Finite And Eternal Being Quotes

A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets. Community is only being created when they have recognized that the greatness of man is to accept his insignificance, his human condition and his earth, and to thank God for having put in a finite body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small and daily gestures of love and forgiveness. The beauty of man is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day.

When God becomes man in Jesus of Nazareth, he not only enters into the finitude of man, but in his death on the cross also enters into the situation of man's godforsakenness. In Jesus he does not die the natural death of a finite being, but the violent death of the criminal on the cross, the death of complete abandonment by God. The suffering in the passion of Jesus is abandonment, rejection by God, his Father. God does not become a religion, so that man participates in him by corresponding religious thoughts and feelings. God does not become a law, so that man participates in him through obedience to a law. God does not become an ideal, so that man achieves community with him through constant striving. He humbles himself and takes upon himself the eternal death of the godless and the godforsaken, so that all the godless and the godforsaken can experience communion with him.

A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this way a human being is still not a self.... In the relation between two, the relation is the third as a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation and in the relation to the relation; thus under the qualification of the psychical the relation between the psychical and the physical is a relation. If, however, the relation relates itself to itself, this relation is the positive third, and this is the self.

We need to learn how to live consciously and, trusting ourselves, purposefully on that inevitable balance point between form and emptiness, relative and absolute, being and non-being, self and non-self, time and eternity, the finite and infinite. It is between all such dichotomies and poles that our life actually flows.

Love transports mortal beings to the existential plane of spiritual eternity transcending the emotional, mental, and physical limitations of an inaccurately perceived finite existence.

The devil is a created being. He is therefore not self-existent nor eternal, but limited and finite.

Immortality would have been meaningless, trapped in a “machine” with a finite number of possible states; in a finite time he would have exhausted the list of every possible thing he could be. Only the promise of eternal growth made sense of eternal life.

As far as I know, all major religions that subscribe to a belief in God—including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism—believe that the universe was created by God at a finite time in the past. The one major contemporary religious tradition that does not incorporate God, Buddhism, holds that the universe has existed for all of eternity. Looked at another way, a universe with a beginning must have had a creation, either by a divine being or by quantum physics. But a universe that has existed forever needs neither.

[The goal is] "liberation from the bondage of rebirth. According to the Vedantists the self, which they call the atman and we call the soul, is distinct from the body and its senses, distinct from the mind and its intelligence; it is not part of the Absolute, for the Absolute, being infinite, can have no parts but the Absolute itself. It is uncreated; it has existed form eternity and when at least it has cast off the seven veils of ignorance will return to the infinitude from which it came. It is like a drop of water that has arisen from the sea, and in a shower has fallen into a puddle, then drifts into a brook, finds its way into a stream, after that into a river, passing through mountain gorges and wide plains, winding this way and that, obstructed by rocks and fallen trees, till at least it reaches the boundless seas from which it rose." "But that poor little drop of water, when it has once more become one with the sea, has surely lost its individuality." Larry grinned. "You want to taste sugar, you don't want to become sugar. What is individuality but the expression of our egoism? Until the soul has shed the last trace of that it cannot become one with the Absolute." "You talk very familiarly of the Absolute, Larry, and it's an imposing word. What does it actually signify to you?" "Reality. You can't say what it is ; you can only say what it isn't. It's inexpressible. The Indians call it Brahman. It's not a person, it's not a thing, it's not a cause. It has no qualities. It transcends permanence and change; whole and part, finite and infinite. It is eternal because its completeness and perfection are unrelated to time. It is truth and freedom." "Golly," I said to myself, but to Larry: "But how can a purely intellectual conception be a solace to the suffering human race? Men have always wanted a personal God to whom they can turn in their distress for comfort and encouragement." "It may be that at some far distant day greater insight will show them that they must look for comfort and encouragement in their own souls. I myself think that the need to worship is no more than the survival of an old remembrance of cruel gods that had to be propitiated. I believe that God is within me or nowhere. If that's so, whom or what am I to worship—myself? Men are on different levels of spiritual development, and so the imagination of India has evolved the manifestations of the Absolute that are known as Brahma, Vishnu, Siva and by a hundred other names. The Absolute is in Isvara, the creator and ruler of the world, and it is in the humble fetish before which the peasant in his sun-baked field places the offering of a flower. The multitudinous gods of India are but expedients to lead to the realization that the self is one with the supreme self.

To say that, on the one hand, God is infinitely good, perfectly just, and inexhaustibly loving, and that, on the other, he has created a world under such terms as oblige him either to impose, or to permit the imposition of, eternal misery on finite rational beings, is simply to embrace a complete contradiction.

Maya—goddess of confusion and misdirection—is back in the chair opposite me. “So who are the priests of all religions?” she asks me. “They are your shepherds,” I respond, “keeping the sheep in the fold, away from the cliffs.” I know this. I know that the religions with their promises of an afterlife form an interior layer of containment and that the eternal rewards and punishments they speak of are as finite as the one in which they speak. Bubbles within bubbles. Turtles on top of turtles. “And who are the saints and sages of the great spiritual traditions?” she asks. “They are your final level of containment. They are the weavers of the final web, masters of subtle misdirection; convincing because they are convinced. For every million that get near the edge, perhaps only one steps over.” She smiles. “And where do I dwell?” “In the heart,” I respond. “In fear.” “Fear of what?” she asks. “Fear of being haunted by meddlesome Hindu deities?” I ask, but she’s already gone.

Sixthly, if we posit a finite world, it is impossible to escape acceptance of the void, if void is that which containeth naught. Seventhly, this space in which is our world would without it be indeed a void, since where the world is not, there we must infer a void. Beyond our world then, one space is as another; therefore the quality of one is also that of the other; wherefore too this quality cometh to action, for no quality is eternally without action, and indeed it is eternally linked to action or rather is itself action, for in eternity there is no distinction between being and potential being [nor therefore between action and potential action].

Man has been driven eternally at a primal level within the core of his being to find the intersection of finite matter and infinity, which energy represents in its most un-manifested form.  The energy that animates all matter, in particular living matter, is accepted as either representative of, or a subset of, the infinite creation.

The apparently separate self or finite ‘I’ around whom all experience revolves is the true and only ‘I’ of eternal, infinite awareness – the ‘I’ of God’s infinite, self-aware being that shines in each of our minds as the knowledge ‘I am’ – temporarily coloured by thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions but never being or becoming anything other than itself.

human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation. For those who do not immediately pitch the book across the room, Kierkegaard continues, “A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity.

If God were always visible, humans could not exist at all. “No one can see Me and live,” says God. “If we continue to hear the voice of God, we will die,” say the Israelites at Sinai. But if God is always invisible, hidden, imperceptible, then what difference does His existence make? It will always be as if He were not there. The answer to this dilemma is holiness. Holiness represents those points in space and time where God becomes vivid, tangible, a felt presence. Holiness is a break in the self-sufficiency of the material world, where infinity enters space and eternity enters time. In relation to time, it is Shabbat. In relation to space, it is the Tabernacle. These, in the Torah, are the epicentres of the sacred. We can now understand what makes them holy. Shabbat is the time when humans cease, for a day, to be creators and become conscious of themselves as creations. The Tabernacle is the space in which humans cease to be masters – “fill the earth and subdue it” – and become servants. Just as God had to practise self-restraint to make space for the finite, so human beings have to practise self-restraint to make space for the infinite. The holy, in short, is where human beings renounce their independence and self-sufficiency, the very things that are the mark of their humanity, and for a moment acknowledge their utter dependence on He who spoke and brought the universe into being. The universe is the space God makes for man. The holy is the space man makes for God. The secular is the emptiness created by God to be filled by a finite universe. The holy is the emptiness in time and space vacated by humans so that it can be filled by the infinite presence of God.

