Sunday, October 28, 2007

Eternal

Eternal.

From the Latin root aevum, an age - i.e., ageless.

Hebrew equivalent: olam.

What is eternal? The material substance that forms my body today, was shaped ages ago in the furnace of a star and a billion years from now, might again be part of a star or perhaps make up a few molecules of some planet's atmosphere, perhaps a billion light years from where I now sit.

Will my consciousness or some kind of soul persist in some other realm, some heavenly sphere, long after my mortal components have been recycled? Of what substance, if so, will it be formed?

The Greeks did not believe their gods were eternal: they had a birth from an earlier generation of elemental beings. The Judeo-Christian God, however, is decisively aeveum, olam, without beginning of days or end of years.

Eternal.

Yet the scientist who smiles condescendingly at such a conception, must also admit that there are limits to his or Her own understanding, what has been, what will be, what science knows about eternity.

5 comments:

Nadiyya said...

Energy is eternal, and that we are :)

Chase March said...

People tend to think that the future goes on forever and ever. I don’t think that time in linear. If it is, then time must also go on and on forever into the past. This is a hard concept for most people to grasp. I like to think of time as a circle. It has no beginning and no ending. Therefore, it is eternal.

PixieDust said...

The Alpha & the Omega, the beginning & the end... questions that have been pondered since the beginning giving us our biggest fears, hopes, and dreams...

StayAtHomeKat said...

Time and the Eternal

I just wish that folks could grasp the now and the near future.... their children's future .... and realize that they are leaving them with very little ...that would be worthwhile .... and the interest to that legacy is being compounded daily.... and we, as we are very little different from previous generations, will no doubt, be reflected in the eyes of the next and the next... and they will compound it as well .... until the true account is called forth.... and all comes due.

The Eternal.
We can't take a lien out on that... borrow it, do anything with it... It is out of our reach.... a pristine thing .... Eternity will sort it out by and by according to It's dictates which have nothing to do with we ourselves.

the buddha closes his eyes and opens his eyes, opens and closes, opens and closes, and worlds come into existence and out of existence, into and out, into and out... forever and ever and back onto itself and ever

StayAtHomeKat said...

ever again and anew