Let’s dispose of that troublesome word – God – for the time being. It seems to create so much confusion and infighting between those who believe and those who don’t, between those who believe in a certain kind of Higher Power, and those who believe in another kind, and between those who believe that the path to God should be one way, and those who belief that the path should be something entirely different.

Let’s not argue about the fact that there are as many beliefs, and experiences, and paths to this truth as there are people, including people who think of themselves as atheists. Let’s not even talk about that. Let’s do what they do in the movies – suspend all our disbelief, as well as our beliefs about things, our ideas about ideas, which is what religion and philosophy and metaphysics really are: our ideas about concepts such as God or no God, which represent collections of ideas themselves. 

Let’s just talk about the infinite, the idea of infinity, that something can be endless. If it’s endless in space, we call it infinity. If its endless in number, it’s also infinite. If it’s endless in time, we call it eternal, and I’m not referring to eternity in the religious sense in which that word is often thought of. Even a good atheist schooled in the sciences may agree that there is something infinite, perhaps the infinite universe or countless, different dimensions of spacetime in what’s been called the multiverse, or the megaverse.

If there is endlessness, then deep down, it must be us, because it’s everywhere and everything. We can each lay a complete claim upon the infinite without diminishing it, since it extends boundlessly beyond ourselves.  Infinity is something we can entirely possess without diminishing it. And it surrounds and enfolds each of us in a mutual embrace. We belong to it.

Since it’s infinite by definition, we must be it. It must be us. That means we have access to it and all that it is and to which it has access. We participate in the infinite, and that makes us endless as well.

You may deny your endless nature because you look at yourself and, well, you end. You have ends in space – hands and feet and a head – as well as ends in time, a birthdate and a death date. Key to your belief in your finite nature is a belief in boundary. When we draw boundaries around something, what’s inside the border becomes finite. But everything on the outside of the boundary remains infinite, if you believe in the concept of infinity.

You can, of course, deny that infinity exists. It would be difficult, I maintain, to even entertain the concept of infinity unless that condition holds true somewhere, for some set of circumstances. Either in space, or in time, or, as the two are joined in Einstein’s physics, in spacetime. And even if you don’t believe that something like spacetime or the matter or energy within it are infinite in quantity, infinity still exists. For instance, in fractal theory, there is no smallest length of coastline. You can keep dividing up and measuring any section of cast forever. You can even do the same with any straight length, or with any volume of space. So infinities do exist on the microscopic scale even if we can’t prove that they exist on the macroscopic level.

Infinite simply means no beginning and no end. A circle is infinite. The very globe on which we tread is, based on that definition, endless, too.

If there is infinity, then we must be surrounded by it, enveloped within it. Our concept of who we are may limit our ability to identify with this state of endlessness. And that concept is the idea we have of ourselves as defined by, and drawn within, a membrane called the human body.

That body is born. It’s given a name. It celebrates its birthdays. Then it dies. It has ends in time. It has ends in space – its feet and head and hands. It’s defined by its skin. It’s finite.

This is the idea we have of the bounded creature called the human being. We could also extend the boundary to the individual family, to a clan or tribe, to a nation, or to our species. These groups are all obviously larger than the individual human. But they are all still enclosed by boundaries. What these boundaries have in common is that they allow us to define, and to distinguish and exclude what’s inside the boundary from everything outside of it. Yet to define, to distinguish and to exclude also limits.  The boundary is what we choose to define and categorize by, and this definition is always, by its very nature, limiting. Definitions are limits. Anything within a given class is of necessity defined and limited.

We could define ourselves by our membership in the order mammalia, or even by our participation in the Terran systems of biology, atmosphere, and geology sometimes called Gaia. We could go further and call it the noosphere, a developing consciousness. We could identify our boundary with the magnetosphere, with the solar system called Sol, the galaxy called Milky Way, the cluster of galaxies called the Local Group, or the universe itself.

If there is infinity – in space, in time, in matter, in energy, we are of necessity participants within it. I think this is all people mean when they think and speak of God. For God, by its nature, is the indefinable, the illimitable, the unclassifiable, that which is without boundary. It transcends. It lies beyond. If you’re not comfortable with that three-letter word, get rid of it. It doesn’t matter to the endless what you call it. To call it by a name is like trying to throw a rope around the moon. It’s impossible to characterize it through name or classification, and it doesn’t change what it is.

We cut ourselves off from the endless by closing the boundary around ourselves, and by defining ourselves as limited. Anything compared to the infinite is quite small, when you think about it, except in relation to other, smaller things. This is why we compare ourselves to others, and to other things. Bigger is better. More is desirable. This sets up the relative world, the comparative one. 

If there be infinity, none of us can really comprehend it. We can only imagine bottomless space, endless time, uncountable matter, limitless energy.  These are unquantifiable, since quantity can only be measured by comparison. Any quantity is only that amount of anything – space, time, matter, energy – around which limits can be drawn, and thus which can be counted, which can be accounted for. Infinity can’t be quantified, and so we can’t really know it with the same mind by which we know other things, like numbers and particles and even the definable God of religion. Infinity can’t be accounted for.

If there is infinity, we must be part of it, and be possessed by it. And yet since we are also within it, in a sense, it is part of us and we possess it. Whether you believe in God or not is unimportant, since God is a mere concept, which always by its definitions places limitations on our understanding. If you believe in infinity, in eternity, then you can begin to participate in the infinite, in the eternal, simply by relinquishing your sense of boundaries, your notions of what you are, and your ideas of what reality is.

So let’s dispose of the God word. And at the same time, we can dispose of the limits we place around ourselves. On this way, we can begin to identify with our own boundlessness.

© 2024 by Michael C. Just