All descended lines of beings of the finite dimensions, continued the waves, and all stages of growth in each one of these beings, are merely manifestations of one archetypal and eternal being in the space outside dimensions. Each local being—son, father, grandfather, and so on—and each stage of individual being—infant, child, boy, young man, old man—is merely one of the infinite phases of that same archetypal and eternal being, caused by a variation in the angle of the consciousness-plane which cuts it. Randolph Carter at all ages; Randolph Carter and all his ancestors both human and pre-human, terrestrial and pre-terrestrial; all these were only phases of one ultimate, eternal “Carter” outside space and time—phantom projections differentiated only by the angle at which the plane of consciousness happened to cut the eternal archetype in each case.

Everything old people say about time is true. For starters, it flies. As a kid living through semi-eternal summer vacations, this is hard to believe. But as an adult? Get married. Have children. And then sit back, stunned, watching an absolute roar of gorgeous moments and hilarious moments and exhausting moments disappear—quickly and in tragedy or marching off at the traditional pace, but disappear they must. Snap a photo or two. Read verses about futility. Watching one’s small humans age and grow up packs a serious punch. It’s like being stuck in a dream unable to speak, like being a ghost that can see but not touch, like standing on a huge grate while a storm rains oiled diamonds, like collecting feathers in a storm. Parents in love with their kids are all amnesiacs, trying to remember, trying to cherish moments, ghosts trying to hold the world. Being mortals, having a finite mind when surrounded by joy that is perpetually rolling back into the rear view is like always having something important on the tips of our tongues, something on the tips of our fingers, always slipping away, always ducking our embrace. No matter how many pictures we take, no matter how many scrapbooks we make, no matter how many moments we invade with a rolling camera, we will die. We will vanish. We cannot grab and hold.

This earthly realm is, I believe, where we are meant to learn the lessons of unconditional love, compassion, forgiveness, and acceptance. Our knowing of our eternal spiritual nature is not meant to be as clear to us as the moon rising in the sky at night. Our ability to fully learn the most important lessons of life depends on our being partially veiled from that more complete (yet finite) knowing that our higher souls possess between lives. How

But what is this state? It is like a morning of spring, varied in its life and beauty, yet one and entire. All the conflicts and contradictions of life are reconciled; knowledge, love and action harmonized; pleasure and pain become one in beauty, enjoyment and renunciation equal in goodness; the breach between the finite and the infinite fills with love and overflows; every moment carries its message of the eternal; the formless appears to us in the form of the flower, of the fruit; the boundless takes us up in his arms as a father and walks by our side as a friend. While yet we have not attained the internal harmony, and the wholeness of our being, our life remains a life of habits. The world still appears to us as a machine, to be mastered where it is useful, to be guarded against where it is dangerous, and never to be known in its full fellowship with us, alike in its physical nature and in its spiritual life and beauty.

Wie wir „ursprünglich verstehen “, was Wahrheit ist, wenn wir erkennen, und was Gutheit ist, wenn unser Streben Erfüllung findet, so verstehen wir, was Schönheit ist, wenn jener „Glanz “ uns an die Seele rührt. Er begegnet uns in der sinnlichen Welt als das Strahlen des körperlichen Lichtes selbst, ohne das uns alle sinnliche Schönheit verborgen bliebe, als Farbenglanz und als Liebreiz körperlicher Gestalten. Aber er ist nicht an die Sinnenwelt gebunden. Es gibt eine geistige Schönheit : die Schönheit der Menschenseele,...

I said that Aristotle was not by temperament deeply religious, but this is only partly true. One could, perhaps, interpret one aspect of his religion, somewhat freely, as follows: God exists eternally, as pure thought, happiness, complete self-fulfilment, without any unrealized purposes. The sensible world, on the contrary, is imperfect, but it has life, desire, thought of an imperfect kind, and aspiration. All living things are in a greater or less degree aware of God, and are moved to action by admiration and love of God. Thus God is the final cause of all activity. Change consists in giving form to matter, but, where sensible things are concerned, a substratum of matter always remains. Only God consists of form without matter. The world is continually evolving towards a greater degree of form, and thus becoming progressively more like God. But the process cannot be completed, because matter cannot be wholly eliminated. This is a religion of progress and evolution, for God's static perfection moves the world only through the love that finite beings feel for Him. Plato was mathematical, Aristotle was biological; this accounts for the differences in their religions.

Philosophy in the strict and classical sense is quest for the eternal order or for the eternal cause or causes of all things. It presupposes then that there is an eternal and unchangeable order within which History takes place and which is not in any way affected by History. It presupposes in other words that any "realm of freedom" is not more than a dependent province within the "the realm of necessity." It presupposes, in the words of Kojeve, that "Being is essentially immutable in itself and eternally identical with itself." This presupposition is not self-evident. Kojeve rejects it in favor of view that "Being creates itself in the course of History," or that the highest being is Society and History, or that eternity is nothing but the totality of historical, i.e. finite time.

The best antidote to the furtive poison of anger, fear, anxiety, or any of our destructive, unwieldy passions, is just gratitude. And not the grandiose, boisterous or especially obvious kind. It is not necessarily the verbose or expressive kind. It's often the full immersion, a kind of deep submersion even, into a pool of awareness. This penitent affect distills within us surreal realizations; it is a focus, tinged with layers of deep remorse and the profound beauty of newfound appreciation that washes over us about the simplest things we have slipped into, or suddenly become aware of our own complacency over. This cooling antidote instantly soothes any veins swollen with the heat of pride, or stopped up with pearls of finely polished self-pity. This all comes about with a balm of humility that is simultaneously soothing and jolting to all of our senses at the same time. It is a cocktail both sedative and stimulant in the same, finite instant. It often occurs as we are halted dead in our tracks by a thing so extraordinary and breathtakingly natural, even luscious in its simplicity and unusually ordinary existence; often something we have been blatantly negligent of noticing as we routinely trudge past it in our self-absorbed haze. These are akin to the emotions one might feel as they finally notice the well-established antique rose garden, in full bloom; the same one they have walked by for years on their way to somewhere - but never noticed before. This is the feeling we get when our aging parent suddenly, in one moment, is 87 in our mind's eye - and not the steady 57, or eternal 37 we have determinedly seen our so loved one to be, out of purely wishful thinking born of the denial that only the truest love and devotion can begin to nurture - for the better of many decades.

