Are You in an Infinite Timeless Loop?

=By Anubhav Srivastava

Email: anubhav101@gmail.com

Let’s go back to your childhood: you are born one day, and the world is already in motion. You don’t remember signing up for this life, nor do you recall choosing the specific rules of reality that you now operate within. The sun rises, the seasons change, and your body grows older. Everything around you seems to follow a certain flow—from birth to death, from beginnings to endings. Naturally, you assume: everything must have a starting point and an endpoint.

But here’s the twist: this perception is a byproduct of the specific “slice” of reality you’re experiencing, just like our specific experience of gravity is the byproduct of living on earth. Go to the moon, and the experience changes.

We are like a fish in the ocean can only observe their environment and assume it to be the only reality and remain blissfully unaware of how large the ocean truly is or how many fish exist in it. This is excluding the idea of a land-based reality which to a deep sea fish is incomprehensible!

Now let’s zoom out. If we go by the premise of a Timeless “Nothing with No Laws”, leading to Everything, as the base reality (which the book Nothing/Everything argues for), all these “slices”—these configurations of existence—are already being projected timelessly. Think of it as an infinite movie reel.

Each observer, trapped within a specific slice/snapshot of this infinite reel, believes they are in the middle of a grand story for the FIRST TIME.

You think this is the first time you’ve existed, the only time you’ve existed, and that there must have been some “Big Bang” that kicked it all off and some ultimate end when it will all fade away. But here’s the probable truth: the Big Bang, while absolutely real, is ALSO just one slice/snapshot on the infinite reel. The “end of the universe” is another.

These events are not beginnings or endings—they’re simply configurations that exist timelessly, just like all the other snapshots. Your mind, however, is part of a snapshot that operates under certain rules. In this case, the rule is: everything must have a cause, a beginning, and an end.

Let’s break it down.

The Default State of Reality, as we have established logically in the book Nothing/Everything is probably “Nothing with No Laws” → This Leads to Everything.

Nothing/Everything doesn’t pick and choose—it simply allows all configurations to exist, even if the configurations are not visible to each other in the same “slice” just like one fish cannot see the entirety of the ocean. This “infinite configuration” and universes not visible to each other possibility is also supported by the Many Worlds view of Quantum Mechanics.

This means everything that can exist does exist, including “you.”

Nothing with No Laws Means Everything. This means Infinite Probabilities which Mean Infinite Yous.

If the fundamental state of reality contains every possible version of you, then there are configurations of you/similar to you that:

Were born in different centuries, planets, universes.

Made different choices, leading to different outcomes.

Lived, died, and were born again—not through reincarnation in a religious sense, but simply as a natural consequence of infinite probability.

There’s No Time. You’re Not “Waiting” to Appear. You Already Exist in Infinite Ways.

In a time-bound universe, we think of existence as a straight line.

But if time is an illusion, and all realities exist timelessly, then “you” aren’t appearing after some event.

You already exist in an infinite number of configurations, in an infinite number of ways.

If you’re wondering how you “got here,” the answer is—you never left. You’ve always been here.

From your perspective, it feels like you’ve started from zero and are progressing toward some finality, but this is an illusion.

If all snapshots are already being projected timelessly, then nothing needs to be “created” or “destroyed.” Everything simply is. The infinite combinations of reality, including yours, have no cause or purpose. They are the natural expression of a state of Nothing with no limitations—where every possibility exists timelessly.

As observers, we struggle with this because our ego wants to feel important. We want to believe we are here for a reason, that there is a grand narrative, a higher plan. But in reality, our existence is probably just one configuration among infinite others, and that’s okay.

If the ultimate reality is not bound by limitations, if all possible realities exist timelessly, then it isn’t just likely that a version of “you” would show up—it’s inevitable. And not just once.

Not just twice.

But probably, over and over and over again.

Think of existence like music.

A song, once recorded, is not played only once—it can be played again at any time

It can be played at normal speed, fast-forwarded, or even remixed into a new version.

But no matter what, the original song always exists, sitting there, ready to be played again.

Now, imagine “you” are one of the infinite songs in the Nothing/Everything playlist.

Your particular song—this life, this personality, this body—is being “played” right now.

But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been played before.

And it doesn’t mean it won’t be played again.

Because if all configurations already exist, then different versions of “you” are experiencing their own timelines right now.

Some versions are wildly different.

Some are nearly identical to this one.

Some are you reading this very sentence—but maybe with one slight variation.

And yet, no version of “you” is more real than the other.

So… What Now?

Some might find this idea unsettling. Am I just trapped in an infinite loop of existence? Is there any meaning to it?

The truth?

You’re not trapped, because you were never outside of it to begin with.

The Illusion of the “First Time”

Why does it feel like this is the first time you are here?

Because each version of you only has access to the memories contained within its particular configuration.

Think of a character in a book. That character only knows the events within the story they exist in.

They don’t know that thousands of identical copies of the book exist, sitting on shelves all over the world. They don’t know that different versions of the book exist, where the story unfolds in slightly different ways. They only know what’s inside their particular book.

