If within us there is existence and we exist within the universe, then the universe must exist within?

Question

something, etc., etc.

Then wouldn't existance at some point have to stop? It would come to the point where there is nothing else. There would have to be something such as a wall or we would end up where we started; but it can't go on and on infinately.

Is that not where I have taken you? Are you not done? OK then, if there's a start, must there not be an end? There must be. One can not exist without the other.

So, from box, to box, to box, we come to realization; there's nothing else to live in but this confinment. Also, what we make of it is what we have to live in. From death to death, to death, to where we started from!

I guess at some point we end up in a fish bowl. That's where I have take you, is it not? From bowl to bowl: to toilet bowl.

Answer 1

You're a deep thinker, but let me take you somewhere instead! Try to look at the universe as a circle-the most efficient form for many things scientific and otherwise(example: a bubble)-and we are just a small, minute part of the whole thing. A circle has no start or end really, so why should we?? If you think in terms of a human being just as a holding space for an eternal spirit (not religiously, I don't go there, but merely as a form of energy, which has been scientifically proven we have as we lose a certain amount of weight-though very small-at death that cannot be explained otherwise) and we just go from one to another, perhaps floating for a while in between on some "other side" or rather another dimension we cannot go to in human form, only as spirit energy. I always got caught up on the issue of "Well, where did God come from, then, to make all this stuff and us?", which is similar to your statement that we must have a beginning and end, which may not be so in the strict sense of things....it got me kicked out of the Catholic Church though! LOL! Seriously, I wasn't allowed to get confirmed for refusing to accept everything and not question anything! Not a problem, I don't believe in religion as it is man made and as flawed as everything else we make or do!
Hey, Pink Floyd said it well, much like you did:"Were just two lost souls living in a fishbowl, year after year. Running over the same old ground, what have we found? The same old fears. Wish you were here." Extend it to multiple lives though, until we finally "get it" and can get past that point and onto another issue.
But you seem to be right about the confinement, as I too believe we are in confinement in human form, but we do so for a purpose, it's just not always easy to understand or see them though, which leads to this confusion amongst mankind. Many awful things I've been through ONLY made any sense years later when I was needed for some purpose and I had to have gone through that bad experience to be able to help someone else or myself get through something. But usually your purpose is mostly improvement on yourself, but often it has to be by helping others. You are lucky as you realize that life is a lot about what we make of it, but there is so much out of our control, it seems impossible to really make it how you'd like it to be mostly.
I have a reading suggestion, if you're into this really and would like to find some sort of peace or deeper understanding, as this is what helped me to get a view of the bigger picture, as you seem to be more of a short-term thinker (No! That is not a bad thing, there's just differences and some of us think about today and tomorrow, while others are way off in the future-we need both types to make anything work properly-please do not be insulted at my catagorization, I am a similar type thinker, and if not for my husband who thinks long-term, I'd be lost in "now" far more often! Just don't hook up with the same type as you, then things will be balanced better!) but to get a grasp on the whole scope of things I read some stuff about the Other Side written by Sylvia Brown, (she has a lot of books, start with the ones about life on the other side) and as strange as it seems, I never felt better or more informed than after reading her stuff! She's known as a "psychic", but no matter what you believe in she has an incredibly sensible view of life, the universe, and everything (much like "Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy" sequel? LOL!) and if you don't get some weird familiar feelings about the stuff she says, I'd be very surprised!! Please don't dismiss her writing without reading at least a few pages, no matter what you may think of psychics or whatever because she is not a fake, I swear she's got a line directly to the other side and knows a lot more than I do for sure, but as long as you're in this mode of thinking, why not open your mind a bit more (use whatever assistance you need to do so, if you know what I mean!) and let her stuff blow it away-I was, and I'm NOT religious, didn't even believe in God most of my life, don't fall for scams or believe in hokey stuff in general, even have a B.S. degree in Accounting and even work on computers, so I'm pretty logical and down to earth (even if I don't like it here!), and this was the first "spiritual" type thing I found I could believe in without compromising my common sense and logic! Finally! And life has been just as hard and challenging as ever, but at least I can begin to see some reasons why now, and I try to not get depressed or worse, like I used to, because I know that this is all supposed to happen and it'll make sense at some point, even if it's after I am gone in this form, which is really just a box for your soul or whatever you call that thing inside you that makes you who you are.
Maybe there are some things better unknown to us so we can do what we are here to do without worrying about getting back to something else, somewhere else, that is almost totally out of our control anyway! Then there are exit points...but I'll let you find out about them on your own-I had a very real experience that I should have never survived, but did so without a scratch(actually a few who saw it were like-HUH? How did you get hit by that huge old car-dead on-at 65 MPH and get up a second later unscathed, while my ex was only nicked by the side mirror and his body was badly damaged, mutliple broken bones and other injuries and while I remember getting hit, I lost a few seconds and was OK, although sprawled in the middle of the road in front of the car, which was a perfect example of one choosing to not take an exit point when it was offered, rather choosing to stay and move on to where I am now, which took a lot of work, but ended up being a right decision, but if asked then, I'd have taken death not knowing what was in store for later in my life, and I would've missed out on a lot I'd have been sorry to not be around for instead. And this happened before reading those books, but became very clear as soon as I read it a couple of years later! I can see no other explaination, and no one else has any answers-the driver and others, too, were sure I was dead until I got up and walked over to him-then he was as white as an African-American person ever looked, like I was a ghost! Very strange, but Sylvia Brown had the answer!!!
No fish bowl, no toilet bowl-unless that is what you've decided to make your life into-just the circle, and we keep on coming back, too! Hang in there, and please just read a little bit to see if you don't connect, I think you will, but I would've laughed if someone else told me this and thought they were a religious fanatic or just plain nuts, but I'm not even close! (Well maybe a little nuts, but aren't we all?) I hope it will bring you some answers and explain a lot of the confusion and pain we go through, maybe even bring you some peace of mind that all is not in vain after all! Good luck and learn to let your brain stop thinking so much, sometimes it's just no good, as I am one of the worst offenders and cannot ever shut off my brain as needed, but I discovered ways to slow it down, tune it out, not let it drive me completely crazy (20 years ago, barely a teenager, I had the same exact questions that you do now and it drove me crazy most of my life when things would happen that I didn't understand, and why are we even here anyway, damn it, i thought constantly-I never asked to be born was how I looked at it all, and was often suicidal since I didn't believe in anything, so my only fear was facing another tortuous day in life, Hell looked like a vacation spot to me if it even existed-I had a tough life, believe me!) but I still have trouble sleeping and often can't turn off my brain as much as I need to, so it's not an exact science, but I do work through things much better most of the time-there's a lot of people who'd tell you so, too, as I've caused others a lot of pain trying just to get through my own-and just that I'm still alive is proof that it helped me a lot to try and work on that, and learning about the Other Side cleared so much up for me that I can honestly say I am a different person because of it. Hey, it can't hurt, right? At least not as much as life does...

