As we explore the liberating power of the philosophers’ stone, we are learning a more open way of looking at our experience and our practice. We can begin to recognize what true nature is and to more fully see its role in spiritual awakening and maturation. We can come to understand that true nature is behind all the various revelations, illuminations, awakenings, and realizations that we experience. We as individuals, especially as separate individuals, do not have the wisdom and the capacity to do any of it on our own.  

This is how we live—trying to manipulate the outer world so that our inner world can be at peace. But this struggle is a hopeless task; it is not what will bring us to a state of contentment. This example of our internal process points to a basic fact of our ongoing experience: We don’t know how to leave ourselves alone. Every internal action involves some kind of rejection of our present state, our actual reality. And there is a deeper consequence to this attitude of rejection: By rejecting what is so for us in the present moment, we are rejecting ourselves. We are out of touch with our Being. Aiming toward the future, we sacrifice the present. By looking outside ourselves for what is missing, we subject ourselves, our souls, to the pain of abandonment. But the fact is: Nothing is missing! Our true nature is actually always there. Our true nature is Being. And everything is made of this true nature: rocks, people, clouds, peach trees—all the things in our life. However, these things do not exist independently, the way we think they do. What we are really seeing are the various forms of Being. To understand Being itself, the nature of what we truly are, we must penetrate the inner, fundamental nature of existence. To be open to this fundamental nature, we must question what we think we are: Am I really a white male, of a certain height and weight and age and address, who is defined by my personal history? And if that’s not me, what is? 

In the classical experience of nondual unity, which is part of the second turning of the wheel, we recognize true nature as beyond everything, as a kind of mysterious awareness or presence that is being and nonbeing at the same time. Because it is presence, everything is; and because it is nothing, everything changes. And as we explore what it means when we say that true nature is being and nothing at the same time, we recognize that there is no one particular way of experiencing and knowing that. There are many different ways of experiencing the purity of reality as being and as nonbeing.  

The first thing that true nature knows is its being, its presence. This knowing is knowing of its being, a knowing not differentiated from its being. Being, in this dimension, is knowing of being. In other words, in this dimension, manifest true nature is being, which is knowing of being. More accurately, in this dimension of true nature, knowing is being and being is knowing. Being and knowing are both present in pure presence, but undifferentiated. We can say that being is the original knowing, before which there is no knowing. What do we mean here by knowing? Knowing is recognition, apprehension, which implies some kind of concept. On this dimension, the concept is the simplest possible, the bare possibility of concept. The simplest concept is that of being, which experientially appears as presence. The simplest concept is not a mental concept, not an ordinary representational concept. The concept is presence itself, for concept has not differentiated from consciousness. It is a kind of protoconcept, but even simpler and more fundamental. When there is concept and concept is not differentiated from pure consciousness or awareness, we experience such concept as being, which is consciousness coemergent with the concept. The simplest possible concept, in other words, is the experience of nondifferentiated presence. It is not a thought, not a representational concept, but a direct discriminating awareness of presence, inseparable from the presence. This is pure basic knowledge, basic knowledge before any differentiation. We actually see here the origin of basic knowledge, and its objective nature. Basic knowledge is a capacity that exists in its simplest and hence most direct and immediate form in the realization of pure presence. Pure presence is actually basic knowledge before any content, for any content will be a differentiated content.   

We get the sense of time from the perception of change, so time reflects the dynamism of Being. Similarly, spatial extension reflects its openness. The openness and spaciousness of true nature, which is also the sense of depth, mystery, and infinity inherent in it, appears in our normal experience as the sense of physical space between, around, and within manifestation. Our experience has spatial extension; we cannot have perception without spatial extension, just as we cannot have it without change. Shape and size, distance and extension, all reflect the inherent characteristic of openness. True nature has no boundaries in terms of size, shape, or distance. In fact, true nature is beyond extension. When we fully experience true nature, the concept of space disappears. When that occurs, we recognize that there is no such thing as either distance or no-distance. The concept of extension disappears; we then experience it only as openness, as possibility. And because of this possibility, everything manifests, all the colors and shapes.  

