There are precious, terrifying periods when I am totally gone, immersed so completely in some activity that I cease to think, to be, anything. No inner monologue, no self-consciousness, no awareness of the passing seconds or hours. I’m lost to a flow state, a timeless void. If I returned to see all clocks frozen, I would have to look out a window to estimate the duration of my temporary death.
I cannot fathom infinite hours. The only infinity I know is the one I am when I’m timeless. I can’t think infinity, only experience it temporarily. Just as there is an infinity between one and two, there is an infinity between this minute and the next. I can’t possibly know the former. I can’t fit a perpetually expanding list of decimals in memory or imagination. But it is possible, if the conditions are right, to know the latter. I know it when I’m completely immersed, timeless, gone, voided. Time leaves with me.
There are no clocks in Heaven, no watches in Hell. There are no sunrises or sunsets, no extending shadows, no wrinkling skins, no births, no deaths. Time is God and Satan’s only shared enemy. On earth, I can find time again after I’ve left it. The clock has shifted, the planet has rotated. I can return from the void to myself, finitude, and the passing seconds. I can “look back” at evidence of my absence. Nothing of the sort is possible in the Otherworlds. I lose myself to something, am gone, and eventually return. How long was my trip away? Time is dead, I can’t even guess. Whether I’m in Heaven or Hell, there is no “this minute” or “the next,” no growth or decay, no way to finitize the experienced infinity.
Eternal life is commonly understood to be the type of life that is lived where time is dead. I live forever and infinitely in the sense that the duration of my existence can’t possibly be measured here. This says little about my experience, the content of life as I know it, and everything about the objective nature of the Otherworld.
I could live this kind of eternal life and never be truly eternal. I could live infinite years and never encounter the timeless void. Finding eternity has nothing to do with the duration of my existence and everything to do with the timelessness of my experience. I can be a living eternity in this world by being completely immersed. Through this existential baptism, I meet an infinity that can only be appreciated in contrast to my finite self-consciousness. When I leave, time leaves, and all that is left is a living eternity, an embodied infinity encapsulated between the moments I leave and return whose afterglow reassures me that there is life beyond myself.