...Because the sacred fire that lights all nature liveliest of all in its own image glows. All these prerogatives the human creature possesses, and if one of them should fail, he must diminish from his noble stature. Sin only can disenfranchise him, and veil his likeness to the Highest Good; whereby the light in him is lessened and grows pale. Ne'er can he win back dignities so high till the void made by guilt be all filled in with just amends paid for by illicit joy. Now, when your nature as a whole did sin in its first root, it lost these great awards, and lost the Eden of its origin; nor might they be recovered afterwards by any means, as if thou search thou'lt see, except by crossing one of these two fords; either must God, of his sole courtesy, remit, or man must pay with all that's his, the debt of sin in its entirety. Within the Eternal Counsel's deep abyss rivet thine eye, and with a heed as good as thou canst give me, do thou follow this. Man from his finite assets never could make satisfaction; ne'er could he abase him so low, obey thereafter all he would, as he'd by disobedience sought to raise him; and for this cause man might not pay his due himself, nor from the debtor's roll erase him. Needs then must God, by his own ways, renew man's proper life, and reinstate him so; his ways I say - by one, or both of two. And since the doer's actions ever show more gracious as the style of them makes plain the goodness of the heart from which they flow, that most high Goodness which is God was fain - even God, whose impress Heaven and earth display - by all His ways to lift you up again; nor, between final night and primal day, was e'er proceeding so majestical and high, nor shall not be, by either way; for God's self-giving, which made possible that man should raise himself, showed more largesse than if by naked power He'd cancelled all; and every other means would have been less than justice, if it had not pleased God's Son to be humiliate in fleshliness.

But, for all that, there is a Beyond, and he who has once caught a glance of it, is like a man who has gazed at the sun —wherever he looks, everywhere he sees the image of the sun. Speak to him of finite things, and he will tell you that the Finite is impossible and meaningless without the Infinite. Speak to him of death, and he will call it birth ; speak to him of time, and he will call it the mere shadow of eternity. To us the senses seem to be the organs, the tools, the most powerful engines of knowledge ; to him they are, if not actually deceivers, at all events heavy fetters, checking the flight of the spirit. To us this earth, this life, all that we see, and hear, and touch is certain. Here, we feel, is our home, here lie our duties, here our pleasures. To him this earth is a thing that once was not, and that again will cease to be ; this life is a short dream from which we shall soon awake. Of nothing he professes greater ignorance than of what to others seems to be most certain, namely what we see, and hear, and touch ; and as to our home, wherever that may be, he knows that certainly it is not here.

I am not I in myself alone, but only in all others. If, then, anyone is in hell, I too am partly in hell. Happily, however, if the Christian story is true, that love cannot now end in failure or tragedy. The descent into those depths--where we seek out and find those who are lost, and find our own salvation in so doing--is not a lonely act of spiritual heroism, or a futile rebellion of our finite wills against a merciless eternity. For the whole substance of Christian faith is the conviction that another has already an decisively gone down into that abyss for us, to set all the prisoners free, even from the chains of their own hatred and despair; and hence the love that has made all of us who we are, and that will continue throughout eternity to do so, cannot ultimately be rejected by anyone. Thus all shall have their share in--as Gregory [of Nyssa] says in his great mystical commentary On the Song of Songs--"the redeemed unity of all, united one with another by their convergence upon the One Good." Only thus will humanity "according the the devine image" come into being, and only thus will God be truly all in all.

The encyclopedia wand’s a theoretical puzzle, like Zeno’s paradox. The idea is t’engrave the entire encyclopedia onto a single toothpick. Know how you do it?” “You tell me.” “You take your information, your encyclopedia text, and you transpose it into numerics. You assign everything a two-digit number, periods and commas included. 00 is a blank, A is 01, B is 02, and so on. Then after you’ve lined them all up, you put a decimal point before the whole lot. So now you’ve got a very long sub-decimal fraction. 0.173000631 … Next, you engrave a mark at exactly that point along the toothpick. If 0.50000’s your exact middle on the toothpick, then 0.3333’s got t’be a third of the way from the tip. You follow?” “Sure.” “That’s how you can fit data of any length in a single point on a toothpick. Only theoretically, of course. No existin’ technology can actually engrave so fine a point. But this should give you a perspective on what tautologies are like. Say time’s the length of your toothpick. The amount of information you can pack into it doesn’t have anything t’do with the length. Make the fraction as long as you want. It’ll be finite, but pretty near eternal.

Okay,” I said, looking up to find the gate in the stars. I lifted a hand, only to have it jerked violently down. “What are you doing?” Reth hissed. “I’m making the gate!” “Not that one.” His eyes were wide with—fear? “Why are you so scared of that gate?” He looked to the side, deliberately avoiding staring at the stars. “Because that is . . . that is another part of eternity. It’s not ours.” I frowned. “But I sent the other souls there.” “Yes, and without bodies they were ready to go there. But I am not, nor will I ever be.” I couldn’t help smiling. “Ooh, poor little Reth, are you scared of what happens after you die?” His voice and face were shockingly sincere, his skin pallid and his lips nearly blue. “More than anything. I have no desire to discover that realm of eternity. None of us do, which is why we need that gate. Myself most desperately. Now, please.” I looked back up at the stars, trying to figure out if I was scared of that gate or not. And, strangely enough, I discovered I wasn’t. It was like Lend and I had talked about—no one could say when they were going to die. You did the best with the time you had, filled it with people and things you loved, and hoped that whatever came after was as good or better. I was finally okay with this whole finite mortality thing. “Alright, you big pansy. I’ll figure out the other one.

Who, after all, is saying something more objectively atrocious, or more aggressively perverse? The person who claims that every newborn infant enters the world justly under the threat of eternal dereliction, and that a good God imposes or permits the imposition of a state of eternal agony on finite, created rational beings as part of the mystery of his love or sovereignty or justice? Or the person who observes that such ideas are cruel and barbarous and depraved? Which of these two should really be, if not ashamed of his or her words, at least hesitant, ambivalent, and even a little penitent in uttering them? And which has a better right to moral indignation at what the other has said? And, really, don’t these questions answer themselves? A belief does not merit unconditional reverence just because it is old, nor should it be immune to being challenged in terms commensurate to the scandal it seems to pose. And the belief that a God of infinite intellect, justice, love, and power would condemn rational beings to a state of perpetual torment, or would allow them to condemn themselves on account of their own delusion, pain, and anger, is probably worse than merely scandalous. It may be the single most horrid notion the religious imagination has ever conceived, and the most irrational and spiritually corrosive picture of existence possible. And anyone who thinks that such claims are too strong or caustic, while at the same time finding the traditional notion of a hell of everlasting suffering perfectly unobjectionable, needs to consider whether he or she is really thinking clearly about the matter at all. (from Public Orthodoxy, “In Defense of a Certain Tone of Voice”)

The Christian narrative states that a maximally powerful, maximally good, all-knowing aseitic being consciously created everything, including man who short-circuited shortly after. This failure resulted in the immediate separation of all earthly things, including man, from the Creator: the Middle Eastern deity named, Yhwh. The objective of life, according to the Christian narrative, is to return to communion with Yhwh. Failure to do so in a finite space of time (a single lifetime of indeterminate duration and unequal resources) will result in Yhwh tossing the individual into an abyss he created for his finest and most beautiful creation, an angel named Lucifer (Ezekiel 28:12,13), who also short-circuited sometime earlier. This is considered by Christians to be the ultimate punishment: an eternal separation from the god, Yhwh. This narrative is wholesale nonsense. As a theology (and scaffolding for a tremendously flawed accompanying theodicy), it is an extravagant work of self-annihilating absurdity. As a maximally good, aseitic being, everything was once part of perfection. That’s what aseity means. There was no-thing that was not already perfect. To argue otherwise is to concede Yhwh was not, in fact, perfect. Creation, therefore, destroyed this eternal harmony, this purity, and by this fact alone, the act of Creation can only be called maximally evil. Creation separated things from the perfect goodness. Creation expelled goodness and cast it into a state of imperfection, and that is evil. In the second instance, as Lucifer—Yhwh’s most perfect creation—had already failed, which was itself inevitable, then that means Yhwh consciously flung man into an already corrupted Creation, and that, too, is evil.