So True Nature is beyond mind. And it is the facet beyond mind, a dimension we have not yet explored, that allows us not to get caught in the conceptual trap of learned ignorance. When we were discussing the different kinds of ignorance earlier in this book, we saw that at the beginning of our development as human beings, our conceptual knowingness—which we also call our cognitive capacity or our discriminating ability—is rudimentary, almost nonexistent. It develops gradually until we are able to recognize concrete objects, and then we are able to move into more abstract activity—into thinking and mental conceptualization. But even before we have that cognitive capacity, True Nature has an awareness. Animals have awareness, and it is that awareness that causes them to respond. And the fact that we human beings have awareness even as infants tells us that True Nature has a capacity to be aware that is more fundamental than our capacity to know. This capacity is what I call perceptual, or pure, awareness, in contrast to knowing awareness or cognitive awareness. From the time we are born, we perceive. We might not know that we perceive, but we definitely have perception. We don’t have the cognitive awareness that develops later, but we have the perceptual awareness. 

There are further consequences to the understanding of emptiness as nonbeing, which takes the enlightened awareness to new mysteries. For instance, in the perception of the unity of reality, in which everything is at once Being and nonbeing, there can remain the perception of “here” and “there.” There are here and there, and the distance between here and there. When we penetrate the concept of space, there is a feeling of no here and no there. We recognize that emptiness is not a medium. Nonbeing does not have extension; it is not a medium. We sense that here and there are one single spot, that here is there and there is here. Space does not disappear in terms of perception; as long as there is a distance between here and there that can be measured, there is a concept of space and a perception of space. Even if space as extension is perceived, in the realization of nonbeing it disappears as a felt sense. Manifestation always manifests in space; true nature is beyond space, and our realization can reflect that.  

Yet this experience of unity still contains subtle concepts that are difficult to discern. As we investigate emptiness more thoroughly, we can uncover more subtle and hidden senses of self. One of the concepts implicit in this mystical unity of appearance—where everything is pure presence and awareness that is the radiance of emptiness—is the concept of space. That is to say, even though everything is unified, even though everything is at once Being and nonbeing, even though everything is a manifestation of the same beingness, there are still concepts of here and there. There is a here, and a there, and some distance exists between here and there. When the concept of space is finally recognized and penetrated, we understand that emptiness is not a medium. In other words, emptiness does not have spatial extension—there is no here and no there. Here and there are the same spot. Here is there, and there is here. As long as a measurable distance exists between the two, there is a concept of space. I don’t necessarily mean that spatial extension disappears in terms of perception, because manifestation always manifests in space. What I mean is that spatial distance disappears in terms of a felt sense because true nature is beyond space. This no-distance realization can even be perceptual, but this is a further subtlety that we will consider later.  

In the fourth turning, true nature illuminates even more of its possibilities. We see that true nature is beyond space and time. Because it is beyond space, it does not have a size or shape; because it is beyond time, it does not have duration. When people think of true nature as outside of time, they usually think of true nature as a ground through which all time passes; so it is outside of time and yet present in all times. But to think of true nature as present in all times is to include it in time. True nature has no extension in time or in space.  

We realize that even though we can consider true nature both being and nothingness, it is inherently far more mysterious than that. For example, because it is the nature of everything and also beyond everything, true nature is beyond the spatial and temporal dimensions of the world. I am pointing to something different from what some people call the “timeless now,” which is an experience of presence as a nowness in which everything is simply what it is in the moment. Since everything is just the beingness of it now, the immediacy of it now, the question of time—of the past and the future—disappears, and with it the influences of the past and the pulls of the future. We are simply being what being is at the moment.  

And there is another nonhierarchical realization that does not have to do with duality or nonduality but with the relationship of phenomena with each other, the relationship of one form to another. This realization reveals one of the secrets of true nature: that it is beyond time and space. This does not refer to the experience of timelessness and spacelessness, because timelessness is the polar opposite of time and spacelessness is the polar opposite of space. Rather, one of the understandings that this realization brings in is that each manifestation of true nature is all of true nature, each form of true nature is true nature in its entirety.  

Emptiness and clarity characterize true nature in manifestation, but we need to remember that true nature is beyond time and space, beyond manifestation. So how does this transcendence become reflected in manifestation? Contemplating this question will bring to mind other characteristics of the experience of self-realization of true nature. The luminosity of the coemergent true nature is not simply the perception of radiance. The luminosity is the factor of awareness in true nature. It is intrinsic to the manifest true nature, for without awareness there is no perception of manifestation. True nature is then awareness, which means that awareness is fundamentally clear transparent presence coemergent with emptiness. Through this luminosity, true nature is inherently capable of being aware of the distinction of forms arising within it as expressions of its own field. Hence, true nature is inseparable from bare awareness. Yet it is not simply awareness, for it is the potentiality for all things.  

