From Chapter 2 of The Selfward Facing Way ("Multiple Concepts, A Singular Wholeness"):
Something quite wonderful is occurring at this stage of our human story. We are now developing a quantum understanding of reality, based on mathematical principles (and backed by discoveries in astronomy and molecular biology as well as other fields of natural science), to reflect and confirm what the greatest saints and sages ever known have been telling us all along.
Essentially, we are coming to understand that the only thing here is infinity in all directions.
Looking into a telescope, you know that “the universe” spreads out before you without any identifiable end point. Your looking may reveal all sorts of mind-blowing phenomena: planets and stars, sunspots, nebulas, comets, meteor showers, black holes and galaxies. As you look, and in each moment, the Earth is hurtling through space in its orbit of our Sun at about 67,000 miles per hour. This figure does not even take into account the speed of the Earth’s rotation or the speed with which our solar system is rotating in the Milky Way (490,000 mph or something crazy like that). Yet because of gravity, we and everything else here are held “in place”! These forces and the unfathomable power be-hind them are almost unspeakable. Countless trillions of light years are in operation, simultaneously in this very instant, engendering a perpetual multiplicity of cosmic events.
Being aware of these unbelievable forces, it becomes evident that this activity of the universe extends forever. Whatever you cannot see is there, too, the immensity of which exceeds far beyond what can be observed, detected or measured.
This is a pretty huge realization!
Looking through a microscope to the inside of your body or that of any other sentient life form, you can perceive an equally mind-blowing universe. Bearing witness to the intricate diversity and complexities of the living organism bestows an awe that is unsurpassed. And we also know that the stronger the capability of the micro-scope, the more we can see of what’s really going on in there. Increasing our magnification of what we are able to view on the inside reveals there is also no end to life going in this direction, in the very same way there is no end when a telescope is pointed “outwards.” Inside and outside, there is only infinite space.
The big question is: “What is ‘the looker’ in all of this?”
Where is he/she? Who is the one looking through the telescope or the microscope? Is not the very possibility of our beginning to observe and confirm this huge mind-blowing reality—through advances in technology and scientific understanding—a function of infinity itself? Can something other than infinity be looking at infinity? What is the delineation between “inside” and “outside”? Is infinity not discovering the vastness, the limitlessness, the immensity, the beauty and the wondrousness of its own nature?
If this is true, where does infinity begin and end in you? Can there be somewhere in which you are not in this discovery?
Can you yourself be other than infinity? Other than wholeness?
Is this not simply reality as it is?
* * *
Infinity literally means “never-ending.” Therefore, infinity has constant never-endingness as its nature. So in this moment, it is seamless. It has no demarcations or limits. Our adopted definitions and beliefs—our concepts—are responsible for imposing an apparent limit on infinity. But apparent limits are fundamentally untrue. In mathematical terms, this means that no matter what number you think of infinity as being, it is always at least one more. No matter what size you perceive it to be, it is always bigger.
Since infinity already exists as never-endingness, it is only our continual discovery of observable aspects of it that can make us think of it as expanding. The collective learning and knowledge of humankind deepens through our evolutionary development. But knowledge is the same as infinity in the sense that all there is to know already exists; we are simply uncovering more and more of this fact, through the passage of time. What expands is just our apprehension of it—our confirmation. This process does not actually change anything, however. The knowledge of everything everywhere is already complete.
Whenever something “new” gets added to the knowledge bank in which we store our cumulative evaluation of infinity’s immensity, we can fall into the trap of imagining this new concept is somehow better at capturing what is inherently uncontainable. Infinity is too immediate, too free and too all-encompassing to be grasped in any description or process of categorization.
Within infinity, every concept that has ever been and will ever be conceived of arises and disintegrates. Infinity is that by which all concepts can appear, without exception, and it remains here unaffected when they disappear again—as they inevitably do. Infinity is already everything. It is already one never-ending wholeness. Reality is simply, exactly this truth. And it is permanent.
Can there be anything else here but this?
* * *
For more info and to order the book by donation, see the book website at www.faceselfward.net
