We received an interesting comment from a viewer of this video → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb-AiGeFN1k:
“I’m listening along, but I doubt it. I don't believe anyone can actually conceptualize a never ending existence. It almost seems like torture, unjust, to “BE” forever”
My brief reply on YouTube with additional thoughts below it:
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I do think there is a way to think about this and not be "tortured" by it. Perhaps think about someone you really like to spend time with and also imagine doing something with them that you both really enjoy (or multiple things if you like). I would assume that having that experience end would sometimes be much less joyful than having it continue.
"If" you did not have time constraints, you could continue this joyful relationship and activity as long as you both desired to. And, even if you "took a break" for awhile - if time was not limiting you - you could pick it up again later. And later, and later...
So we could infer from this that how a "never ending" existence "feels" (torture vs. joy) depends on what you are doing and experiencing in that existence. I would encourage you to look at it more from a "quality" perspective than a "quantity" of time perspective.
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As I think about this more I suppose the inherent difficulty of “conceptualizing a never ending existence” lies in our shared human experience of finiteness. Every one of us is experiencing a temporal (physical, worldly) life that had a beginning (so not eternal past) and clearly has a finite physical end (so not appearing to have a eternal future).
The key here, that Eternity Series of videos probes, is if there is something more to us than just the physical. If we are only made up of physical stuff (“meat all the way down” as it is sometimes phrased) then we have a lot of empirical evidence that shows “we” cease to exist for all practical purposes. Our physical “self” simply deteriorates over time, and if there is no conscienceless or non-physical “part” of us - the “self” is gone. Even if we assume that our particles shift into other types of matter - there is still no us left. Our “life”, however defined, is over.
However, “if” we assume, as we have at least tried in our Eternity series videos, that there is a non-physical part of us, then there is the possibility of continued existence beyond our physical death.
In addition to this possibility of a continued existence beyond the grave is the added possibility of this existence lasting for an infinite time if we assume that the natural physical laws of deterioration do not apply. And, once we get our minds to this point - as we do in the Eternity Series - we can begin to imagine a lot of interesting and exciting things that might just be possible.