Realization means that we have the certainty and recognition that we are true nature and that our being is true nature. We know that what perceives and experiences and what understands and knows is true nature. So there is a freedom from the usual sense of self. When essential activation is this free, it is runaway realization. Runaway realization is the closest thing in this teaching to what is considered enlightenment. Our experience has become runaway realization when realization keeps changing and morphing into other realizations. True nature continues to reveal different faces of itself, and in each face what we are is true nature. Enlightenment becomes a dynamic illumination that comprises both the illuminating dynamic and the dynamically illuminated. True nature is both the revealing light and the revealed truth of enlightenment.  

As a consequence, we begin to regard complete openness and impressionability as undesirable, even threatening and dangerous. We unconsciously defend against it regardless of how much we understand its value and significance. This resistance is an attempt to protect our sense of identity. In resisting openness and impressionability, we unconsciously believe that we are fighting for our own personal survival and integrity. This becomes one of the primary difficulties in the process of inner work where we need to be open to new and novel elements of our potential. In fact, in order to be able to be receptive and impressionable to our essence, we need to be completely impressionable, for any limitation in impressionability will become a limitation in our receptivity to the true nature and ground of the soul. This is because our true nature is characterized by complete transparency, luminosity, and flow, and any opaqueness or rigidity is bound to limit our openness to it.  

With more discrimination in this experience of the emptiness of everything, we may observe that there is another characteristic that always accompanies the emptiness. In the experience of true nature in its nonduality with manifestation, we observe that forms are not only transparent and empty of substantial existence, but that they are also luminous. Emptiness never appears simply as the emptiness of forms; such experience is always accompanied by luminosity, although the luminosity may not be consciously or directly perceived except upon investigation. Upon further inquiry we can recognize that all forms appear as forms of transparent radiant light. Thus we see that it is not only emptiness that is apparently unchanging; so is luminosity. In some sense, emptiness reveals the transparency of things, disclosing that they are forms that clear light, or transparent luminosity, assumes. We find, then, that luminosity, clarity, or clear light is a permanent ground of all phenomena. At the same time we cannot separate the experience of this clarity from that of the emptiness of all things. Emptiness characterizes the ground of clear light, so we cannot say that clear light exists in the conventional sense. This observation may lead us to take the view that true nature is clear light inseparable from emptiness, or empty clear light. 

So that is what our practice is. We are learning how True Nature would approach our situation in the moment—how it would hold it, how it would relate to it. And we especially want to know this when we are reactive or scared or feeling stuck. That’s when it’s especially hard to know how to just be in a natural condition. You might hear people say, “Just be in your True Nature; remember what it is to be yourself and just be that.” For some people, that might work, but most people can’t do that at any time, much less when things are difficult. We never need to take the position that we have to pull or push ourselves into the complete purity or nonduality of our True Nature. That would be like trying to push a camel through the eye of a needle, as some spiritual traditions express it. True Nature is compassionate and appropriate, so the first thing it does is to help the camel walk. It doesn’t try to push the camel anywhere, much less through the needle’s eye.   

Understanding this magnetic force within us can help us clarify how to have a strong, powerful, deep motivation to continue to be real, to be as real as possible, to dedicate our time and life to experiencing, living, and expressing the truth, the truth of the mystery. Since this mystery is the truth of unity, its expression is love, generosity, and the experience of coming together in the most appreciative, sensitive way. Experienced from this perspective, the mystery itself, our true nature, is complete clarity, radiance, and brilliance. Also, this type of magnetism is pure luminosity. When we feel this luminosity in the heart, we feel it as the luminosity of magnetic love. It is beautiful, sublime. It feels so delicate, so fine, so refined, and so subtle, all at the same time; and although it is so subtle, its effect is of the most powerful, most passionate attraction. Again, this is paradoxical. It doesn’t make sense to the mind, because we think that something so subtle and so delicate should be fragile, not powerful. It is the subtlest kind of love, the barest kind of delicate, effervescent luminosity. But its impact is an amazing magnetic attraction that appears as a liking, as an enjoyment—as the enjoyment and the liking of love itself, of desire itself, of the pull itself, of the unity itself. This force, which is also exquisite love, can become the appreciation of our true nature, but it can also express itself as an attraction between people.  