The Buddha was concerned with how to escape from just this kind of self-created suffering, with how to avoid the pitfalls of self-inflation or -debasement. It is here that the latter parts of the Second Noble Truth, the thirsts for existence and nonexistence, become relevant. Buddha, we must remember, did not teach a speculative psychology; he taught a practical one designed to liberate practitioners from dissatisfaction. “I do not teach theory,” he said, “I analyse.”2 He refused to answer questions that would feed either the tendency to cling to some kind of absolute romanticized ideal or that would enable nihilistic distancing, the two trends that are subsumed under the headings of existence and nonexistence and that become the basis for many powerful religious, psychological, and philosophical dogmas. There were, in fact, fourteen subjects that the Buddha repeatedly refused to discuss, all of them searching for absolute certainty:        1)  Whether the world is eternal, or not, or both, or neither.        2)  Whether the world is finite (in space), or infinite, or both, or neither.        3)  Whether an enlightened being exists after death, or does not, or both, or neither.        4)  Whether the soul is identical with the body or different from it. The Buddha taught that to attempt a definitive answer to these questions would give the wrong idea, that to do so would only feed the tendency to cling to an absolute or to nihilistically reject, neither of which he found useful. He never taught the existence of a true self, nor did he ever support the idea of a chaotic universe in which “nothing matters” and individual actions are of no importance. Rather, he encouraged a consistent doubting of all fixed assumptions about the nature of things. In a teaching that he gave to a skeptical follower named Malunkyaputta, he likened the asking of questions about the ultimate nature of things to a man wounded by an arrow refusing to have the arrow taken out until all of his questions about who the assassin was, where he came from, what he looked like, what kind of bow he was using, and what make of arrow had been shot had been addressed. “That man would die, Malunkyaputta,” emphasized the Buddha, “without ever having learnt this.”3

Since, however, darwinism has once for all displaced design from the minds of the 'scientific,' theism has lost that foothold; and some kind of an immanent or pantheistic deity working IN things rather than above them is, if any, the kind recommended to our contemporary imagination. Aspirants to a philosophic religion turn, as a rule, more hopefully nowadays towards idealistic pantheism than towards the older dualistic theism, in spite of the fact that the latter still counts able defenders. But, as I said in my first lecture, the brand of pantheism offered is hard for them to assimilate if they are lovers of facts, or empirically minded. It is the absolutistic brand, spurning the dust and reared upon pure logic. It keeps no connexion whatever with concreteness. Affirming the Absolute Mind, which is its substitute for God, to be the rational presupposition of all particulars of fact, whatever they may be, it remains supremely indifferent to what the particular facts in our world actually are. Be they what they may, the Absolute will father them. Like the sick lion in Esop's fable, all footprints lead into his den, but nulla vestigia retrorsum. You cannot redescend into the world of particulars by the Absolute's aid, or deduce any necessary consequences of detail important for your life from your idea of his nature. He gives you indeed the assurance that all is well with Him, and for his eternal way of thinking; but thereupon he leaves you to be finitely saved by your own temporal devices. Far be it from me to deny the majesty of this conception, or its capacity to yield religious comfort to a most respectable class of minds. But from the human point of view, no one can pretend that it doesn't suffer from the faults of remoteness and abstractness. It is eminently a product of what I have ventured to call the rationalistic temper. It disdains empiricism's needs. It substitutes a pallid outline for the real world's richness. It is dapper; it is noble in the bad sense, in the sense in which to be noble is to be inapt for humble service. In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as a presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman. His menial services are needed in the dust of our human trials, even more than his dignity is needed in the empyrean. Now pragmatism, devoted tho she be to facts, has no such materialistic bias as ordinary empiricism labors under. Moreover, she has no objection whatever to the realizing of abstractions, so long as you get about among particulars with their aid and they actually carry you somewhere. Interested in no conclusions but those which our minds and our experiences work out together, she has no a priori prejudices against theology. IF THEOLOGICAL IDEAS PROVE TO HAVE A VALUE FOR CONCRETE LIFE, THEY WILL BE TRUE, FOR PRAGMATISM, IN THE SENSE OF BEING GOOD FOR SO MUCH. FOR HOW MUCH MORE THEY ARE TRUE, WILL DEPEND ENTIRELY ON THEIR RELATIONS TO THE OTHER TRUTHS THAT ALSO HAVE TO BE ACKNOWLEDGED.

That the line does not consist of points, nor the plane of lines, follows from their concepts, for the line is the point existing outside of itself relating itself to space, and suspending itself and the plane is just as much the suspended line existing outside of itself.-Here the point is represented as the first and positive entity, and taken as the starting point. The converse, though, is also true: in as far as space is positive, the plane is the first negation and the line is the second, which, however, is in its truth the negation relating self to self, the point. The necessity of the transition is the same.- The other configurations of space considered by geometry are further qualitative limitations of a spatial abstraction, of the plane, or of a limited spatial whole. Here there occur a few necessary moments, for example, that the triangle is the first rectilinear figure, that all other figures must, to be determined, be reduced to it or to the square, and so on.-The principle of these figures is the identity of the understanding, which determines the figurations as regular, and in this way grounds the relationships and sets them in place, which it now becomes the purpose of science to know. Negativity, which as point relates itself to space and in space develops its determinations as line and plane, is, however, in the sphere of self-externality equally for itself and appearing indifferent to the motionless coexistence of space. Negativity, thus posited for itself is time. Time, as the negative unity of being outside of itself, is just as thoroughly abstract, ideal being: being which, since it is, is not, and since it is not, is If these determinations (of Kant, the forms of intuition or sensation) are applied to space and time, then space is abstract objectivity, whereas time is abstract subjectivity (“the pure I=I of self-consciousness” but still the concept is in its pure externality). Time is just as continuous as space, for it is abstract negativity relating itself to itself and in this abstraction there is as yet no real difference. In time, it is said, everything arises and passes away, or rather, there appears precisely the abstraction of arising and falling away. If abstractions are made from everything, namely, from the fullness of time just as much as from the fullness of space, then there remains both empty time and empty space left over; that is, there are then posited these abstractions of exteriority.-But time itself is this becoming, this existing abstraction, the Chronos who gives birth to everything and destroys his offspring.-That which is real, however, is just as identical to as distinct from time. Everything is transitory that is temporal, that is, exists only in time or, like the concept, is not in itself pure negativity. To be sure, this negativity is in everything as its immanent, universal essence, but the temporal is not adequate to this essence, and therefore relates to this negativity in terms of its power. Time itself is eternal, for it is neither just any time, nor the moment now, but time as time is its concept. The concept, however, in its identity with itself I= I, is in and for itself absolute negativity and freedom. Time, is not, therefore, the power of the concept, nor is the concept in time and temporal; on the contrary, the concept is the power of time, which is only this negativity as externality.-The natural is therefore subordinate to time, insofar as it is finite; that which is true, by contrast, the idea, the spirit, is eternal. Thus the concept of eternity must not be grasped as if it were suspended time, or in any case not in the sense that eternity would come after time, for this would turn eternity into the future, in other words into a moment of time.

