Posted By :
liamjtolentino
6 Jan
On the Edge of Eternity
Our unending search for meaning
A decade ago, I was enrolled in a summer camp for Duke’s Talent Identification program DukeTIP where I received a book called The Colossal Book of Mathematics. It was basically a massive compilation of a bunch of Martin Gardner’s works describing strange and complex math concepts. While I could talk for hours about the concepts in this book, the part I really want to talk about, and the part that stuck with me for ten years was the chapter on non-Euclidean geometry, specifically on hyperbolic space.
The chapter presents a hypothetical finite circle, shown below. The image is actually Circle Limit III by M.C. Escher, but most of what I learned about it was from Gardner’s book. Basically, within this finite circle that takes up not even half of the page in the book is an infinite universe. As outside observers, we can see and pinpoint exactly where the outer edge of the circle is. However, for the beings living within this circle, the edge could never be reached. As they approach the edge, space starts to bend away and the distance they have left to travel remains infinite. We see this in the artwork as the fishes getting smaller the farther they get from the center, but to them, it just seems like an infinite empty space.
It was this artwork, this concept that led me to write the poem I called Edge of Eternity three years later. I will paste the full poem at the bottom of this post for you, dearest reader, to read at your heart’s desire. Long story short, the poem is about my personal spiritual journey from my darkest hour to the moment I turned my life around. It may be difficult to see at first, especially with my writing style at the time, but the end of the poem briefly describes what the edge of eternity means, at least to me. It’s this idea of something that seems attainable and within your grasp but never can be because it’s never meant to be reached. It’s about things like heaven, eternal life after death, something we strive to reach even though we’re never meant to. We dream of achieving the impossible even when we know we can’t, but in the process of walking that endless road, we find something close. With each footstep towards the edge, the distance we cover means much less, but we still push forward. Why is that?
In my ponderings on this topic, I explored what it means to me spiritually. I mentioned eternal life earlier as the concept of heaven has always been prevalent in my life, growing up under the Catholic faith. The thing is, while I identify as Catholic, I consider it more relevant to my cultural identity than my spiritual identity. I engage in the traditions and rituals that come with Filipino Catholicism, but my beliefs and values don’t completely align with the teachings of the church. In prayer and meditation, I find my own way to God because I’ve never felt truly satisfied with most religious teachings as they mostly teach their way as the final answer to all things rather than chasing the edge of eternity. The fishes in the artwork may think they’ve found the edge of the circle, but there will always be more to explore.
I may expand more on my spirituality and religious beliefs in another post, but for now, I’d like to focus on the concept of heaven and eternal life. See, a lot of religious folk I hear talk about eternal life, but to me, they don’t seem to comprehend the full scale of eternity. They treat is as just the end, like a final level to a game or something. Once you reach heaven, that’s it. That’s never truly satisfied me nor does it capture the full reach of eternity.
I want you to imagine walking an infinite road. You’re trying to get somewhere: the end of that road. You can walk as long as you want, cover as much ground as you like. You can travel millions, billions, trillions, fucking duodecillion kilometers forward, but no matter how far you go, you’ll always be closer to where you started and nowhere nearer to the end. But you still keep going. Why? Your goal is to reach the end, but no matter how many steps you leave behind, the steps ahead never change. Still, even though the number ahead never changes, the number behind will always go up as long as you keep going.
To me, that’s what heaven, God, eternal life, whatever, means to me. It’s something that you know for sure will never be reached, but you still keep going. You’re not there to see the edge of eternity, you’re there to see how far you can get with your eyes fixed on the goal. A lot of people find fulfillment in believing there is a direct path to heaven by sticking to a way of life taught to them by a book that went through countless translations and editions over the millennia. That’s fine. I respect that. Hell, I envy being satisfied with a belief to stick to till the end of time. But that’s not me. I believe the way to heaven is forward, not sticking to a destination that I believe to be the end. To me, life isn’t just some test to see if I’ll be worthy to cross the pearly gates when I die; I find life to be a finite moment in an unfathomably infinite existence that will never return along the path and must be spent chasing the edge of eternity, the gates of heaven, whatever you call it, to make the most out of this short point in existence.
