Oneness Vs. Duality Part 1 of 3: Overcoming the Madness of Infinities

German mathematician Georg Cantor (1845-1918) spent much of his lifetime trying to wrap his mind around the concept of infinities. As a result, he went mad. Which doesn’t surprise me. There is no concept I have found more consistently disturbing in my lifetime than the concept of infinities. My dreams as a child were often riddled with immensely frustrating themes of ungraspable infinities. Treadmill effects, exponential growth curves, and perpetual splitting were ideas that would often turn my nighttime slumbers into nightmares.

My distress over infinities peaked at around age eight and then progressively subsided. Today, infinities only manage to take hold and haunt my mind during times of illness (flu), which fortunately has been very rare since my childhood.

Although my lifelong relationship with infinities has been distressing, it has taught me an important lesson: There is no difference between madness and infinities. Entertaining the idea of infinities is itself madness. As a result, I have come to be very weary of all thought systems that require an acceptance of infinities. And to put it simply, any thought system that accepts multiplicity as a reality necessarily accepts infinities. Thus, whether the thought system comes from science, religion, philosophy or wherever, if it accepts multiplicity as reality, it accepts inescapable infinities, and so is just a variety of madness.

It must be noted though, that there is a difference between infinities (plural) and Infinity (singular). However, in the normal everyday use of the word infinity, this difference is not recognized. Notice that thus far in this article, I have said only that the concept of infinities (plural) is equivalent to madness. I have not said anything about the word Infinity (singular). Infinity (singular) is not madness; it is in fact sanity.

Our analytical brains are only capable of grasping (running with) the concept of infinities (plural) not Infinity (singular). Analysis is in itself the act of breaking things down into smaller, more manageable parts, which are then assessed by an observer that is treated separate from the thing being analyzed. In other words, analysis is all about multiplicity, which when carried out indefinitely leads to infinities. Infinity (singular) cannot be analyzed. Thus, Infinity is incomprehensible to the analytical. Analysis turns Infinity (singular) upside down and splits it apart into infinities. What all this means is that one cannot grasp Infinity (singular) without actually being it in experience. Any thought of separation (multiplicity) renders Infinity (singular) incomprehensible, and so it cannot be understood by an outside observer (perceiver).

This understanding of Infinity versus infinities is why I find thought systems like atheism/materialism just as limited and grounded in multiplicity as most religious/spiritual doctrine. The arena of human thought systems is for the most part a spectacle of blind people arguing over the colors of nothing. What unites almost all human thought systems is a mutual attempt to justify multiplicity and thus justify infinities. Human thought systems are sometimes useful for getting things done in the world of multiplicity, and for sometimes providing glimpses of truth, but they are always incomplete and self-blinded. There are just as many potential thought systems for attempting to justify infinities (multiplicities) as there are infinities (potential multiplicities)…and all of those thought systems are doomed to incompleteness due to their inherent reliance on multiplicity (non-oneness).

In the next article, we will look at incompleteness as it relates to truth in: Kurt Gödel and the Never-Ending Proof

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