I say here to-night that you cannot commit a sin against an infinite being. I can sin against my brother or my neighbour, because I can injure them. There can be no sin where there is no injury. Neither can a finite being commit infinite sin.

Forwards, always forwards! was the existentialist’s cry, but Heidegger had long since pointed out that no one goes forwards forever. In Being and Time, he depicted Dasein as finding authenticity in ‘Being-towards-death’, that is, in affirming mortality and limitation. He also set out to show that Being itself is not to be found on some eternal, changeless plane: it emerges through Time and through history. Thus, both on the cosmic level and in the lives of each one of us, all things are temporal and finite.

In the production of finite existence the first act was the evolution of the Memra, or the Word, which was the first point in the descending series of beings, and from whom in nine other degrees of manifestation emanated those forms which at once compose the universe and express the attributes and presence of its eternal ruler.

Returning to the screen example, we can easily understand how Consciousness stays immaculate despite what happens in the movie. If there’s a fire in the movie, it doesn’t affect the screen one bit. Currently, the vast majority of humans identify themselves with the movie and its characters (ego-mind). Those who want to wake up from this mass delusion have to recognize their true essence as the eternal and ever-pure screen of Consciousness, disidentifying from the temporary and restless false self known as ego. Ego is “I,” the feeling of being a separate entity always seeking something; it’s a “blend” of consciousness with the finite qualities of the body and mind. It’s as if the screen believed itself to be a character in the movie, subject to whatever was happening in it and limited by its length, being finite.

Of course, most of us, in the service of sanity, don’t fixate on the end. We go about the world focused on worldly concerns. We accept the inevitable and direct our energies to other things. Yet the recognition that our time is finite is always with us, helping to shape the choices we make, the challenges we accept, the paths we follow. As cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker maintained, we are under a constant existential tension, pulled toward the sky by a consciousness that can soar to the heights of Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Einstein but tethered to earth by a physical form that will decay to dust. “Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.”2 According to Becker, we are impelled by such awareness to deny death the capacity to erase us. Some soothe the existential yearning through commitment to family, a team, a movement, a religion, a nation—constructs that will outlast the individual’s allotted time on earth. Others leave behind creative expressions, artifacts that extend the duration of their presence symbolically. “We fly to Beauty,” said Emerson, “as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.”3 Others still seek to vanquish death by winning or conquering, as if stature, power, and wealth command an immunity unavailable to the common mortal. Across the millennia, one consequence has been a widespread fascination with all things, real or imagined, that touch on the timeless. From prophesies of an afterlife, to teachings of reincarnation, to entreaties of the windswept mandala, we have developed strategies to contend with knowledge of our impermanence and, often with hope, sometimes with resignation, to gesture toward eternity. What’s new in our age is the remarkable power of science to tell a lucid story not only of the past, back to the big bang, but also of the future. Eternity itself may forever lie beyond the reach of our equations, but our analyses have already revealed that the universe we have come to know is transitory. From planets to stars, solar systems to galaxies, black holes to swirling nebulae, nothing is everlasting. Indeed, as far as we can tell, not only is each individual life finite, but so too is life itself. Planet earth, which Carl Sagan described as a “mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam,” is an evanescent bloom in an exquisite cosmos that will ultimately be barren. Motes of dust, nearby or distant, dance on sunbeams for merely a moment. Still, here on earth we have punctuated our moment with astonishing feats of insight, creativity, and ingenuity as each generation has built on the achievements of those who have gone before, seeking clarity on how it all came to be, pursuing coherence in where it is all going, and longing for an answer to why it all matters. Such is the story of this book.

His twin twitched, and Qian Meng smirked a little. He knew it was a struggle for Zihao to look him in the eye. The coward lasted all of ten seconds at best, but it was enough. A shiver of revulsion echoed between them, their very cores recognized a finite difference. While being of the same blood, they were a paradox. Destined to rebound off one another for eternity, forever linked, but never united.

The human being is essentially spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is to be a self. But what is self? In short, the self is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporary and the eternal, of freedom and necessity.

Absolute time is eternity. (Eternity = Present) AT = Et (AT = absolute time; Et = Eternity) Absolute space is infinity. AS = ∞ AT = ∞ AT + AS = ∞ ∞ = 0 The Being, the Universe, is finite.

The Difference between Zero and Nothing Even in the primordial “form,” there is a difference between the Being and the Nonbeing. Even if the Being is asleep and inactive, in the primordial form, it is still something as a potential. Although Zero is nothing in a way, Zero is not absolute nothing as real nothing is. At this absolute “point,” the Being is Zero, and Nothing is just Nothing. Zero is not nothing. Zero is the point between nothing and something (Everything). Zero is a tunnel, a passage, a bridge, a wormhole between the Being and the Nonbeing, infinity and finiteness, eternity and time, existence and nonexistence. Although zero has the potential capacity for infinity and eternity, it is still the end point of the Being and the Nonbeing when they meet. The first point, the appearance point, of coming into the material Being is Zero. Zero is the last point, the disappearance point, of coming out of the material Being. The zero point is the point of absolute density. Everything comes into material existence through it. Everything comes out of a material existence through it. The “point” where the primordial Being and Nonbeing meet to create is the zero point of creation. Nothing is just nothing. Nothingness (emptiness), or absolute void, is Nothing. At its absolute point, the Primordial Being, the Ultimate Source (God) beyond creation and creating, when it is almost equal to nothingness, is, actually, Zero. Zero is the “point” where material and immaterial meet. The last possible “point” of “physical energy” or “matter,” in any form, on the micro or macro level, is the Zero “point.” Beyond this Zero “point” is nothingness.

NONBEING (NOTHINGNESS) Only nothing is infinite in its endlessness. Its endlessness is its end. (The impossibility of a beginning and end is the secret of infinity [eternity].) The endlessness of Nothingness is not real infinity. (Infinity of Nothingness is Zero.) Nothingness is finite because it is reduced to Zero anytime and anywhere. Anywhere is nowhere. Nothingness must be endless if there is nothing to reduce to Something. The biggest limitation of Nothingness is that it is limitless. The lack of limit is the limit of Nothingness; its infinity reduces it to nothingness. Nothingness is neither finite nor infinite. The nothingness of itself and for itself is absolute. (God of itself and for itself is absolute.) Nothing (Nothingness) and Something (God) can be absolute because if they don’t disturb one another, their separateness reduces them to nothing. They can be absolute because, as separate absolutes, they are the same and one. Since Nonbeing (emptiness, absolute vacuum, nothingness) is nothing, it is passive and compatible with the Being; it is the perfect medium for the finite Being (infinite in its potential). Nonbeing offers no limits to the Being, which allows for its potential development.

