Cloudscape

If you want to be content, compare what you have with zero. If you want to achieve something, compare what you have with infinity. This cannot be done without infinite imagination, and if you could fully realize what it would be like to have everything, and fully realize what it would be like to have nothing, you would be enlightened.

In everything there is infinite beauty; in what things one sees beauty is but a matter of preference. To say that the beauty of something is greater than that of something else is prejudice, for if all beauty is infinite, there is none that is greater than any another. There is inexhaustible beauty in all things, and to be fully conscious of it would mean to be God.

Since everything is perception and so everything is but as we perceive it, everything is of infinite and therefore equal beauty. It is therefore impossible to do or create anything that is more or less beautiful than anything else, except to oneself or to a specific other person. There is beauty only in love, the appreciation of beauty.

As everything is equal in beauty, it is meaningless to seek beauty in anything but the perception of the beauty in all things in itself, which is love. To seek to love all things is the only thing we ever need to do, but unfortunately, since we are unable to love all things, we must often confine ourselves to the things we have already learned to love, lest, in trying to love the things that are still hurtful to us, we would destroy ourselves. Yet our task remains but to learn to love those things we cannot yet love, and to more fully love those things that we already do.

It is a question of balance, therefore, between loving what we find (yin), and finding what we love (yang), in order to find love, which is the only thing we should seek.

Ultimately, love itself is the only thing of value, that is to say, the only thing that gives value to our lives. Thus, everything is of infinite value, and yet nothing by itself is of any value whatsoever.

Everything we experience is no more than a connection with things that are already there in the universe. Therefore, ethical matters are more a concern of one's own connection with these things in the universe than those things themselves. Everything, being infinite, will always remain the same anyway. In an infinite universe, all things occur at an infinite frequency, and so their frequency always remains the same. Nothing we ever do can therefore change anything about the universe itself; it can only change the nature of our own connection with the universe.

Ethics, then, is not so much about not hurting others in the universe, but not hurting one's own connection with others in the universe. Others are part of our connection with the universe as is our ego, and so they are part of ourselves. Whoever hurts someone else will hurt themselves.

If there is or would be a God, then all things to God are of infinite and therefore equal value. With regards to its value, therefore, it does not matter what we do except to ourselves individually.

All emotions are motivated in some way or other by some kind of love; even fear, for if one loved nothing one would have nothing to fear; even hate, for if one did not love to hurt one would have nothing hate; even loathing, for if one did not love that which is opposed to what one loathes, one would have nothing to loathe. Therefore, without love one is emotionless, and that is why love alone, in some form or other, is the only thing that can resolve emotionlessness.

As all emotions have some element of love, the only thing which could be fully opposed to love would be indifference - or not even indifference, as even that can perhaps said to be an emotion sometimes. Rather, then, the only thing we could call it is unlove; that which falls towards lower levels of beauty, closer to nothingness, whereas love strives towards greater beauty, closer to infinity.