Honestly, much of my frustration towards most religious beliefs is the approach to death. The way I heard from most people, they seem to think that after death, eternal life in heaven makes the life we live on Earth seem meaningless and that we shouldn’t be too scared of crossing to the other side of eternity because we’ll be in a better place. I don’t quite like that. I never really have. I don’t like taking away the value of the life we lived on Earth just because we’ll have something better after. It just makes things feel meaningless, even though to some people, that’s what gives life meaning. Once again, I could talk more on this, especially considering my own relationship with the concept of death, but I’ll leave that to some other time.
Lastly, I’d like to talk about Turing machines and how a paper I wrote expanded on my thoughts on the concepts of infinity and the edge of eternity. At the bottom of this post, you’ll see a paper I wrote where I attempted to prove that the level editor in Portal 2 is Turing complete. I won’t go too in-depth on the technical details here as I’ll focus more on my points in the conclusion of the paper.
To begin, the Turing machine, or more specifically, the universal Turing machine, is not a real physical machine. In fact it is impossible for it to exist in its entirety in the real world as it is infinitely long. However, it is the basis for all of modern computing, even the very computer used to type this. How is that? How can something that can never exist possibly affect the real world to such a degree?
You see, dear reader, this is the point where I started to find a new approach to God and existence in general. As I explained in the paper, the way we were able to make the impossible possible wasn’t by directly bringing it into existence, but by taking steps towards the edge of eternity. If you look at the history of computing technology, you’ll see that with every innovation, every step forward, we start to approach the impossible, never getting closer, but getting much much further from where we began. We didn’t stop at ENIAC; we kept going and pushing the limits of what we can do in the physical world, to the point that we’re now pushing beyond classical physics into the quantum realm. We came so far and still continue to innovate, eyes locked in on this impossible theoretical concept of a machine that can compute anything. To be fair, the actual logical mechanics of the Turing machine have been built many times and even improved upon and the only thing that’s actually impossible is the infinitely long memory tape, but the concept is still there. And it doesn’t even stop there. Sticking to mathematics, we have digits of pi, large prime numbers, things that will never end but we still try to find them. The idea of innovating endlessly with eyes locked on an impossible yet comprehensible concept is what drove humanity so far.
So now, how does this relate to existence? I mentioned how such abstract concepts that could never exist physically still manage to affect everything in the real world. Remember those imaginary numbers you learned in high school that seemed pointless? Even though they couldn’t possible represent anything in the real world, their properties affect so much of the numbers that do represent something to us. Fictional characters also affect our real lives despite only existing as words on a page or pixels on a screen.
So if that’s the case, if the impossible can affect the possible, what even is the meaning of existence. To that, I shall repeat the words of Majin Buu from TeamFourStar’s Buu Bits:
“Existence is but a shallow question with no answer.”
If we try to limit existence to concrete answers, strict definitions, we will never truly solve it. But that’s the beauty of it. Much like the edge of eternity, the true definition of existence can never truly be reached because it was never meant to. We can think ourselves as the outside observers able to touch the outside of the circle on the page, but we’ll always really be the fish in the drawing, and I find there’s an unfathomable beauty to that.
And now, dearest reader, I hope you can start to see what the meaning of God is to me now. He’s not a physical, tangible entity that controls this whole existence. Even if tomorrow, they somehow proved definitively that there is no creator, I’d still believe in the concept of God. Because to me, God both exists and doesn’t exist. As in, he doesn’t exist in our physical plane of existence because he can’t and isn’t supposed to. But he still has an undeniable effect on everything, existing simply in the same plane as the previously impossible concepts like the full Turing machine, the final digits of pi, the largest prime number, the edge of eternity. He is the edge of eternity. With eyes locked in on the impossible concept of an all-powerful being, I strive to go forward and make him be as “real” as I possibly can. For what even is “reality” but another abstract concept that could never be answered? If I’m made in his image, that’s what I’ll strive to be. In that, I find heaven. In that, I find peace.
