Is “eternity” time extending forever without limit, just as “infinity” is space or number extending without limit? Or is “eternity” timelessness, the eternal “now”, a mode of existence somehow at right angles to time as we know it, a state of being rather than becoming?

Time is a strange concept. It moves past us, or we move along it, at a constant speed which we cannot control (speed up, slow down, stop or reverse). In this sense, it is quite unlike a space dimension (up-down, left-right, front-back), along which we have reasonable freedom of movement, a choice. There are physical limitations to movement in space: we can move only as fast as present technology permits, cannot move down through solid rock, or up too far without a rocket; but these relative limitations are quite different from the absolute lack of control regarding movement through time.

In Einstein’s theory of relativity, time is a dimension in the four-dimensional space-time continuum. A point in the continuum is an event, which has three space coordinates defining the place and one time coordinate. An object that persists for a while is represented by a “life-line” in the continuum; so is a human being. A life-line has a beginning and an end (e.g. conception and death). A life-line is geometrically a line segment, not an infinite line.

Yet if we look at Einstein’s equations specifying the continuum, time is different from the three space dimensions. While the space dimensions are simply x, y, z in some units like centimeters, the fourth dimension, to be made commensurate with the first three, and to “work” in the equations, must be put as “ict”, where t is time in seconds, c is the velocity of light in a vacuum in cm/sec, and i is the square root of minus one, which mathematicians call the “unit of imaginary numbers”.

It is not surprising that c appears as a proportionality constant, for we would not expect independently defined units like centimeters and seconds to have a proportionality constant of one. (We might still ask “why the velocity of light?”, but that is a different question.) What is significant here is the imaginary unit i. Does that make time, after all, in some sense an “imaginary” dimension? No; mathematicians explain that calling the square root of minus one and its multiples “imaginary numbers” is only a historical accident in the development of mathematics. Imaginary numbers are as “real” as real numbers. Both result from the mathematicians’ basic definitions of them. It is only that the imaginary numbers were defined later than the real numbers.

Still, there is a reason for this lateness in defining them. Real numbers are an extension of the counting numbers (integers) which grew out of commonsense applications. In that sense, the real numbers HAD to be defined first, before the imaginary numbers. Though both kinds of numbers are abstractions, the imaginary numbers are abstractions-once-removed, at a greater distance from commonsense reality than the real numbers.

In any case, the fact that i is part of time’s proportionality constant in Einstein’s equations does make time a DIFFERENT dimension, qualitatively different, from the space dimensions. That seems to confirm common sense, where, as we have seen, we are relatively free to control movement along space dimensions, but not along the time dimension.

Yet, another concept in the theory of relativity gives us pause. For an observer in a different state of motion (say moving at a uniform velocity along a straight line relative to the first observer), the frame of coordinates in the continuum is rotated, so that time is no longer in the same direction; it now partakes of some of the direction of the previous space dimensions, and the new space dimensions partake of some of the direction of what was previously time. This would indicate that these dimensions are not different in basic nature, but the same. Most of the paradoxes in relativity theory stem from this coordinate frame rotation, called the Lorentz transformation; and perhaps in our consideration of the role of imaginary numbers in the time dimension, we have hit another paradox which is really deep. However, let us now leave it aside without resolving it.

Let us suppose that being in a state of eternity means that the time dimension stops being “i” and permits us free movement along it backwards and forwards, at a wide range of speeds. One consequence is that “past” and “future” become equally accessible – not just as a memory or prediction, but ACTUALLY, with the same immediacy as the “present” is accessible to us now. Events are THERE, in past, present and future, and we can “visit” them to experience them. (Language becomes difficult in explaining this, because “are there” is present tense, and we want to generalize it; but our language is “time-bound” and we have to do the best we can with it.)

Suppose that we enter the state of eternity after death, and we gain access to our whole life-line, though perhaps not to its extensions before our birth or after our death. We can then “relive” any of our life experiences, or all of them as a panorama of the whole, and see all the events, our actions, and their consequences, which we may not have even known while alive. If we had acted selfishly or irresponsibly or foolishly, with bad consequences for ourselves and others, we will suffer remorse, which could be a very acute pain in a state of eternity. We will be in a hell of our own making – not a punishment, but a natural consequence (karma) of our actions. If we had acted selflessly, responsibly, wisely, we will see and experience all the good consequences of our behaviour, feel a high state of bliss, and will be in heaven – not as a reward, but as a direct outcome.

Note that these are suppositions, not assertions. I began the previous paragraphs with “let us suppose”. I do not dogmatically BELIEVE them, only consider them possible.

Now let us explore, still on a hypothetical basis, the place of God in this scheme. The Bible states that God created the world (universe), therefore he pre-existed. Teilhard de Chardin (1965) talks about humanity evolving toward an “omega-point”, in a sense creating God as a pinnacle of evolution.

But in eternity, past and future are equivalent, as we assumed. If God had not existed before us, we would not be here. But if we (and all earthly nature before us and after us) had not evolved to the omega-point, God would not exist. It is a circle, like a snake swallowing its own tail – an old religious symbol in the East, called the Uroborus.

At this point in human evolution, we are not sure that we are going to make it; we might destroy ourselves in a nuclear war or ruin our environment and the biosphere. Yet we might make it, as world unity grows and spiritual powers increase. In the temporal world order (as opposed to the eternal), there is no way to know which will happen. But in the eternal world order, there is an answer…IF our assumptions are correct.

The very fact that we are here now proves that there was a God before us. And in order for that to be true, the omega-point must have been reached. So we (or our successor species) did (will) make it, in that snake-tail circle. Otherwise the whole system would have crashed and nothing would be here. This sounds very strange, because it makes no sense at all in the temporal order; but it is perfectly obvious in the eternal order. I call it “the back way to hope”, because of an incident I experienced which it would take too long to recount. (It is told in “The Fifth Yoga” in Section VII.)

Hope is foolish in the temporal order, but it has its own logic in eternity.