It was probably at school, during a math lesson, that I first heard about Zeno of Elea’s famous paradox demonstrating the impossibility of movement:

You measure the distance between an arrow and its target and divide it by two. When the arrow has travelled half this distance, you divide the remaining distance by two again. Each time the arrow travels half of the distance it has left, you divide the remaining distance by two. Given that an infinite number of divisions are possible, the arrow will never reach its target: there will always be a minute distance separating it from its destination.

I do not recall if our teacher explained how mathematicians managed to resolve this paradox 2,000 years later by using a mathematical abstraction that demonstrates that, even if one can cut up time ad infinitum, there is still continuity.

Even if mathematical abstraction provides a solution to this problem, I remain perplexed by our incapacity to comprehend the world around us, even in its most simple reality. Explanations cannot enable us to take the leap of understanding that would put an end to all of our questions. Once one question is answered, another one follows. These questions and their answers are like divisions ad infinitum of a reality that escapes us constantly — but only when we question it. It is futile to question it for, at the very moment we do, it escapes us.

The infinite is hidden in the heart of every thing. Is that not an important clue?

When Maharaji explains that the ocean of questions and the ocean of answers reside inside of us but can never meet (paradox!), he invites us to enter into another way of looking at the world: to become one with the eternal moment despite our finite understanding.

We can then celebrate the miracle of being alive, because is that not the definition of a miracle: that there is no rational explanation for what is happening and yet it still does?

Illustration by Sara Shaffer.