SPACE IN THE UNIVERSE EINSTEIN’S SPACE The space we explored and elaborated on before is not the same as we experience in the existing Universe, as we “see” it. In the “space,” before the Universe, as we know it, there is no point of reference. A point of reference exists only if there is a relationship between something and something else, even if that relationship is only between two things, two entities. We will call the space we experience Einstein’s space. Einstein’s space is “impregnated,” programmed, or shall we dare to say, “contaminated” by the awakening, “explosion” of the Absolute. This explosion is the dispersion of Nothingness into the Being, not the “explosion” of the Being into Nothingness. The “space” created this way is not the clean “space” we described as an absolute vacuum, emptiness, or nothingness. If we talk about the Primordial Being and Nonbeing, we cannot talk about space from Einstein’s physics point of view. In the primordial “space,” the Being does not possess any material properties; the same applies to the Nonbeing or nothingness. In such a state, there is no space as we understand it. Every point is the same point. Every moment is the same moment. In such a state, the vastness of “space” and “time” are the same point and moment. This is the infinity of the finite, compressed infinity of the Absolute Being. The Infinity and Eternity outside the realm of the “material” Universe are the Infinity of Eternity and Eternity of Infinity enslaved beyond space and time. That which gives space and “time” to the World is beyond the spacetime continuum. The Universe is the manifestation of the Absolute Being. Absolute Being is spaceless and timeless. It is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It encapsulates all the space and time, yet it is outside space and time. Absolute is spaceless space and timeless time. Absolute is Everything and nothing at the same time.

• The absolute “number” of possibilities is the Absolute itself because it contains this potential. • The absolute “number” of possibilities is infinity itself. • The absolute “number” of possibilities is needed not for infinity but for any particular manifestation of the Absolute in the form such as the Universe. • Any such universe, or the manifestation of the Absolute, requires the absolute number of possibilities to exist meaningfully as a high complexity. • The absolute number of possibilities is absolute potential. • The potential of the Absolute is both infinite and eternal. • The absolute “number” is infinity. • Absolute “number” is numberless. • Infinity is nonexistent. It is zero. • Zero is a gateway. • Zero is the Wormhole from the Universal Mind to the “Material” World-Universe. • Possibilities are possible only when they are not zero. • Passage through the Zero is the birth of possibilities. • The present is an eternity. • The victory of the finite possibility over infinity is the birth of life and existence. • Victory over eternity (absolute time or space) is time's birth. • Victory over the infinite space of zero is the birth of space. • The Finitude of the Being makes infinity. • Infinity in itself is nothing. • Infinity of the Being is a never-ending process, never-ending life or existence.

Spinoza’s (1632—1677) Ethics starts with a clear framework, explanation, and definition of his terms. In that way, the philosophical inquiry becomes more accessible and precise for a reader or interpreter to understand and grasp. When Spinoza, in his definitions, uses the term substance, we understand that it is God. But when the term substance reappears under point III and then again under VI, which treats God, we must question why. For Spinoza, there is substance and substance. What is the difference between the substance under III and VI? We would say that, according to Spinoza, the ultimate, infinite substance is God, and everything formed is of the same substance. If that is the case, all substance is God or Nature. If all substance is God, then the question is, why separate substance from substance? Spinoza wanted to highlight the difference between the infinite substance of the ultimate Being, God, and the substance that makes Nature in all its forms. But nature, or anything in nature, is substance “which is in itself and is conceived through itself and does not need another “thing” to form it.” Nature is just a manifestation or mode of God or Substance. Substance (substantia) is not a new term and has been used since Aristotle, if not earlier. Perhaps the substance is interchangeable with terms like arche, aether …. fifth element, proton archon (first principle), Plotinus’ Divine mind (nous), or intelligence. Here are Spinoza’s definitions: Of God DEFINITIONS I. By cause of itself I understand that whose essence involves existence, or that whose nature cannot be conceived unless existing. II. That thing is called finite in its own kind (in suo genere) which can be limited by another thing of the same nature. For example, a body is called finite because we always conceive another which is greater. So a thought is limited by another thought; but a body is not limited by a thought, nor a thought by a body. III. By substance I understand that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; in other words, that the conception of which does not need, the conception of another thing from which it must be formed. IV. By attribute I understand that which the intellect perceives of substance as constituting its essence. V. By mode I understand the modifications of substance, or that which is in another thing through which also it is conceived. VI. By God I understand Being absolutely infinite, that is to say, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence.

Entitled leaders act as if the world revolves around them. Their thinking goes something like this: I’ve been blessed. I have gifts and influence. I have worked hard and deserve to be treated well. This is what I refer to as “power over” others leadership. The opposite of an entitled leader is a grateful leader. Grateful leaders continually marvel at all they have received from God. But as a leader’s sense of gratitude shrinks, their sense of entitlement grows in equal measure. While the world practices a “power over” strategy characterized by dominance and win-lose competitiveness, Jesus taught a “power under” strategy characterized by humility and sacrificial service. In the world, says Jesus, leaders throw their weight around, “[but it is] not so with you. . . . Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” (Mark 10:42 – 43). While Jesus is the invisible God who holds all things together — Almighty, eternal, immortal, and infinite — he became human, temporal, mortal, and finite. Jesus demonstrated his power not by force or control, but by choosing to come under us, humbly washing feet and dying for our sins. He carefully stewarded his power: “[Christ Jesus,] who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:6 – 7).

Arjuna, there is a banyan tree that grows upside down, its roots in the sky and its trunk below. The wise know that Veda constitutes its leaves. The branches go up and down, as a consequence of nature’s tendencies, nourished by experiences. The aerial roots that grow down are actions born of desire that bind it to the realm of men. Wisdom alone can cut these downward roots, enabling discovery of the reverse banyan tree, with its primal roots, before enchantment of the senses began and obscured the view.—Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 15, verses 1 to 4 (paraphrased). The banyan tree is sacred to the Hindus. It symbolizes immortality (akshaya). But it is unique in that it has primary roots and secondary roots. The latter grow from its branches and eventually become so thick that it becomes impossible to distinguish them from the main tree trunk. In this verse, Krishna visualizes a banyan tree growing from the sky, its primary roots rising up into the sky, its secondary roots growing down to the earth. Thus, it is being nourished from above and below. The primary root rising from the sky is nourished by inner mental reality. The secondary roots going down to the earth are nourished by external material reality. The tree is who we are. We are nourished from within as well as without. Within is the atma that is immortal and infinite, and so does not suffer from the anxieties of the mortal and the finite. It is neither hungry nor frightened, nor does it yearn for validation. Without is the world of things, people, our relationships, our desires and frustrations. When we derive value from the outside, we assume that our identity is the anxious aham. So Krishna advises Arjuna to use the axe of knowledge (gyana) to cut down all secondary roots, take refuge in the primary root of atma and liberate himself. This is moksha, liberation, where we no longer seek validation from the outside, but feel eternally validated from the inside. Moksha is liberation from fear.

I experience transcendence when something infinite reminds me I am finite.

