Can we conceive eternity?

Question

Thanks to all your answers. Have a great weekend!

I really appreciate good answers from you people. There are very informative and i see all your answers in different perspectives. So, thanks a lot, Indeed there are some intelligent answers. Thank you so much.

Answer 1

Sure. The concept isn't really that difficult... just time without end, continuation.

Let's look at it differently, if that helps.

Take the number 192837465. It's not very big on the screen, and it isn't terribly large as numbers go, but counting at a number a second it would take more than a lifetime to reach. It takes only nine keystrokes to enter. It is the first integer larger than 192837464 and the last integer smaller than 19283747. These are its properties.

0 is also a number. It takes nearly no time to count to, is special because it is neither positive or negative, comes just before 1 and just after -1 in integers. These are its properties.

But what about integers? As a series, each comes before the next, and there is always a next. There is no single integer that is the largest, by definition it doesn't work that way. But there is the concept of infinity, used often in mathematics. Infinity can be multiplied and divided, infinity can be positive or negative, and it has the property that it is absolutely bigger than any number you might have. It's what the arrowhead means at the end of a line in a diagram, indicating that the line continues, whereas any number you might name is just a point on the line.

Eternity is the same. Every instant in time is just a number, a point on the line. Eternity is just the property of continuation of the line when the line is time. No matter where you are on the line, no matter the instant in time, the line always continues.

So yes, I say we can conceive eternity. It's neither difficult or frightening, the concept is simply a property rather than a thing.

Answer 2

I can, but at the same time I can't.

Regarding the answer from drgirishkumarts, eternity deals in time in only one direction: forward. Therefore it doesn't neccessarily have or not have a beginning, because the concept is unidirectional.
In addition, it is a well known fact in th scientific world that every concept that has a beginning has an end by definition (for example fear, pain, or hate), and vice versa to say that every concept that never began will never end (such as an absolute anything, absolute nothing, or absolute concerntration), and that every concept that has no beginning also has no end (like love, hope, or energy). These concepts that can never end or have no end are the concepts we speak of when we think of eternity, yet the question remains:

Can we conceive eternity?

A real and true understanding of anything that extends endlessly is impossible, without that which is seeking the understanding to also exist in a timeless realm. We may appear to be mere mortals, but our fragile bodies are powered by an infinitely immense reservoir of spiritual energy that has and will always exist, because energy can never be created or destroyed, and it moves within, through and around everything that is, was, or ever will be. This energy is the very essence of who and what you are. Before you think of yourself by your name, skin colour, gender, habits, beliefs, or role in society, you can go deeper to say you are human. You can go deeper still to say you are an animal, deeper still to say you are a multicellular organism, deeper to say you're alive, self aware, and creative, deeper to say you're a collective of harmoniously interdependent particles and subparticles, and deeper to say you are a vibrating mass of highly charged strings of pure natural energy concentrated in an area of space that allows you to manifest yourself in the form of a human.
Given this scientific truth, if you should find a way to revert back to your original state of unmanifested energy, you would still be you, fully conscious and self aware and creative, only you would no longer be constrained by the relative realm where time exists. In this state, you would be able to fully and completely conceive of eternity in all it's granduer.

So the answer is YES, we can conceive of eternity, but NO, not as we are now. Only in a state of eternal life, which we will all return to after we discontinue manifesting in the physical relative realm, or when we die.

Answer 3

Hi Third P.

I do not think we humans can truly conceive eternity. We certainly understand what the meaning is; but can we truly understand it? I don't think so.

One day, I will be in Heaven; and at that time I will be living in eternity. Then I think I will no longer be able to truly conceive of actual time, though I may understand its meaning.

Right now, we humans live in a time-oriented world. Everything we do is based upon time. We wake up at a certain time, get to work or school at a certain time, etc. Nothing is done without time defining it.

However, when we die & go to Heaven, we will no longer be in human form. We will be in spirit form. Time will not exist as we know it now. We will live for all eternity. We will have a true understanding of it then, because we will be living it.

Physical time, as we know it now, will not exist. Eternity is just that — eternity. Existence will just be. We will exist with God, in all His glory, for all time, immeasurable time.

I do not think eternity is for us to know — yet.

Peace.

Answer 4

It depends on what conceive and eternity means to you. My meaning of eternity is life after our physical death and conceive is something we create with our minds, bodies and the material objects at our disposal . Eternity we cannot create, it has been there from the beginning of time.

Answer 5

I can conceive eternity, the never-ending abyss that I personally would love to live through

Answer 6

Yes we can conceive it. But in our existance it cannot be experienced because that would take eternity, which is not part of this life.

Answer 7

I dont think you can. Our minds, through conditioning have set up psychological constraints to help us to conceptualise the world around us. if we thought about a problem endlessly, we would never be able to achieve anything. therefore from an evolutionary perspective we have had to learn to create 'best fit models' that help us to frame our understanding. the best example is in physics. a caveman would know that if your throw something in the air it falls. it took hundreds of years to work out gravitons

Answer 8

NO way...we conceive life but never eternity!

Answer 9

when i think of eternity i am absolutley baffled and end up realizing what an insignificant part i am in the wheel of life.
i dont think we could ever ever conceive eternity

Answer 10

We can only accept the higher authority (God) on this one. Our brain and senses can not really understand it. We just have to accept I have always existed and always will. That is eternal. If you can accept that then you have realized it.