Why Understanding Infinity Is Important For You

Though you might think you have a rough idea about infinity, have you ever really thought about what exactly it means, and just how long, and far, forever stretches? Looking deeply into what infinity means is key to grasping the idea of Infinite Existence, and key to finding peace and freedom in your life right here and right now, today.

There is no number for infinity, simply because if there was then you could always add a 1 to it and make it bigger. For this reason, infinity is represented by the symbol ∞ and is really an idea, a concept, although it is still used in mathematical calculations. For our purposes though, we’ll disregard its use in math, to concentrate on what infinity means in the sense of space and time. For infinity, think eternity, forever, always, endless, boundless, immortal.

Infinity is really big – which is the general sense most people have of infinity. But if you have sat in church and tried to think about what eternity and eternal life might actually look like, you’ve probably just given yourself a headache. It’s really big, and in the sense of eternal life – it’s really long. But let me start pushing you now on just how big infinite space and time really is…

Earthly Time & Space

Let’s start with some more down to earth facts and figures:

The human lifespan averages around 73 years old globally but the oldest, independently verified, life was lived by Jeanne Calment, who was 122 years old when she died in 1997. Though it seems like a long time when we’re seven years old, our lives start shrinking pretty quickly as we age. By the time we glide into our forties most of us have come to the realisation that human lifespans are pretty short. Okay, better than the 24 hours a Mayfly gets but nowhere near the 400 years that the Greenland Shark can reach¹. No wonder most religion’s promise some kind of eternal life and no wonder it’s part of the draw to religion for most believers – see Stage Two of The Roadmap for more on this.

But our human genes have, after all, been around a great deal longer. The fossils of the oldest discovered ancestor of humans, nicknamed Lucy, is dated as being around 3.8 million years old² and the first recognisably modern human fossils are dated to around 300,000 years ago,³ with the first cave art, perhaps the most convincing sign of modern human culture, dated at around 50,000 years old.⁴ In that 300,000 years there have been over a million generations of humans. That’s a lot of time and a lot of living. The story of those humans may not always be covered in glory, more often blood and guts, but when I think how each human has lived a life with the same fundamental loves and losses, desires and fears as your own, you feel a sense of the infinite.

And yet, each life is a mere speck in infinite time and space. The pyramids of Giza are estimated to be 4,500 years old. Stonehenge is around 5000 years old, and the oldest human stone construction, discovered so far, Göbekli Tepe⁵ in Turkey, is somewhere around 10,000 years old. These incredible structures are testament to our human urge to construct and create and preserve ourselves, or some sense of ourselves, beyond our deaths and so touch infinity.

Humans are newborns compared to the history of life on earth and it’s here that we can start to get a sense of really long timespans. This is useful because we can understand these kind of timespans through scientific discovery and so there is a concreteness to them. And, after all, the history of life on earth is still our own history as the ancestors of our own genes were there in the first life on earth in protocells in the oceans. Some notably vast timespans, in a human context, can help with building us up to the limitlessness of infinite time.

Dinosaurs may have gone extinct 65 million years ago but they ruled the earth for 150 million years before that. Primitive types of fish have been dated to come into existence just over 500 million years ago and the first simple animals to have evolved from plant life around 700 million years ago. The beginnings of plant life, protocells are thought to have formed 3.8 billion years ago and the first types of Bacteria at 2.4 billion years. The 300,000 years that modern humans have been around seems even shorter now, right?

Cosmic Time & Space

The Earths geological history is tied up with life, in that life, through oxygen, influenced periods of cooling and heating of our planet and the creation of our atmosphere. The Earth is thought to have formed around 4.5 billion years ago, along with the rest of our solar system, though our sun is slightly older at 4.6 billion years. These are truly mind stretching lengths of time, but of course still measurable.

In space we inevitably think of vast distances as well as times. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is estimated to be 13.61 billion years old and our universe itself estimated to be 13.71 billion years old. (an uncertainty factor here of a mere 200 million years is a big improvement in the last 30 years⁶) It is 93 million miles from Earth to the Sun and if you want to go to our nearest solar system, Alpha Centauri, you’ll need to travel for 4.2 years at the speed of light. A vast distance, but dwarfed by the distance to our nearest major galaxy, Andromeda, at 2.5 million light years away. Putting aside for now the question of whether or not our universe itself is infinite⁷, the distance from Earth to Andromeda is nothing compared to the farthest stars yet seen at 13 billion light years away.⁸ And none of these magnitudes even gets close to infinity.

