September 1, 2025

Dear reader,

On January 1 of this year, during Sweet Surprise, we were asked a question by our Guru, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. “What is the difference,” Gurumayi asked, “between eternity and infinity?”

Being a writer, I suppose it’s natural that my instinct was to take a semantic approach to answering this question. The word eternity, I knew, had to do with time. Eternity is unending time, unceasing time, time without beginning or conclusion. The word infinity, meanwhile, is broader in its scope. Infinity is limitlessness, boundlessness, a cosmic endlessness. Although it can refer to time, more often infinity is used in reference to space, or to the quantity or extent of something.

For a while, I was satisfied with this answer. In identifying the distinction between the meanings of these words (or, at least, one primary distinction), I felt that I had sufficiently responded to Gurumayi’s question. But something must have remained unresolved in the back of my mind, because recently I started thinking about the question again. I wondered: Why did Gurumayi ask us this question? What can we glean from parsing the difference between eternity and infinity?

So I did some research. I spoke to my scientist father, who patiently fielded my many repeated (and no doubt very basic) questions. In the process I came to understand something that I’m sure all the physicists reading this will know well already. This is that there is a context in which the distinction between space and time disappears—where the eternal becomes the infinite and the infinite becomes the eternal.

That context is light.

Scientists have discovered that at the speed of light, time stands still and distance contracts to nothing. A classic example is that of the night sky—obsidian-black, replete with stars. It can take billions of years for light to travel from some of the most distant stars in our universe to Earth. This means that by the time we perceive that light with our eyes, the star may have moved, or it may have ceased to exist entirely. When we look at the sky, therefore, we are in effect looking at the past.

Now, what if we were to take the perspective of the light in this scenario? The reality would be different! You see, light does not experience time or distance like we do. In the same instant that light is being emitted from a star billions of light years away, it is also—from the light’s point of view—present here on Earth, being received through our eyes. Light, in other words, bridges time. Light collapses space. Light is eternal. Light is infinite.

I am not by any means a physicist or a mathematician. But when I learned these facts about light, space, and time, I found that, as mind-bending as they are, there’s also something deeply intuitive about them. On the Siddha Yoga path, we have learned from Gurumayi that light is the form of God. It is from light that we have come and into light that we will eventually merge. Light is what the Guru kindles within us; light is what we recognize in others, in the world around us. Light is what pours into and spills out of my heart when I receive Gurumayi’s darshan. Light is what softens the peripheries of my dreams of Gurumayi, why these dreams feel different, of a reality that seems to transcend both the dream and waking states. So I know, from both my study and my experience, that if there’s anything that can stop time—if there’s anything that can vault across space—it would be this light.

One of my favorite poems by Gurumayi is “As the Light Comes Streaming Down,” from her book Pulsation of Love.¹ In the poem, Gurumayi interweaves themes of light and time, prompting us to consider more carefully the nature of their connection. At the start of the poem, Gurumayi writes:

As the light comes streaming down,
          yesterday, today, and forever,
          the air is draped with a white robe.
The rivers seem to flow with milk.
The entire earth rejoices 
          with the tenderness of love.
The heart, too, expresses its thanks,
          being filled with the Lord’s compassion,
          with His infinite blessings.

All times are God’s time,
          and God’s time is eternity.
Every soul knows this in its own depths,
          but does not always remember what it knows.
Thankfulness is the very nature of the soul.

By not remembering
          that all times are God’s time
          you are only thankful
          for what seems to be good.
When you are born, it is time to thank God.
As life continues, it is time to thank God.
When you die, too, it is time to thank God.
Always this light is a blessing.
This light is compassion itself.

All times belong to God. Every moment offers up an aperture into the transcendent. This is what Gurumayi teaches.

How, then, do we live more constantly with this awareness? How do we lead our lives in such a manner that we return, again and again, to the light of God? I understand this question, and the many possible answers to it, to be at the heart of Gurumayi’s Message for 2025: Make your time worth your time.

Throughout this year, I have written about the holidays we celebrate on the Siddha Yoga path, and how they provide us with clear opportunities to experience the light of God. In September, this means Navaratri. Navaratri is a nine-night festival that originates in India; this year it takes place from September 22 to September 30, with the culminating celebration of Dasera on October 2. The festival is dedicated to honoring the Devi, the supreme Goddess, who is herself an embodiment of divine light. It is, moreover, traditional to worship the Devi with light—by offering puja, for example, or dancing around a garba flame.

Of course, we don’t have to wait until the end of September to invoke the light of God. We can do so now, and later today, and tomorrow, and every day after that. In her poem, Gurumayi indicates how we can do this. We can practice remembrance, and we can practice gratitude.

Each day we can make the effort to recognize even a few of the expressions of God’s light that we encounter in ourselves, in others, in the world around us. These don’t have to be anything “big” per se. It could be that we glimpse this light in the veins of a leaf or the fluid movement of a tree branch, in someone’s smile or in a delicate tear tracking down their cheek. We just need to become more attentive to these moments, make a note of them (in our journals, for example), and consciously express our gratitude for them.

I am glad to be speaking to you right now about gratitude. I am grateful to be doing so. Why do I say this?

I say it because today’s letter, the letter for September, is the last one I’ll be writing to you this year. And as I reflect on our journey together over the past nine months—on the sadhana we’ve done individually and collectively on Gurumayi’s Message—gratitude is what I feel. Gratitude is what I experience bubbling up in my heart.

I am grateful to Gurumayi for her Message, for her teachings related to the Message (like In the Presence of Time), for her love and her grace, which are present in all times and lifetimes. I am also appreciative of you, the sangham of Siddha Yogis and new seekers, for engaging so thoughtfully with my contemplations and for sharing your own experiences of practicing Gurumayi’s Message.

All that said, our study and practice of Gurumayi’s Message continue. We’ve still got four months remaining in the year, and who can anticipate what insights, experiences, and transformations we’ll have in that time? Even beyond that, though—beyond the calendrical cycle in which we’re focused on this Message—Gurumayi’s wisdom will live on. This wisdom is the sound form of light, the shaping of that light into distinct syllables and words that we can comprehend. Gurumayi’s Message is eternal and infinite, here with us always.

On that note, I want to ask: have you seen, or heard of, the solar analemma? It is a diagram, or a time-lapse image, that can be created by combining photographs of the sun that have been taken at the same time, and from the same location, on many different days throughout the year. Although it might seem like the sun would appear in the same position in each photograph, it actually moves. This is due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis (which makes the sun appear to move up or down) and the elliptical nature of the Earth’s orbit (which makes the sun appear to move right or left). Can you guess what shape is made in the resulting composite of all these sun images?

It’s a figure-eight, which we also recognize as the symbol of infinity. Synchronistic, no? To me, it’s a sign. Time enacts its drama across the field of timelessness. No matter where we are or when, we are always tracing the curves of infinity.

Sincerely,

Eesha Sardesai