There are many serious arguments for the existence of God – the philosopher Alvin Plantinga has suggested that there are at least “two dozen or so” [...] One that is worth mentioning in passing given the themes of the previous chapter derives from St. Augustine, and can be summarized in the following way. As we have seen, it is very hard to avoid realism about universals, propositions, and numbers and other mathematical objects. For the reasons we examined, the existence of these entities in some form or other cannot reasonably be denied, and it is implausible to regard them either as material things or as dependent on the human mind for their existence. [...] At the same time, it is also hard to see how they could exist apart from any mind whatsoever: a proposition, for example, just seems clearly to be the sort of thing that exists only as entertained or contemplated by a mind. Furthermore, it seems implausible to say, as Aristotle apparently would, that triangularity (for example), though neither material nor entirely mental, would go completely out of existence if every particular triangular thing and every mind that might think about triangularity went out of existence.[...] But if universals, propositions, and mathematical objections are eternal and necessarily existing entities that cannot plausibly exist apart from a mind, and such a mind could not (for the reasons we have seen) be a finite or limited mind like ours, it follows that they must exist in an eternal and infinite mind. But such a mind is exactly what God is supposed to be. Hence it follows that God exists.

The Principle is Reality in contrast to all that appears as real but which is not reality in the ultimate sense. The Principle is the Abso lute compared to which all is relative. It is Infinite while all else is finite. The Principle is One and Unique while manifestation is multiplicity. It is the Supreme Substance compared to which all else is accident. It is the Essence to which all things are juxtaposed as form. It is at once Beyond-Being and Being while the order of multiplicity is comprised of existents. It alone is while all else becomes, for It alone is eternal in the ultimate sense, while all that is externalized partakes of change. It is the Origin but also the End, the alpha and the omega. It is Emptiness if the world is envisaged as fullness and Fullness if the relative is perceived in the light of its ontological poverty and essential nothingness.

SEPTEMBER 14 Day 258 The Divine Dwelling Place “For thus says the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.’” Isaiah 57:15 Isaiah’s words are a study in contrasts. The transcendent God draws near to man. The High and Lofty One comes to those who are humble. He who is holy dwells with the contrite sinner. The One who inhabits eternity enters time to have a relationship with finite man. The Sovereign of the universe reaches down to sinful people and draws them to Himself. You must maintain an appreciation of this contrast in order to have a healthy relationship with God. During the last two centuries the difference and distance between God and man was all but forgotten in Christian thought. Human logic decreed that people are basically good. Since people are like God, God is like people. Jesus was emphasized as human rather than divine. With this blurring of the difference and distance between the Creator and His creation, the Christian message was compromised. If you are good and God is like you, then you not only lose your sense of depravity, you have little need for Him. When you lose your fear of Judgment, you lose your need for salvation. You worship a God who is holy, transcendent, and eternal. The miracle is, He is willing to have a relationship with you, a sinner, bound by the limitations of being a creature, and incapable of initiating a relationship with your Creator. Never lose your awe of it all.

God is infinitely good, perfectly just, and inexhaustibly loving, and that, on the other, he has created a world under such terms as oblige him either to impose, or to permit the imposition of, eternal misery on finite rational beings, is simply to embrace a complete contradiction.

My grandfather said the sfumato described a psychological and spiritual transition between states of being. This transition was infinite and that’s why we, living in the finite, didn’t understand it. Some called it the Void. But that wasn’t sfumato. We chased the Smoky Dragon. We rode the dragon. We were the dragon. Finite time was our dance audition. Eternity was opening night.

I am not I in myself alone, but only in all others. If, then, anyone is in hell, I too am partly in hell. Happily, however, if the Christian story is true, that love cannot now end in failure or tragedy. The descent into those depths -- where we seek out and find those who are lost, and find our own salvation in so doing -- is not a lonely act of spiritual heroism, or a futile rebellion of our finite wills against a merciless eternity. For the whole substance of Christian faith is the conviction that another has already an decisively gone down into that abyss for us, to set all the prisoners free, even from the chains of their own hatred and despair; and hence the love that has made all of us who we are, and that will continue throughout eternity to do so, cannot ultimately be rejected by anyone. Thus all shall have their share in -- as Gregory [of Nyssa] says in his great mystical commentary On the Song of Songs -- "the redeemed unity of all, united one with another by their convergence upon the One Good." Only thus will humanity "according the the divine image" come into being, and only thus will God be truly all in all.

If the universe had a goal, that goal would have been reached by now.― if any sort of unforeseen final state existed, that state also would have been reached. If it were capable of any Halting or stability of any "being," it would only have possessed this capability of becoming stable for one instant in its development; and again becoming would have been at an end for ages, and with it all thinking and all "spirit." The fact of "intellects" being in a state of development proves that the universe can have no goal, no final state, and is incapable of being. But the old habit of thinking of some purpose in regard to all phenomena, and of thinking of a directing and creating deity in regard to the universe, is so powerful, that the thinker has to go to great pains in order to avoid thinking of the very aimlessness of the world as intended. The idea that the universe intentionally evades a goal, and even knows artificial means wherewith it prevents itself from falling into a circular movement, must occur to all those who would fain attribute to the uni verse the capacity of eternally regenerating itself that is to say, they would fain impose upon a finite, definite force which is invariable in quantity, like the universe, the miraculous gift of renewing its forms and its conditions for all eternity. Although the universe is no longer a God, it must still be capable of the divine power of creating and transforming; it must forbid itself to relapse into any one of its previous forms; it must not only have the intention, but also the means, of avoiding any sort of repetition; every second of its existence, even, it must control every single one of its movements, with the view of avoiding goals, final states, and repetitions and all the other results of such an unpardonable and insane method of thought and desire. All this is nothing more than the old religious mode of thought and desire, which, in spite of all, longs to believe that in some way or other the universe resembles the old, beloved, infinite, and infinitely-creative God that in some way or other " the old God still lives" that longing of Spinoza's which is expressed in the words "deus sive natura" (what he really felt was "natura sive deus"). Which, then, is the proposition and belief in which the decisive change, the present preponderance of the scientific spirit over the religious and god- fancying spirit, is best formulated? Ought it not to be: the universe, as force, must not be thought of as unlimited, because it cannot be thought of in this way, we forbid ourselves the concept in finite force, because it is incompatible with the idea of force? Whence it follows that the universe lacks the power of eternal renewal.

If the world had a goal, it must have been reached. If there were for it some unintended final state, this also must have been reached. If it were in any way capable of a pausing and becoming fixed, of "being," then all becoming would long since have come to an end, along with all thinking, all "spirit." The fact of "spirit" as a form of becoming proves that the world has no goal, no final state, and is incapable of being. The old habit, however, of associating a goal with every event and a guiding, creative God with the world, is so powerful that it requires an effort for a thinker not to fall into thinking of the very aimlessness of the world as intended. This notion―that the world intentionally avoids a goal and even knows artifices for keeping itself from entering into a circular course―must occur to all those who would like to force on the world the ability for eternal novelty, i.e., on a finite, definite, unchangeable force of constant size, such as the world is, the miraculous power of infinite novelty in its forms and states. The world, even if it is no longer a god, is still supposed to be capable of the divine power of creation, the power of infinite transformations; it is supposed to consciously prevent itself from returning to any of its old forms; it is supposed to possess not only the intention but the means of every one of its movements at every moment so as to escape goals, final states, repetitions―and whatever else may follow from such an unforgivably insane way of thinking and desiring. It is still the old religious way of thinking and desiring, a kind of longing to believe that in some way the world is after all like the old beloved, infinite, boundlessly creative God―that in some way "the old God still lives"―that longing of Spinoza which was expressed in the words "deus sive natura" [God or nature.] (he even felt "natura sive deus"). What, then, is the law and belief with which the decisive change, the recently attained preponderance of the scientific spirit over the religious, God-inventing spirit, is most clearly formulated? Is it not: the world, as force, may not be thought of as unlimited, for it cannot be so thought of; we forbid ourselves the concept of an infinite force as incompatible with the concept "force." Thus―the world also lacks the capacity for eternal novelty.