But all that is just our universe. With a multiverse of universes, see Infinite Existence for more on this, this is going on in literally billions of other universes. And what about possible dimensions of space we can only speculate about, branches of space beyond height, breadth and width? Currently String Theory predicts ten infinitesimally small dimensions curled up inside each atom of our own universe. This also leads to a multiverse of universes which String Theorists call the Landscape.⁹

This takes us to thinking about the vastness of life and space and time at a micro-level. In your own body there are around 20-40 trillion cells, and, look away now if you’re a germaphobe, there are estimated to be the same or more number of germs in the human body. This vast amount of activity at the micro level is then in turn dwarfed by the fact that these cells are made up of trillions of molecules and all this in turn is made up of atoms. There are around seven billion, billion, billion atoms in an average human adult.¹⁰ These atoms are made up of further particles, but we’ll come back to that later.

So now, if your head’s not spinning too much , and you’re able to hold a sense of the gigantesque nature of our universe, go ahead and place it within a multiverse of universes, lets say a trillion (one thousand million) universes. In this context, our immense universe is suddenly as tiny as the speck of life that we humans are within our own universe. Now go ahead and double that amount of a trillion universes, now multiply that trillion universes by one thousand, by one million, by a trillion, by a googol, then by a googleplex¹¹, now multiply it by itself…. and you’re still not even close.

With infinity there is always more room, and, always more time.

There is room and time for everything – each particle of matter can exist in every possible space & so can every other particle and then all can combine in every imaginable way. And then this can repeat again and again and again. Journey could have been describing infinity perfectly in Don’t Stop Believin’, when Steve Perry sings, “It goes on and on and on and on….” And this is the paradox you have to get your head around to really grasp infinity – it goes on forever, and, it already is forever.

Infinity Is Fully Formed

Try to take that in… the major paradox at the heart of infinity – all this massiveness means infinity, being endless, boundless and eternal, is already fully formed. It doesn’t get bigger or grow larger because it is already infinite, so what is there to grow into? It doesn’t go on forever because it is forever.

Infinity just is.

Already endless, it is fully formed in a sense, and yet it is formless because if it had an end then it would not be infinite. This is where any true comprehension of infinity ultimately mirrors mystical interpretations of reality formed at a time before there was any comprehension of the size of our universe or if it was infinite or whether there was a multiverse of such universes.

In Taoism, Lao Tzu describes reality this way:

“There was something undefined and complete, coming into existence before Heaven and Earth. How still it was and formless, standing alone, and undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and in no danger (of being exhausted)! It may be regarded as the Mother of all things. I do not know its name, and I give it the designation of the Tao (the Way or Course).”¹²

Karma and Samsara¹³, which posits an infinite cycle of death and rebirth, are at the heart of Buddhist teachings. However, the Buddha himself refused to give an answer to questions of whether the universe is finite or infinite, though at the same time he pointed to the paradoxical nature of both possibilities being true:

“And what teachings have I taught and pointed out as not categorical, ‘The cosmos is eternal’ … ‘The cosmos is not eternal’ … ‘The cosmos is finite’ … ‘The cosmos is infinite’ … ‘The soul is the same thing as the body’ … ‘The soul and the body are different things’ … ‘A realized one still exists after death’ … ‘A realized one no longer exists after death’ … ‘A realized one both still exists and no longer exists after death’ … ‘A realized one neither still exists nor no longer exists after death.’”¹⁴

The Hindu Vedanta sacred text, The Upanishads, is littered with references to the infinite nature of existence and the paradox within this:

“That One, though motionless, is swifter than the mind. The senses can never overtake It, for It ever goes before. Though immovable, It travels faster than those who run. By It the all-pervading air sustains all living beings.”¹⁵

In the Bible the infinite nature of God, (and here God can be interpreted as the same as reality, see Glossary), is often referenced, such as when prayers end, …forever and ever, Amen , or in Psalm 90:1-2:

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations, Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world,, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”¹⁶

Then there are the Greeks, with Zeno famously pointing out the logical paradoxes at the heart of time and distance. The best known of Zeno’s paradoxes¹⁷ shows that there is an infinite distance between any two points by imagining travelling from point A to point B with each movement forward equal to half the distance of the total journey. In this way you never reach your destination because you can always move half the distance yet to travel.

These distances of course become vanishingly small and here we are drawn back again to the vastness found at the atomic level. As we move from cell to molecule to atom to electron and quark will we ever reach an end point to find so called fundamental particles – units of energy that are indivisible? Personally I doubt it. Like Zeno, I suggest that distances can always be halved and, the paradox of this is that smaller and smaller units of energy will be discovered until we reach a point where our means to measure, currently particle accelerators, reach their limit.¹⁸

In this way the fundamental paradox – infinity goes on forever in all directions, even though it is already fully formed – is given an extra twist – that we can never actually prove or disprove this. And there’s the rub, and one of the most important points in understanding infinity, you must let go of the urge to prove or disprove this and instead find your own essential place as part of this paradox, which is as part of Infinite Existence.