There can be no ultimate limits in the universe, because those limits would themselves need to have a reason to be what they are. Everything has a cause, and therefore so do physical constants; if they had not, then why could they not just as well have another value? Why do physical constants have one value rather than another, if they are purely random? There is a reason, for instance, that the speed of light is 300.000 kilometers per second, rather than 400.000 or 200.000; the same counts for every other physical constant.
The fact that physical constants are fine-tuned to life means that they cannot have been predetermined before existence; they must have been determined by existing factors. If they do have a cause, however, then that cause must be changeable. We cannot assume constants to be fully constant without dispensing with causality.
Since it would be too coincidental that there would be only one universe which is fine-tuned to life, there must be many other universes, most of which are not fine-tuned; ours merely continued to evolve because of natural selection. Something must have fine-tuned its constants. If we can find out how this happened, we might change these constants within a closed system, and so even these may not pose ultimate limits.
If all things have causes, and those causes themselves have causes, then this must essentially go on in infinity; this means that causation occurs in an infinite series. Thus, throughout this series, as everything will have random causal connections with other things, it must follow that all things are causally connected in infinitely many ways, throughout the infinite series of causations.
This means that all causes can themselves be changed; this also means that with sufficient science, all things can be observed, and that with the right technology, all things can be influenced. There can simply be no one-way causation if all things are causally interconnected, and so all causes can themselves be changed.
If everything has a cause, including physical constants, this may also mean that the universe cannot be finite. If the universe would be finite, this would mean that it possesses a certain finite amount of energy.
As this amount of energy would be specific, however, it would again be the question why it would be the specific amount it is: why one amount rather than another? If there is any such finite amount, we can only suppose that this amount would be random. Even if there were a reason that it is this specific amount, that reason would itself have been determined by other specific parameters and so forth. However, if this amount is ultimately random, it follows that its determination is acausal.
All limits, like anything else, must have a cause. If a system is limited, there must be something that limits the system; but the Universe itself cannot be limited as there is nothing to limit it. There is nothing outside the Universe to limit it, neither was there anything before the Universe to limit it, as the Universe is all that exists.

In an infinite universe there will always be infinite suffering, and nothing we ever do can ever change that. For an infinite universe as a whole can never be changed, for that would otherwise have been done by others before us. While its parts may be changed, on the whole it always remains as it has always been.
The only thing that matters to us, then, is the beauty of our own experiences.

If either the age, size, energy or complexity of the universe are infinite, so are the others: if the universe is infinite in age, it must be infinite in size because a finite universe would keep expanding, ergo in energy, because it would otherwise be of infinitely low density due to this expansion, ergo in complexity because this energy would be distributed amongst the universe rather than remaining infinitely accumulated.
If the universe is infinite in size, it must be infinite in age because if it had a starting point it would originate from a singularity rather than popping into existence in infinite dimensions, and infinite in energy and complexity because it would otherwise be of infinitely low density as formerly said.
If the universe is infinite in energy, it must be infinite in age because in order to become of finite density it'd otherwise have to expand with infinite speed (this is the most plausible other possibility, as the absolute speed of light might not be absolute), infinite in size for the same reason, and infinite in complexity because of its infinite size.
Infinite complexity basically equals infinite size because size is relative. If the universe is infinite up or down, it makes little difference. Suppose the universe was contained inside a giant atom (which would have an infinitely complex substructure, so that this would be possible!), we'd still say the universe is tens of billions of light years in diameter instead of one and a half femtometer. Relative to an infinitely small world (at an infinitely complex level), everything is infinitely large. As we've said, infinite size and finite density means infinite energy. However, if the universe is infinite in complexity this does not necessarily mean that it is infinite in age.

Thus, we conclude that either:
1) the age, size, energy and complexity of the universe are all infinite,
2) neither the age, size, energy or complexity of the universe are infinite
3) the size, energy and complexity, but not the age, of the universe are infinite, and the Theory of Relativity is incomplete.

You can scratch the latter two possibilities, however, if you can accept the following argument. Existence cannot have had an actual cause, because that cause would itself have to be part of existence, otherwise it could not have existed because it would then not be part of existence. Why would there be a beginning? Where did it come from? What caused it? Now, I'm talking about the whole of existence, not just our own reality, but any reality at all, including hypothetical realities in which our own universe was created. Unless there already existed "something" which had caused the universe to arise, ie there was already something in *existence* (in other words, in the universe), such cause would necessarily have been acausal, and for something to be science it must obey causality. Causality, then, is its own only exception. Everything has a cause, but the chain of causes and consequences itself hasn't.