Answer 2

First of all it is impossible for physical matter to exist. You can't get something from nothing. Think back prior to the Big Bang.How did that matter get there. We all know that an atom just wouldn't appear. We do exist but we are some kind of program. In a program all is possible.

Answer 3

Maybe there doesn't have to be a start or an end. We feel there must be, because we can't comprehend infinite time and infinite space. As with many pieces of life, just because we don't understand it, doesn't mean it can't exist.

I believe we all have a multitude of universes within us, and we are all a part of each other's reality. It's all about perception. :)

Answer 4

Actually, the universe is everything in exisitence. And scientists have a few theories about how it will end:

The Big Rip- the universe will expand so much, it's actually ripped apart.

There's another one that's the opposite: the universe will collapse in on itself.

so, have a nice day.

Answer 5

Non sequitur. Nice try.

The Universe is by definition all of space, matter, and energy. Space is expanding but the sum of all matter and energy (as they are basically equivalent via E=mc^2) is constant.

There may be other universes, but they occupy distinct space-times and thus are not in the same pot as us.

When you ask a metaphysical question in a physical science forum, don't be surprised if we have a rational answer and you just end up showing your ignorance of the topic.

Answer 6

All you have established is that our existence is a subset of the existence of the universe.

You are hinting at the conundrum of Descartes' Dream:
http://www.sspx.ca/Angelus/2002_May/Descartes.htm

Answer 7

I think you're getting a bit too philosophical for here. All I know is that I exist. The rest is pure conjecture.

Answer 8

The category is Astronomy & Space, not Philosophy

Answer 9

Wait, why can't existence be infinite?