No Beginning No Ending

Accepting the paradox of infinity having no beginning and no ending, and yet already containing everything, can be approached using the Buddhist metaphor for life, The Wave and Water. Thich Nhat Hanh discusses this in detail in the chapter No Coming No Going in the book Fear, which is one of the Guides I recommend.

Our human condition within the infinity of time and space, within Infinite Existence, is like we are simultaneously both a wave on the water and the water itself. As the wave we exist briefly – this is our daily world and our World Identity – and we look distinct from other parts of the universe, like a wave seems distinct from the water it comes from. However, we are more than our World Identity and as Universal Consciousness we exist for all time and in all places as the water itself. As the wave is not really separate from the water, we are not not actually separate from all of reality, which is infinite. Only thinking we are separate makes it seem like we are and so a deeper part of what makes us up is eternal and infinite. You can call it soul, or consciousness or anything you like, but the important thing is to feel it in your life.

Seeing our place within an Infinite Existence in this way shows the permanence of infinity, because it has no end. However, as with the paradoxical nature of infinity, we also have complete impermanence in all material things and in our World Identities. As is always clear when thinking about infinity with cosmic time and space, everything in our universe will turn to dust eventually, even as new universes are born. We live beyond death as Universal Consciousness, but we can’t take our memories with us, anymore than we can take our possessions.

Accepting the end of our World Identities, and embracing Universal Consciousness, is the answer that brings peace, but it can be a difficult answer to grasp, and grasping what infinity really means is vital to this process. The whole of this website and The Roadmap are my attempt to help you find Universal Consciousness within yourself as part of Infinite Existence. Please also read the article Meditation – 3 Ways.

Tolstoy’s Despair

Leo Tolstoy author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, garnered fame and fortune and critical acclaim in his own lifetime. However, at the height of his powers, the literary giant was struck in an existential crisis that led to him considering all of life completely devoid of meaning. At one point he considered suicide the only rational action for himself, or indeed for anyone, who believed there was no God as taught in traditional religions, and so no objective meaning in life to grasp as real.

In short, what was the point of anything, including our tiny lives, if death was always the outcome?

If you are clinging on to your World Identity as all of who you are, then you will almost certainly be asking the same question yourself. If you cannot feel Universal Consciousness, which is the connection we all have to the infinite, then you will be stranded with your World Identity and the resulting further questions of what does it matter what happens in the world? Once you grasp the vastness of infinity, if you don’t feel connected to this vastness it can feel like an abyss, swallowing you whole.

However, even if you have connected with Universal Consciousness and Infinite Existence and see yourself as part of an endless cycle of life, you may still be bothered by the question of what does it matter what happens in the world? What does it matter what happens in the world if everything will happen, has happened, is always happening.

It is a fair question because everything will happen. You cannot create a perfect life and fix everything so that there will be no suffering. But, what you can do as part of your time now on earth is to live a life that feels right. When you see yourself as both World Identity and Universal Consciousness, as both wave and water then why would you do anything to harm yourself? And yourself here means everything – your body, the environment, other people, future generations. However, this is not to say you must take this on as any kind of pious burden. Rather, once you see yourself as an integral part of all life, as Infinite Existence, it will feel natural to do your best to do no harm to others and the world – why would you hurt and poison yourself?

To return to Tolstoy, (and please read more in an excellent article in The Marginalian) he also found the way out of his despair by embracing infinity:

“For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.”¹⁹

But I Don’t Believe In Infinity

You don’t have to.

No-one is forcing you to. Maybe there is one universe and it is finite? Or even several universes, but they’re all finite. They will come to an end. Does that seem likely? I argue why this doesn’t seem likely here, so won’t cover that ground again now. But even if it did turn out to be true it is unlikely to be ever proven to be true. These questions are beyond final answers and so which answer you ultimately choose says more about you than the theory itself.

Feel free to choose:

1. There is infinity and you are a part of this everlasting cycle of energy exchange and life which we can call Oneness, Tao, Brahmin, God or Infinite Existence.

2. There is only one, or a limited amount, of universes and you are here briefly to witness a moment in time and space before all eventually stops.

Finding Infinity in Everyday Life

Once you have grasped the idea that infinity is impossibly large and endless, and that you and I are an integral part of this vastness and will be a part of it forever, it is relatively easy to invoke the feeling of peace that comes with this thought.