Following this line of reasoning we conclude that the universe is infinite in age, size, energy and complexity. This also implies a universe of infinite complexity. In such a universe, there would be an infinite number of phenomena; each of these would in some way have to influence each other, as they would otherwise not form one whole. Whatever phenomenon would not influence the rest of the Universe would not really be part of it, and therefore not really exist as far as we are concerned. In this way, all phenomena would be infinitely connected to one another, that is to say, each phenomenon would be influenced, directly or indirectly, by infinitely many others. One of such phenomena is our own will, or consciousness, which would likewise be causally interlinked to all other phenomena, meaning that it as well could influence and therefore control them. Thus, in principle, if one would find one's way through this web of causal connections, one could, in principle, control any phenomenon in the universe, meaning that one could be omnipotent. This appears to follow logically if the universe is of infinite complexity.

Something you should surely have read if you've visited my blog at all - probably my most shocking idea.

In an infinite universe, everything is real. Probabilities depend on time and space, thus is both time and space are infinite, all probabilities in the universe are equal to one. This is the basic idea of ergodicity.
This infinity has highly bizarre consequences. Think of the most absurd things you can think of - monkeys raining from a clear sky, trees sprouting from nuclear waste in seconds, atoms arranging themselves to a microscopic epic, molecules across a solar system falling into place to form a hi-tech civilization, a live alien popping into existence in space -- these are all configurations of energy which are theoretically possible, and as Feynman said, anything which can happen will happen. It's all happening, right now and every moment, an infinite number of times. How surreal!
The punchline: the very fact that you can think of something happening means that it IS happening. This principle is known as modal realism: all imaginary worlds are as real as our own, "real" world. Remember that when you're reading a book, or slip into a reverie -- you're having a vision of something which is actually happening.
But it's not over yet -- there's something even more amazing about modal realism…
If everything is real, that means everything is true. After all, it would mean that there is a causal association between all things, and in fact all things are connected. This would actually make all delusions true, as anything that would happen would not only have several causes, but all causes one could think of. For instance, if a paper one looks at suddenly floats away, this would be both because the wind blew it away and because one has telekinetic abilities. There obviously appears to be something wrong here.
In principle, according to chaos theory it may actually be possible to cause a paper to float away by looking at it. But this is not necessarily so, and moreover, it can not be caused both by one's thoughts and the wind.
But because of the ergodic nature of an infinite universe, there would simultaneously be a world where it is caused by the wind and a world where it is caused by one's thoughts, quite simply because if the universe is infinite, everything is. These worlds could otherwise be identical, except in the cause of the paper floating away. Because the universes would be perceived in the same way, they would per definition have the same essence, so that there would be no telling in which of these universes one is. In fact, one could well say one is in both universes at once.
As long as you don't know if something is true or false, it is both true and false, because your own perception matches both the universe where it is true and the universe where it is false. Of course, the only condition for something to be true is that you perceive it to be, that is, that your qualia makes it a possibility (for instance, that you discern something is either true or false, not both). Then, there is always a chance that you'll be in the universe where it is true.
Of course, this chance may be very low, as only in a small percentage of the universes which the many identical "yous" would perceive as identical, it would really be true. Still, however, as long as you have no definitive "proof" whether it is or isn't, it is true, because you have all the perceptions of the you who lives in the universe where it is true, and therefore you are essentially that you. To clarify, nothing really exists if it can't be perceived, thus if the difference between the universe where the idea in question is true and the universe where it is false cannot be perceived, it does not really exist as such, either.
And of course, things are even further complicated because the so-called "proof" that it is or isn't true, which would necessarily be part of one's sensorial input, could be hallucinatory, it'd be essentially worthless: you could still be in a universe where the sensorial input of the proof is an illusion and the idea in question is still either true or false. There is no separation between what we know and what we imagine.
This means that everything is in a dual state, from quantum to universe. This explains the principle of Heisenberg, because we can't (yet) know the state of an individual quantum. This version of this principle is known as the many worlds principle, though the latter was perhaps not founded upon modal realism.
Any possibility one can conceive has a 100% probability of happening somewhere in the multiverse. Thus, any story you can think of is true. Somewhere in the infinite numbers of universes in the multiverse, it happens just like you imagined. If the universe is infinite, space and time are all that separate us from that which we imagine. Imagination, therefore, is a discovery.