It is questionable to think of true nature as having characteristics, for it is completely indeterminable. It possesses no explicit qualities, no recognizable differentiations. We know that we are experiencing true nature in its full self-realization in that we feel a state and its impact, but we cannot describe it in positive terms. The tendency is to describe it negatively, in terms of what it is not. More precisely, to attribute to it a particular quality gives it a determination from which it is actually free. Any quality or attribute can only be a form it momentarily displays. It cannot be delimited, though people have attempted to describe it throughout the ages. Therefore, the classically given characteristics are such things as its lack of determination, limitation, quality, color, size, shape, form, duration, etc. This approach to describing true nature does avoid various pitfalls, but it is not completely faithful to the experience. Since it is possible to experience true nature, it is possible to say definite things about it. Our understanding of true nature leads us to see that we can say much about it, but what we say can only be a pointing, a path toward greater penetration and precision of experience. In others words, our description is functional and not delimiting, pointing to nuances that direct our mind to become even subtler in its experience. A discussion of the characteristics of true nature is, then, only an attempt to communicate a direct experience, and not one of packaging it in a conceptual wrapping. Any such description will inevitably be tentative and open, and will be transcended by a more subtle description that itself is not final. There can be no final and complete description of true nature, only attempts to point it out to the reader or listener. And in fact this is all that is necessary, for what is important is its direct experience and realization.   

Even though true nature is composed of five coemergent boundless dimensions, these dimensions generally manifest in the inner journey one by one, in a specific order. The order seems to be of increasing fundamentality and subtlety, moving from the dimension closest to ordinary experience to the one nearest to transcendent truth. These dimensions arise in an order that reveals the characteristics of manifest true nature in increasing depth, subtlety, and precision. The latter levels are simpler than the ones preceding them, possessing less structure and hence less accessibility to our ordinary consciousness. Yet they are all true and authentic dimensions of true nature, spanning the totality of its Riemannian manifold.   

The dynamism of red sulfur is a good metaphor for the power of the philosophers’ stone, the combustive, creative dynamism of true nature as it is ignited and activated. True nature is creatively dynamic in the sense that it is creating right in the moment the experience that is happening. The creative dynamism of the individual consciousness and the nondual dimension of creative dynamism are manifestations of this dynamism in the first two turnings of the teaching.  

And the way to this simplicity is to recognize the centrality and the significance of true nature. Whether we recognize it as presence or awareness or emptiness, true nature is crucial to the process of awakening, realization, enlightenment, and liberation. It is the source of all spiritual experiences, insights, and transformations. There is no other source. Nothing can happen without it. All our various experiences are nothing but true nature manifesting in one way or another. This is one of the most important wisdoms that arises in the third and fourth turnings of the wheel.     

The third characteristic is that true nature is dynamic. Reality is moving and changing all the time. This is obvious when you notice that your perception of your inner experience—or of the whole world—is not a snapshot; it is a movie. It is inherently in a constant state of change and transformation. It is not a static presence. This is related to the Buddhist notion of the “all accomplishing wisdom.” Reality is a dynamic presence that is always changing through shifts in the manifest patterns. In fact, the presence of change is implicit in the fact of awareness; without it, there is no awareness. If there is only a snapshot and the observer is part of the snapshot, the observer will have no awareness of anything. Change is necessary for awareness. If you are aware of the Absolute, only the Absolute, and nothing but the Absolute, then you have no awareness of anything. That is why this experience of the Absolute is called cessation. But usually when you are aware of the Absolute, you are also aware of the manifestation, the dynamism, or the flow that is obvious in your own experience.  

Recognizing these truths—that each manifestation of true nature is all of true nature, that each manifestation of true nature is all of true nature creating itself as that manifestation, that each manifestation of true nature can spark endless realization—is another factor involved in essential activation. What’s important for us to see is that red sulfur conveys a particular property of the philosophers’ stone when it is combusted and activated, when our being is so activated that it recognizes the truth of nonhierarchy, it recognizes that any experience of true nature can ignite the life of realization. When this kind of combustion occurs, it means that essential activation has happened. 

