The universe is perpetual, an immortal place full of unimagined instances. We never know what’s next or what will be our next surprise. It waits for our wits to grow sharper to reveal more of its secrets. All that we have today and all that we will start with zero. It was nothing but empty and void. The big bang as we know gave life to this universe. Never thought that an explosion will lead to such wonderous things, our mere existence, an artists eye that glows like the sun, magnificent earth to take shelter on, a shining star in the night sky that shows the right path just like it did to numerous sailers when they were left astray. A great explosion that merely started with nothing gradually became the infinity we all need. A place to inhabit us and the generations to come, a beginning of infinity.
Zero and infinity are the two elements of life and of this universe that defy our logic and understanding of the world. We all know that anything divided by zero is infinity and anything multiplied by it is zero. However, we fail to notice the reality behind these simple formulae. Let me explain to you with a simple example. Imagine a rubber band is your number line. When you stretch the band, it’s like multiplying and when the band is relaxed, the band stands divided. This is what would happen with normal numbers. But if the band is multiplied by zero, the band is so stretched till now that it explodes. And all that you multiplied is all gone, all consumed by that one number zero. Similarly, if you divide the rubber band will implode, nothing remains.
When the Indian mathematicians introduced zero, they made it clear that there was an aspect of the philosophical application and not just technically in mathematics. They asserted zero with Nirguna Brahman which means attributeless truth and infinity with Saguna Brahman which means truth with attributes. This may all sound very mystical and far from modern mathematics but the truth is infinity is a manifestation of zero.
In the circle of life, we start from a point that is zero. Then we spend our entire lives adding and subtracting points from it. At times we add lots of successes, happiness and sometimes we subtract failures and sadness from our life which do go into the negatives but always gives us positives of learning. We work die-hard all our lives to give ourselves the life we deserve and to outdo others, sometimes we forget how important it is to live through the journey because we start from zero, experience ups and downs, success and failure, dissatisfaction, and contentment. After all this, we come to the inevitable zero of this universe, death. We must know that there are instances in life where all our earnings, hard work, successes are subtracted down to zero and we feel abandoned by the world and may lose all hope. But amidst all this, we must decide the path to choose and elements to add to our number line. It is upon us if we want to add.
Positivity, hope, and more hard work or do we want to spend the rest of our time whining, giving up, and falling into the negatives of life? A thought to be considered because life isn’t always fair and times may come when life won’t back us up. It rightly said, to manifest it we must believe in its inevitability. The journey of life is inevitable, you can’t reach the destination whenever you wish to. We reach with our own pace, our efforts, our optimism. Infinity here is telling us about the endless opportunities in life and unfathomable manifestations.
We start from one inevitability and end with another, we start with life and end with death. Our first breath is our zero: The beginning to infinity.