The Infinite One
The Infinite One
There is a story older than memory. It has been told in different ways across all cultures, whispered by mystics, intuited by poets, glimpsed by those who have touched the edges of the invisible. It is the story of where we come from and where we are going. Perhaps you already know it. Perhaps, in reading these words, you are not learning something new but remembering something you always carried within.
The story begins before the beginning. Before time existed to measure anything. Before space existed to contain anything. Before there was light or darkness, sound or silence. There was only what the ancients called the Infinite — not a thing that can be named or measured, but the mystery from which all things emerge.
This Infinite was not empty. It was full of something that has no name in any human language, something we might call pure potential, or consciousness without object, or simply: being. It was complete in itself, lacking nothing, needing nothing.
And yet, the story tells us, something stirred within that completeness. Not from lack, but from abundance. The Infinite became aware of a possibility: the possibility of knowing itself. But how can the limitless know itself when there is nothing outside it to serve as mirror?
The answer, according to this ancient telling, was as simple as it was mysterious: by becoming many while remaining one. By creating within itself points of view, centers of experience, apparently separate consciousnesses that could look upon the whole from different angles. Not truly separate — for nothing can be separate from infinity — but separate enough to create the experience of discovery, of relationship, of love.
You, according to this story, are one of those points of view. Your consciousness, your sense of being someone looking out at a world, is the Infinite looking at itself from your unique angle. You are not apart from the source; you are the source, temporarily forgetting itself in order to have the joy of remembering.
The traditions speak of three great movements in this unfolding. The first was freedom — the gift that allows each portion of the Infinite to choose its own path, to discover its own way home. Without this freedom, the journey would be meaningless, a puppet show with no real stakes.
The second movement was love — not merely an emotion, but the creative force itself, the impulse that builds, connects, brings into being. Love is what shapes possibility into reality, what calls new worlds into existence, what draws the scattered portions back toward unity.
The third movement was light — the first manifestation, the first something that could be seen and touched and measured. From light, according to this telling, everything else was made. The stars, the planets, your own body — all are patterns of light, temporarily crystallized into form.
Why would the Infinite do this? Why fragment itself into billions of apparently separate beings, why create the conditions for suffering as well as joy, why allow the forgetting that makes life feel so disconnected from its source?
The story offers a simple answer: for the joy of knowing itself in ever-new ways. The Infinite, being infinite, has no end to what it can experience. Every life, every choice, every moment of love or fear is a new way for the whole to know itself. Your experiences — all of them — are precious to something vaster than you can imagine.
There is an ancient phrase from the East that captures this: Tat tvam asi. That thou art. What you are seeking, you already are. The infinite you long to touch is the infinite looking through your eyes at this very moment.
This is not something to merely believe. It is something to remember, to feel, to gradually recognize in the depth of your own being. The story we are telling is not meant to convince you of anything. It is meant to remind you of something you may have always known, something that sleeps in your bones and your blood, waiting to be awakened.
The journey home has already begun. It began the moment you first wondered if there might be more to life than what appears on the surface. Every question you have asked, every longing you have felt, every moment of unexpected beauty that stopped you in your tracks — all of these are signs of the remembering.
The mystery remains infinite. No matter how much we understand, more remains. But perhaps that is the point. Perhaps the journey is the destination. Perhaps the search itself is the finding.