At the exact genesis of Eternity, a God annihilated the Being. The primordial primate – the bipedal, handy, emotive human-animal – transmuted instantly into a paradox: mortal prescience. When a Being died, the dead human body activated the Godhead. The minds, of those remaining, overrode the bodies. For the first time, they saw inanimacy. They saw a corpse. The human skewed futural, into finitude. No!!! The carnal certainty of finite life, in fact, permuted an infinite language.

In the essay, Benda said that we must throw away “the regular clichés about liberation” from the traditional obligations of marriage and family. In the Christian model, marriage and family offers three gifts that are urgently needed for believers struggling within a totalitarian order. The first is the fruitful fellowship of love in which we are bound together with our neighbor without pardon by virtue simply of our closeness; not on the basis of merit, rights and entitlements, but by virtue of mutual need and its affectionate reciprocation—incidentally, although completely unmotivated by notions of equality and permanent conflict between the sexes.2 The second gift is freedom given to us so absolutely that even as finite and, in the course of the conditions of the world, seemingly rooted beings, we are able to make permanent, eternal decisions; every marriage promise that is kept, every fidelity in defiance of adversity, is a radical defiance of our finitude, something that elevates us—and with us all created corporeally—higher than the angels.3 The third gift is the dignity of the individual within family fellowship. In practically all other social roles we are replaceable and can be relieved of them, whether rightly or wrongly. However, such a cold calculation of justice does not reign between husband and wife, between children and parents, but rather the law of love. Even where love fails completely . . . and with all that accompanies that failure, the appeal of shared responsibility for mutual salvation remains, preventing us from giving up on unworthy sons, cheating wives, and doddering fathers.4

Have you ever had the feeling that life isn"t something finite that appears with your birth and disappears with your death, that it existed before you and will exist after you disappear? this is the feeling that you"re connected with that infinite, eternal something transcending space and time. It"s the feeling of not lacking anything, of just being filled with infinite gratitude and peace.

One argument that I shall make in this book is that the very notion that a rational agent in full possession of his or her faculties could, in any meaningful sense, freely reject God absolutely and forever is a logically incoherent one. Another is that, for this and other reasons, a final state of eternal torment could be neither a just sentence pronounced upon nor a just fate suffered by a finite being, no matter how depraved that being might have become. Still another is that, even if that fate were in some purely abstract sense “just,” the God who would permit it to become anyone’s actual fate could never be perfectly good—or, rather, as Christian metaphysical tradition obliges us to phrase it, could never be absolute Goodness as such—but could be at most only a relative calculable good in relation to other relative calculable goods. And yet another is that the traditional doctrine of hell’s perpetuity renders other aspects of the tradition, such as orthodox Christology or the eschatological claims of the Apostle Paul, ultimately meaningless. If all of this seems obscure, which at this point it should, I hope it will have become clear by the end of the book. I cannot be certain that it will have done so, however, because Christians have been trained at a very deep level of their thinking to believe that the idea of an eternal hell is a clear and unambiguous element of their faith, and that therefore the idea must make perfect moral sense. They are in error on both counts, as it happens, but a sufficiently thorough conditioning can make an otherwise sound mind perceive even the most ostentatiously absurd proposition to be the very epitome of rational good sense. In fact, where the absurdity proves only slight, the mind that has been trained most thoroughly will, as often as not, fabricate further and more extravagant absurdities, in order to secure the initial offense against reason within a more encompassing and intoxicating atmosphere of corroborating nonsense. Sooner or later, it will all seem to make sense, simply through ceaseless repetition and restatement and rhetorical reinforcement. The most effective technique for subduing the moral imagination is to teach it to mistake the contradictory for the paradoxical, and thereby to accept incoherence as profundity, or moral idiocy as spiritual subtlety. If this can be accomplished with sufficient nuance and delicacy, it can sustain even a very powerful intellect for an entire lifetime. In the end, with sufficient practice, one really can, like the White Queen, learn to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Then, one demurs that essentially a society is entertained by the theatre of heroism, and in strict individualism of existence, without others, it is only a narcissistic struggle. There is no hero in a lonesome existence. A man lives in a shred and contradiction of duality between his splendid uniqueness out of nature with a grip of eternality and condemnable body of contemptible smallness, transient but delightfully comfortable to rot into the disappearance. This density and finiteness! Laughable yet strangely estimable quality of certitude from his inner drive in the making of his world. O this ambiguity, O this duality, O this weakness. O human! O human!

The "Divine Thought" does not imply the idea of a Divine thinker. The Universe, not only past, present, and future--which is a human and finite idea expressed by finite though--but in its totality, the Sat (an untranslatable term), the absolute being, with the Past and Future crystallized in an eternal Present, is that Thought itself reflected in a secondary or manifest cause.

Supermind gave us the eternal, the timeless, and the spaceless; the limitless potential in the finite. (Translating as infinite potential, achievement, opportunities, happiness, pleasure, grace, wisdom, greatness, etc.) The intervention of the Supramental Force will change past causality to create a new current (e.g. consecration of the source of a disease deliberately identified as chronic or lethal has, on many occasions, been allowed by a practitioner to rediagnose that the condition does not occur). That which seems to be at odds with Supermind is part of a peace. In its harmony and wholeness it sees all such things through due relation to each other. (It sees unity and equilibrium in that which is separated in spirit. There is no mistake as in thought.) Supermind comprehends all things in being and eternal self-consciousness, abstract, immutable, spaceless, hence it comprehends all objects in fluid awareness and rules their rational self-embodiment in space and time. (This is a powerful statement of how because Supermind knows the forces in Being it knows them in becoming.) Supermind sees all the possibilities of Space and Time that Mind cannot understand, without the mistake, groping, and uncertainty of mind. It perceives each capacity in its own power, necessary need, right relationships with others. Knower, knowledge, in Supermind intelligence is one. Supermind is the intermediate connection between Existence-Consciousness-Bliss and Mind that can explain each other and establish a relationship between them that will enable us to realize the one Existence, Consciousness, Delight in the mold of mind, life, and body.

The truth is, that the concept of God which I had always entertained, and which I had accused Christians of teaching to the world, was a concept of a being who was simply impossible. He was infinite and yet finite; perfect and imperfect; eternal and yet changing - subject to all the variations of emotion, love, sorrow, hate, revenge, that men are prey to.... What a relief it was for me, now, to discover not only that no idea of ours, let alone any image, could adequately represent God, but also that we should not allow ourselves to be satisfied with any such knowledge of Him.

It is therefore an analogical knowledge: a knowledge of a being who is unknowable in himself, yet able to make something of himself known in the being he created.  Here, indeed, lies something of an antinomy. Rather, agnosticism, suffering from a confusion of concepts, sees here an irresolvable contradiction in what Christian theology regards as an adorable mystery. It is completely incomprehensible to us how God can reveal himself and to some extent make himself known in created beings: eternity in time, immensity in space, infinity in the finite, immutability in change, being in becoming, the all, as it were, in that which is nothing. This mystery cannot be comprehended; it can only be gratefully acknowledged.