I discovered the logical necessity of the existence of infinity when I was in church as a child. We were there supposedly to explore the most important and basic parts of our existence, and the pastor was up there droning on about a bunch of boring ideas that couldn't possibly interest me. But he did keep mentioning eternity, so in my mind I went off on a tangent and ignored the sermon while proceeding to figure out what eternity had to be, in terms that seemed logical at the time and still do. The chain of logic presented below started as a thought experiment in church as a bored child who liked to scare himself awake by facing the unknown, and has continued to this day.
This early concern of mine obviously included the idea of the universe, the biggest unit of anything that could possibly exist, and infinity, the notion that something doesn't end, it has no edges. By now I've realized intuitively that infinity is not about bigness but about sizelessness, but as a child just getting my mind around infinity, it became undeniably obvious to me that since infinity has no edges, it cannot be physical. At the same time, it seemed to me that if anything exists at all, then infinity must exist, because otherwise you come to a boundary and after that there is nothing.
For example, if you were to extend the notion of a physical universe further and further out, it becomes obvious that physicality could not possibly end either, because there would then be empty space extending out forever unless you drew a limit on it, and then it wouldn't be empty anymore. Somethingness or the notion of realness cannot end because if it does, then it has an edge, beyond which exists nothingness. And if nothingness exists, it is something. So obviously, infinity, if it exists, could have nothing else existing outside of it, it would have to be all-inclusive; the only way for nothing to exist would be for it to be part of infinity. Placing nothingness outside of infinity cancels infinity. If infinity did have an edge, then it would not be infinity, and there would be nothingness beyond the edge, but to posit a place that is not a thing not only defies logic and every definition of every word we're trying to use, by suggesting that infinity has an edge, it also makes nothing not a nothing by suggesting it is a place, thus a thing.
Therefore, nothingness would have to be part of infinity and the universe would have to be the same thing as infinity. As for physical reality, it is by definition the same thing as the universe, but once you extend physicality beyond any possibility of its having any limits, then it is no longer physicality, it's something else you can only call infinity or an infinite universe. But physicality by definition has edges. So while physicality as a notion can go on forever, on the other hand as a solid reality it is a paradox, a can of worms.
Therefore, while infinity has to exist, logically, all on its own, physicality appears to be a mental mistake, which means it's necessary to rethink existence itself, starting with the existence of self. What am I? By what mechanism do I exist? The physical explanation of the average person is a mistake, a transparently inaccurate belief system, so if I take the physicality away by assuming it's just a defective or incomplete explanation for something that can't be understood, my existence boils down to the fact that I'm aware. The conclusion is that awareness, infinity, existence, and reality are the same thing, what you could call the universe, all of reality seen as a single entity, or oneness. Everything else such as the sense of self or identity, and physicality or solidity, are included within oneness because nothing can exist outside of oneness. Oneness doesn't have an outside, because it has no edges, it has no dimensionality. In fact, 'dimensionality' appears to be a better description for the physical experience than 'reality' because reality seems to be more basic, more like a synonym of infinity.
But within our experience and thus somehow/somewhere within infinity there are edges nevertheless, so paradox must be part of the picture. The solution is that there has to be more than one picture, or existing would drive us crazy. Either of which could explain the entire crux of the human problem. Each basic, true, and perhaps even paradoxical picture of infinity or the universe must exist simultaneously, like the discrete harmonics all vibrating simultaneously in a single piano string. I long ago decided to call these various true-but-paradoxical and thus illusional-or-at-least-elusive separate perspectives of reality 'harmonics' because by the time I'd gotten this far in my thinking, I was a young piano tuner depending on the reliable existence of harmonics to make a living. And most non-musical and non-technical people had no idea that harmonics even existed.
But as a child sitting in church, the most basic elements of these thought experiments were just that: experiments. I literally went inside and felt around for the edge of the universe and there wasn't one. I felt around for any hint that physicality made the slightest bit of sense as the most basic of explanations for reality and existence, and that refused to click also. This was experiential, so it was somewhat terrifying. I literally found it hard to believe that I actually existed, unless somehow I had existed forever and always would. Facing these questions experientially, inwardly, is nothing like an intellectual exercise or logic problem or religious belief; it's so scary it could make you puke. But good luck stripping off the multitudinous layers of rationalization that keep us from walking around in a daze with our jaws hanging open in awe of our own existence. If you could do this, you wouldn't need to get unworlded before you could fly; you could do it in your physical body.