Edge of Eternity Poem (Trigger warning: Themes of suicide)
Act I: Back on Track
Oh flowing river
Why do you flow that way?
The ocean is behind
Come return to him
Holy castle
Waterfalls in the mountain
The first in a name
Shines upon you
Stars in the sky
I’ve never seen you before
Guide my way
Back to where I belong
Show me the light
That I once knew
Make it feel real
Take me back
But why why why
Am I still feeling blue?
My heart found its desire
What more does it need?
Fall up, fall away
Away from the clouds
The bridge breaks
And I drown in your tears
Act II: Hellbound
Dark storm clouds fill my sky
Hide away the sun from me
That which I wish to see
Is no longer what I need
That sweet honey
Fed to me since then
Now tastes bitter
And the jar shatters
Bittersweet melodies play
As the lights grow dim
Rope around my neck
Fall from the chair
Ah but what is that voice
Telling me to hold on?
Save me from pain
Bring back the sunshine
Sweet mortal angel
Cut the rope from my neck
Pull me from the flame
And bring me back to the clouds
Act III: Death Lingers on
Seven days, seven nights
Far from the heart, I can’t escape
Chained from harm, yet still unsafe
Oh Sisyphus push it up the hill
Why do I roll back down?
Take me to the top
Far from the heart, close to the mind
Close to that which lies
Between on which I walk
False smiles hide the pain
Worlds made within the mind
To escape from reality
False light, false light
Draw me from the true light
Her eyes, her eyes
Turn me further away
True light, true light
Burn me with your fire again
Sunlight, skylight
Break my chains and spread my wings
Act IV: Temptation
Lost is the truth from me
Lost is the lie from me
New cumulus in the sky
A mere afterimage of desire
Words of past love
Shared across the stars
Soon to be past love
But not quite the same
Perfect square
And a power of two
Lips come to touch
But nothing quite true
Hah, the blood turns to steel
Come in, come in
Ah, how soft the feathery wings
Yet the fall still more
Whisper to me your silent screams
Fright me with your words
Make the moment for me eternity
For soon it will be over
Angel girl
I awakened the demon in you
You woke the beast in me
What left can we do?
Rivers split and broken hearts
The sun continues to shine
Eyes closed searching for love
The sun continues to shine
Act V: Blind Path
Heart of glass, fall and shatter
Clean up the mess you made
From those shards form anew
Melt into something better
Fracture again
Again and again
Let those cracks form
Till you’ve got it down
Float upon the empty sea
Look to the stars above
It won’t soon be over
But it’ll be soon enough
Land ho!
But ‘tis the land we seek?
Perfect white sand
But not enough green
Back to the stars we go
Heaven’s lights we follow
Any way the wind blows
Doesn’t really matter
On that day he rested
When the world was complete
We return to the place
Where flesh met steel and wood
Where the flesh turned to bread
And the blood to wine
Mark me with your oil
Remind me what I missed
Act VI: Northbound Heavenbound
Old stars made anew
Let’s go back
A new place made an old place
We’re not quite back
Like the three, we follow the star
The one that shines above all
End the road a different place
But still the same by heart
Let me be true
This heart ain’t a pond
More like the Dead Sea
More salt than water, more death than life
That which he searched for
And what she shed tears for
What you shut yourself over
Is in the arc of the sun
Learn to see
I’m not stuck anymore
Although still in four
My mind is free
Only in dreams
We find what we seek
So close your eyes
And see a new light
Following silence
Comes the fire in our hearts
A light unseen
Brighter than the sun
I see you there
With rivers flowing from your eyes
Weep upon me
And we’ll cry it all out
The edge of eternity
Seems so close
Yet the gap is still there
Unable to be closed