We have seen that the true nature of all manifest phenomena, the Quintessence, is at once empty presence and substantial nothingness, at once profound clarity and sheer depth. The effulgent force of cosmic dynamism spontaneously creates instant-to-instant the happening of all that happens. Human freedom is the freedom of the dynamism of Being to manifest what its intelligence wants it to manifest. Human freedom is the liberation of that dynamism to display the possibilities and the appropriate forms and dimensions of experience in any situation. This living freedom manifests as individuals who have a personal life that is true and authentic, and at the same time infinite. Our freedom is the vastness of Being manifesting its possibilities and its nature freely, without constraints.  

Many of us can experience various aspects of reality without understanding them fully or recognizing their perspective. What does the experience of different aspects add to our view about reality? In some sense, all of enlightenment, all the wisdom of true nature, is already implicit in any one of the aspects. But it is often difficult for us to fully understand an aspect, to unpack it totally. So true nature, in its endless compassion, offers us one aspect after another in our experience, providing many chances and opportunities to learn about reality. And the same is true of the various wisdom vehicles on this path of realization. They are an important part of what develops the view of totality. And, of course, the boundless dimensions, both in the journey of ascent and the journey of descent, have their own perspectives about reality. As we experience each one of these dimensions, understand them, and integrate them, our view about reality changes and develops.  

Regardless which view we take of the experience of cessation, and of the knowability of true nature in its absolute transcendence, we need to remember that true nature is essentially indeterminable. Nevertheless, the more completely and absolutely we know true nature, the more we are enlightened and liberated. We need to know it because it is our nature and the nature of everything, and it is a deep need and desire of the soul to intimately understand and live this nature. Most of the soul’s experience and realization is bound to be in the domain of immanent true nature, realized as the essence and true nature of everything. The self-realization that we can live is not that of cessation, but of the nonduality of true nature and manifestation. True nature is indeterminable even in such immanence   

Although we are talking about what is holy and sacred, what we revere and love, true nature is also us; it is everything. What makes it fun is that even though it is everything, it is nothing. It is none of it and, at the same time, it is all of it. It is you when there is no you. It is you completely. When you realize true nature, you realize that is what you are, but there is nothing and nobody there. So what does it mean, then, that that is what you are? And you are certain you are completely being yourself, and people look at you and say, “This guy is really there,” but your experience is that there is nothing and nobody there.  

At the beginning of the inner journey, we usually experience Essence in one of three ways: as a presence that arises inside us, or that appears outside us, or that comes into us from the outside. These forms of experience, though real, are due to limitations in our perception, and can become veils if taken to be final. These experiences can be seen as an intermediate stage between normal experience and the objective experience of reality. When we experience true nature objectively, without veils, we recognize that it is neither inside nor outside. It’s everywhere—outside, inside, and in between. The field of awareness has no boundaries. This presence is an infinite field of awareness, which means that true nature is not the true nature of the human soul only, but the true nature of everything. True nature is nothing but presence, which is at the same time awareness, oneness, and knowingness.  

An essential aspect, such as love, is not always manifest, and not explicitly present in the true nature, which is the ground of all manifestation. Hence it may arise in an individual soul’s experience, or it may not; it is a transitory though universal manifestation. Only the fundamental dimensions of the ground true nature are eternally present, like awareness and emptiness; essential aspects arise depending on situations. So the presence of an essential aspect is not always everywhere, as in the dirt, as Wilber seems to imply. Only the ground true nature is everywhere, eternally. 

Seeing the role of true nature in illuminating the dire situation we find ourselves in impacts our heart and our soul, and it transforms our relationship to true nature and everything that expresses it. The more we recognize and encounter true nature, the more the heart is touched. True nature touches the heart in a way that nothing else does. When we realize how exquisite true nature is, we become stunned. How can it be? How can there be such a thing? How can there be such an energy, such a power, that is compassionate and strong at the same time, that is precise and loving at the same time, that is the nature of everything and creating everything at the same time? We experience an immense sense of awe and wonder. We can’t help but love true nature for what it is because of its magnificence, its beauty, its liberating power, its loving generosity, its loving light. It is like a luminosity whose action is pure love and pure goodness. The more it touches us, the more we feel real and satisfied, and the more meaningful our life becomes. 