Unlike the problem of why or how I came to be aware of my own existence and what that represented, the notion of not existing after some point or before some point didn't scare me, it just seemed impossible to the point of being ridiculous that my unexplainable current existence had had a beginning or would have an end. I detected nothing about the obvious fact of my existence that suggested that it was a fact only under certain circumstances. What was scary was that I existed in the Moment, that I existed at all. What also scared me was that the people who were responsible for feeding me and sending me to college some day were sitting here absorbing lies about a cat named Jesus who supposedly died for our 'sins' when they had no idea what reality was really made of, and instead of figuring it out so they would have a practical basis on which to base their metaphysical beliefs, they just accepted the default fantasies of the religion local to their times.
One most interesting aspect of learning to tune pianos was that at first it seemed impossible because I didn't even know yet that I was supposed to be listening to sounds--harmonics--that I had never heard of. No one had even mentioned harmonics in the beginning weeks of the tuning course of education. When a new teacher brought it up in his first lecture, I was flabbergasted. How can one piano string vibrate in many modes at the same time? I'd only ever noticed the fundamental harmonic, the pitch that gives the musical its name, like 'D' or 'F sharp'. The problem at first was that the description was lacking, because my first tuning coach was a retired railroad man who was just a seat-of-the-pants piana tooner with little experience and no theory to back it up. "Just listen to the beats" did nothing for me, because I'm a natural skeptic and I require clear instructions or I feel that something should be impossible because I've never experienced it or even Noticed its shadow crossing my path.
When the new tuning coach came along and explained what caused the beats--harmonics interacting with each other--trying to hear the interference patterns or beats of two harmonics interacting still seemed almost impossible because now that I knew there were sounds within sounds, when I listened for such things I heard so many sounds besides the fundamental pitch or first harmonic that I was overwhelmed and just wanted to eat chocolate instead of beating my head against the wall. Finally a third tuning coach came along and explained to someone in our piano tech class, who explained to me, exactly which harmonics we should be listening for and exactly why. Then tuning made sense and I was able to learn it, sort of, because it suddenly became interesting and accessible. Twenty years later, a fourth tuning coach told me what else I'd needed to know all those years and my tuning improved vastly in a matter of weeks.
Now that I was a pretty good piano tuner, I thought it would be a good time to quit and do something else instead, so I focused on writing since it was a passion I'd chosen for myself vs. the art of piano tuning which my dad had chosen for me. I'm convinced that the purpose of continuing as a fairly unmotivated piano tuner all those years was to keep me focused on harmonics and waves.
You've seen those optical illusion pictures which can look like one thing and then like something else. You've seen transparent pictures overlaid on each other or layers of picture elements, the way graphics are constructed in computer programs. That's how harmonics work in sound or acoustic waveforms, as well as anything else that owes its existence to waves such as AC electrical currents. The middle C note of the piano sounds to most people like just a middle C, but to a trained ear there are several different tones because the string vibrates in different modes or harmonics at the same time. All the harmonics are real and some are louder than others. Instruments like flute with a pure-sounding tone have a strong fundamental or first harmonic, while instruments with a strident tone like the oboe have loud higher harmonics. Throat singers and overtone singers can make two tones at once. Which I learned how to do in an ecstatic flying dream. Some of these sounds are made by choking out the fundamental tone almost completely, with the energy going to make other harmonics louder instead.
In metaphysics it's long been believed that everything is a wave, a vibration, but there's been no mention of harmonics, which are a crucial part of wave science. The Synfonemia model of reality, my theory of everything, attempts to make up for that oversight. I hope my theory is not too far off, because I've been thinking about the elements of reality as both elemental notions--modes of thought that define our experience and combine into complex thoughts and experiences--and secondly as harmonics of reality, for so long that I am not objective about it and don't intend to be. Like a scientist, which I am not, defending his life's work, I will defend Synfonemia to the bitter end, not by pointless debate but by continuing to accumulate better descriptions and evidence as long as I find it interesting to carry on.
In closing, I would like to dedicate this chapter to the Big Bang theory, the most pitifully ridiculous piece of work done by scientists since they gave up drilling holes in the skulls of patients to vent the ill humors of diseased minds. So with infinite pity in our heart of hearts for a weak and dying idea, let's hear it for the Big Bang, on three... with one hand clapping.