You can do this just by thinking about the quantities and qualities of Earthly and Cosmic Time & Space we’ve already discussed, and the fact that every possible variation of every possible event happens somewhere and at some time. Where are we? Are we in the middle, at the beginning? These questions are meaningless, as in a sense everything is happening now at one time and in one place.

You can get a feeling of peace in the infinite by staring up at space on a clear night, knowing you’re viewing only a fraction of the visible universe. But the easiest way I have found to invoke this feeling is by simply taking yourself to a place with a view. Though this could be somewhere “Instagram Worthy” like a mountain top in California (picture above), or on a bus in the Amalfi Coast (pictured at the start of this article) but it is just as easy somewhere very ordinary, like staring down an empty street, or sitting on a bench in a park on a hillside – see pictures below.

The most important thing is to be in this place on your own, and without any time pressures to be anywhere else. I do find that somewhere with a bit of height is best so you get the feeling of the world tumbling away in front of you.

Sit, or stand, and just stare. Think about this infinite nature of reality for a few seconds and then let go of thoughts and you will feel it here and now. You will feel the infinite as a sense of realness, as if you are the same at a fundamental level as the ground beneath your feet, the sky above and the people and animals with which you share the world. This is feeling yourself as Infinite Existence.

Once you get a true sense of the infinite in life, of Infinite Existence, you will start to feel infinity everywhere. With repetition, and through meditation practice, you will meet Universal Consciousness within yourself more and more, and feel this also in the everyday present moment. It will become your constant connection to the peace of infinity which is peace within yourself.

Footnotes

1. The Greenland Shark – A truly remarkable animal – See this National Geographic article for more info. ↩︎
2. Learn more about Lucy at Nature.com ↩︎
3. A wiki of the timeline of human evolution – always open to being updated! ↩︎
4. See this BBC article for a picture: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0vewjq4dxwo ↩︎
5. UNESCO page about this https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1572/ ↩︎
6. NASA’s “Imagine The Universe” is a great easy to understand resource ↩︎
7. Is our universe infinite? The jury’s still out on this one, and we will likely never have an answer to this question with evidence that is beyond doubt. This article by Swinbourne University of Technology gives a flavour of the mixed opinions on this question. ↩︎
8. https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/farthest_info.html ↩︎
9. Love it or hate it, String Theory is always fascinating, usually mind bending and often hard to understand. This article at space.com helps explain the very nearly inexplicable: https://www.space.com/more-universe-dimensions-for-string-theory.html. ↩︎
10. An estimate of course but here’s the logic behind it: https://education.jlab.org/qa/mathatom_04.html#:~:text=In%20summary%2C%20for%20a%20typical,to%2099%25%20of%20the%20total! ↩︎
11. A googol is a 1 followed by 100 zero’s and a Googleplex is a 1 followed by a googol of zero’s. This article goes deeper into the biggest named numbers we have: https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/googol-and-googolplex ↩︎
12. Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching (p. 25). e-artnow. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
13. The interpretation of terms such as Karma and Samsara has been discussed for centuries without exclusive agreement but this article is a good place to start: https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195393521/obo-9780195393521-0141.xml ↩︎
14. There are many quotes attributed to The Buddha, most of which are completely misquoted. The oldest records we have of his teachings are the collected Sutta’s – sutta roughly translates as scripture or discourse of the Buddha. This quote comes from Poṭṭhapādasutta—Bhikkhu Sujato and the link takes you to an excellent resource for exploring these source texts of Buddhism ↩︎
15. Mascaro, Juan . The Upanishads (p. 18). Dancing Unicorn Books. Kindle Edition ↩︎
16. From an online resource of the entire Bible: https://www.esv.org/Psalm+90/ ↩︎
17. Follow this link to a summary of the 4 best known paradoxes: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803133426900#:~:text=Zeno%20of%20Elea’s%20arguments%20against,the%20Moving%20Blocks%2C%20or%20Stadium. ↩︎
18. The strings of String Theory have already reached this position: https://medium.com/@paulaustinmurphy2000/do-you-realise-just-how-tiny-strings-are-46fdc136ef6f ↩︎
19. From Tolstoy’s “Confessions.” The Marginalian is an exclectic mix of content with a detailed discussion of Tolstoy’s despair and how he resolved it for himself. Importantly, part of this resolution came from Tolstoy accepting that his own answer – finding his position within infinity – had to come without demanding a proof that it was. He had to go by faith, though not of the religious kind. https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/06/03/tolstoy-confession/ ↩︎