Asking “What is it?” is suspect not only because it presumes the whatness and thatness of true nature, but also because the question implies that we can find an answer. Who says we can find out what true nature is? Who says we can pin down true nature? And yet, we do discover true nature again and again—as love, as awareness, as emptiness, as beingness, as will, as peace, as stillness. And when it is stillness, it is true nature completely. When it is emptiness, it is true nature completely. When it is will, it is true nature completely. True nature is so fearless that when it presents itself, it always does so wholeheartedly and completely. So when it is love, true nature is being all of itself. When it is awareness, it is being all of itself. It is not as if some of it is held in reserve someplace else. True nature is as it is. When it is beingness, that is it. There is no remainder. When it is peace, that is it. There is nothing hidden somewhere else.  

On the journey of self-realization, it is important to learn to differentiate true nature from the familiar forms of everyday experience. Our very inability to do this accounts for much of the control that conventional reality has over our awareness. Unless we discriminate this formless ground, we will never be able to perceive the forms of reality in their true fullness. Therefore, true nature must first be discriminated in order to serve as our orientation for the inner journey. In the realized state, this discrimination is transcended and true nature is finally recognized in its truth—as inseparable from reality.  

The mystery of the philosophers’ stone is that it is the true nature of reality—the nature of Total Being, which is reality in all its possibilities in all times and all spaces—and, at the same time, it is nothing in particular. It is the purity and the freedom of Total Being to manifest all these realities and to live as all these realities. And we experience this life of Total Being as our personal life, as the preciousness of human life. True nature is freedom, is what frees, and is what we are, and yet we cannot narrow it down to anything in particular. To be free, we have to live in fundamental innocence. In this teaching, the hierarchical view of learning the qualities and dimensions of being all the way to the realization of absolute reality and its integration with life is a self-consistent view. And this self-consistency contains its practice and makes it possible for awakening, realization, and enlightenment to happen. This is akin to classical notions of nondual enlightenment, and there is great freedom in this realization.  

Recognizing that true nature is from another world, from another dimension or realm of reality is a significant part of necessary awakening. If we have an experience of true nature and simply think, “Oh, that was nice. It felt good. That must have been an experience of pleasure or some kind of love and sweetness,” we might mistake it for a continuation of our usual experience and not see that it is a quantum break with reality as we have known it. If we don’t recognize the radical otherness or difference of true nature, we haven’t yet awakened. True nature remains for us just another pleasant experience and is severed from the stream of consciousness that can begin to activate the life of being. 

It’s a subtle thing. In our teaching, we see that our normal mind simply does not have the capacity to recognize true nature. When we recognize true nature, it is actually true nature making the recognition happen. From the beginning of our practice, it is true nature that decided to make itself known through the practice. It’s not like we practice and at some point we recognize true nature. True nature is functioning from the beginning. The dynamism from the beginning is what is guiding our work, what is moving the whole process. The practice is simply to recognize that we need to get out of the way; we need to suspend our habitual goal-oriented doing. The magic is not only in the experience of the enlightened view. The magic is anytime, all the time, anyplace, everyplace. Even when we are not experiencing the instantaneous creation of reality everywhere at once, true nature is ornamenting itself, is changing its jewelry. We can perceive the preciousness of reality regardless of what is arising. If we are aware of the Quintessence, then everything appears as jeweled, even the superego and all of that. Perceiving the Quintessential jewels is the pure perception that whatever appears is always an ornament of reality.  

Even though the now holds all time, it has no duration, no time length. Hence, any instant is the present, which is the now, which is all other instants. From this discussion of the reflection of timelessness and spacelessness in the space-time manifest reality, we see that all instants are contained in one instant and all points in one point. This is the most subtle way we can describe the reflection of transcendent true nature in manifestation. If we pursue this line of inquiry, we can only get into deeper paradoxes, but we see at least that true nature is the experience of boundlessness and nowness in the condition of self-realization. From the above considerations we see that even though true nature is fundamentally free from spatial and temporal extensions, it appears in manifestation as the experience of infinity and eternity, boundlessness and nowness. However, the mystical experience of boundlessness and infinity, and that of eternity and nowness, is not the most direct experience of true nature; rather, it is the experience of true nature from the perspective of the timespace grid of manifestation. This is why true nature is usually described as infinite expanse, omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, endlessness, infinity, eternity, and so on.