Eternity | Definition & Variations | Britannica (original) (raw)

eternity, timelessness, or the state of that which is held to have neither beginning nor end. Eternity and the related concept of infinity have long been associated with strong emotional overtones, serving to astonish, weary, or confound those who attempt to grasp them.

In religious and metaphysical contexts, the notion of the eternal is developed as something without beginning or end. Eternalistic eschatologies appear in various forms in Eastern and Western spirituality and have deeply influenced the world’s religions. Most eternalistic eschatologies find their background in the conception of time as the endless cycle of eternal recurrence. It is from this repetition that believers seek to escape: the last thing hoped for is the deliverance of the individual from the unreal realm of the empirical, temporal, and historical to the timeless realm of spirit. Prominent in all schools of Chinese thought, for example, is the belief that the universe is in an eternal state of flux, either of oscillation or of cyclic movement in a closed circuit. Indian thought emphasizes the belief in kalpas, or great cycles of four phases, through which successive worlds appear, flourish, disintegrate, and die. Similar doctrines are familiar from Greek and Hellenistic literature.

Greek religion presents varied aspects of eternity. The Homeric Hades seems to represent a sadly attenuated continuation of earthly life, but there is also early reference to the Elysian Fields, where the afterlife is much happier. By and large, Greek spirituality seems to be pervaded throughout by a deep melancholy about the transitoriness of life and the emptiness of all things given over to birth and death. Greeks sought refuge in some form of perpetuation—the perpetuation of fame through epic and story; the perpetuation of youth, beauty, and perfection through art; the perpetuation of life through identification with the immortal god in the many mystery cults; the perpetuation of the mind through the philosophic discipline which dissolves the temporal into the eternal; and finally, perpetuation of being through the survival of the soul, by nature immortal.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Augustyn.