Rising, Glimmering, Fading, Dying, Repeat...

We are told that "the universe is eternal and infinite". If this is the case, then why does everything in this universe eventually decay and perish? Plants, animals, humans, planets, stars, love affairs and so on, are all born in glory, bloom into fullness, gradually lose their strength and beauty, then die.

These things do not fit the definition of "eternal".

–adjective

1. without beginning or end; lasting forever; always existing.
2. perpetual; ceaseless; endless.
3. enduring; immutable.
4. Metaphysics. existing outside all relations of time; not subject to change.

"Well", one may say, "plants return in the Spring!". "Seasons return in their due course. Man spends sometime in the 'hereafter' and then returns to physical life - re-incarnates - in order to pick up his lessons and 'live' again, right?".

These, also, do not conform with the definition of "eternal". In fact, the birth/death/birth/death cycle is probably as far as one can get from eternity. It is more of a horizontal cycle, where one picks up where one left off in a prior physical life. Due to continuing Ignorance, one invariably commits the same errors as in previous lives (or worse) and thus dooms one's self to repeated turns of the wheel. This is what i personally refer to as "The Hamster-Wheel of Birth/Death".

So, despite what the "religionists" say, we do not leave this physical life to go on to our permanent "Great Eternal Reward". We leave this physical world and retire to a temporary astral sphere. A "heaven-world" whose attributes and level of pleasantness depend on the quality and morality of the experiences we gathered in the now-ended physical life. The "better-behaved" one was while incarnate, the more time they will spend in "the summerland" of the higher astral realms. Good times! Those who lived lives of a more selfish and negative bent will spend a bit more time in the lower astral realms purging their souls of their materialistic desires before being allowed into the higher astral regions of this temporary heaven-world. A bit unpleasant, but necessary. In any event, at some point, all must return to the material realm, take up their cross and resume, yet again, the physical trek of sorrow and pain.

If one gives the matter some thought, one can surmise that based on the foregoing, we are not living in an eternal universe. We live in a temporal universe, a universe of change.

Then where is true eternity to be found? And what must one do to get there? Does this "eternal universe" even exist? How does one get off the hamster-wheel?

- to be continued -

~~ g