Read more »