They are beyond limits of measure.
Even the naked eye can see thousands of them. When we look through a telescope millions
become visible. With more powerful telescopes many more can be seen and it will be difficult to
say where or how it will all end. Of this infinite creation spreading
above, below and on all sides of us, a tiny bit is what we call our world.
And how huge even this world
appears to us!
3. This vast creation is but one aspect of the Lord's form. Now let
us look at another of it, that is, Time. If we consider the past, our
knowledge of history goes back atmost to ten thousand years. Of the time before that, we
know nothing. While historical time is of the order of ten thousand years, our
individual life's length is not even a hundred years. Time stretches
without beginning or end. It is impossible to measure or count the
time that is past. It is equally impossible to conceive the time that is to come.
Just as our world is so tiny as against the
vastness of space, our 10,000 years of history is as nothing in the infinity of Time,
the past is without a beginning and the future without an end. And as
for this brief present, even as we are speaking, it slips into the past.
Even as we try to describe where the present is, it has become the past.
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