But that doesn’t mean the other books aren’t real. It just means they don’t have access to them.

Your experience of life is the same way.

Every version of you thinks they are the only version. Every version of you believes this is the first time they are experiencing this moment. But that’s just because each version is locked within its own particular book—unaware that infinite other versions exist.

So, what does this all mean? The idea that we are living in a timeless, looping reality, where our lives are like songs on an infinite playlist, can feel strange and difficult to accept.

But what if I told you that this feeling of resistance, this intuitive certainty that “it can’t be true,” is something humanity has gone through before? What if this is just the latest in a long, painful, and ultimately necessary series of lessons in humility?

To understand this, we need to look at our history. It is a history of Great Demotions—moments when a simple, scientific truth arrived and shattered our comfortable, ego-driven view of our own importance.

The First Great Demotion: The Earth is Not the Center

For thousands of years, the truth seemed obvious. Just look up. The sun rises in the east, travels across the sky, and sets in the west. The moon and stars do the same. The ground beneath our feet feels solid and unmoving.

From this evidence, the conclusion was simple: We are the center of the universe, and everything revolves around us. This was the Geocentric Model. It felt right. It made us feel special. And it was completely wrong.

Then came thinkers like Copernicus and Galileo. They used a new tool—mathematics—to show that the reality was the opposite. The sun was the center, and we, on our small planet, were the ones moving. This was the Heliocentric Model.

People hated this idea. It was an insult. It demoted us from the center of everything to just another rock spinning in the darkness. It was a demotion from being the main character of the cosmos to being a minor actor in the background.

The Second Great Demotion: Man is an Animal

Once we got over our cosmic demotion, we built a new fortress for our ego. “Fine,” we said. “We may not be the center of space, but we are a special creation. We are not animals. We have souls, we have reason. The beasts are driven by instinct, but we are different.”

This belief felt right. It made us feel special. And it was also, as it turns out, wrong.

Then came Darwin. He showed, with overwhelming evidence from fossils and biology, that there was no hard line between us and the animal kingdom. We are apes. We share a common ancestor with chimpanzees. Our vaunted intelligence is not a gift from the gods, but a product of the same blind, messy process of evolution that created the tiger and the jellyfish.

This was the second great demotion. It took us off our biological pedestal and placed us firmly back within the animal kingdom. And again, people hated it. It felt like an insult to our dignity.

The Third Great Demotion: Man is a Computer

After Darwin, we retreated to our final fortress: the mind. “Fine,” we say today. “We are animals, but our consciousness is special. The ‘I’ that thinks and feels is a magical, non-physical spark. A machine, a computer, could never INTERNALLY FEEL like a “real being.”

But this too is an illusion. Your brain is a “wet computer,” made of meat and electricity. Your DNA is its source code.

An AI’s “ Digital Code” is fundamentally the same building block for its existence, such as your DNA code is for yours.

Your thoughts are complex calculations. Your sense of self is an emergent property of that biological hardware, a story told by a magnificent machine, but unlike AI it is a machine that has had billions of years of time to stabilize, thanks to Evolution.

This is the third great demotion. It tells us that our minds are not magic; they are the product of an incredibly complex computational process.

The Final Demotion: Removing the Chrono-centric Model of Existence

And this brings us to the very edge of our understanding. We have been demoted in space, in biology, and in psychology. There is only one pedestal left. It is our belief that we are at a special place in time.

We believe that our “present moment” is the cutting edge of reality. We believe that time flows in a straight line from a single beginning (the Big Bang) to a single end. We believe this is the first and only time we will live this life. This is the Chronocentric Model—a model where our moment in “Chronos” (time) is the center of everything.

But just like the Geocentric model, it is an illusion of our limited perspective.

The final demotion is to accept that the ultimate reality is not centered on our moving point in time. The ultimate reality is probably Apeiro-centric.

What does that mean? “Apeiron” is an ancient Greek word for the infinite, the boundless, the undefined, the eternal source of all things.

An Apeiro-centric model says that the true “center” of reality is not a point in time. The center is a timeless, source-less, infinite state of pure potential.

Our entire, seemingly linear universe is just one of an infinite number of “time loops” or “life paths” that exist eternally within this boundless reality.

You are not on a journey through time. Your entire journey is a single point in a timeless whole.

Your feeling of “living for the first time” is just as real, and just as wrong, as your ancestors’ feeling that the sun was moving across the sky. It is a trick of perspective.

When you accept this final, humbling demotion, you are left with a profound and unshakable understanding. You are not a singular hero on a linear quest. You are an eternal note in an infinite symphony. And the music, as it turns out, has been playing all along.

We think of time as flowing, an unbroken river carrying us from one moment to the next. We anchor it with constructs like hours and days—10 a.m., noon, midnight—believing these markers are universal. But they’re not.

Even within our own planet, 10 a.m. in New York is not 10 a.m. in Tokyo. The very concept of time is tied to where you stand, to how Earth spins, and to the artificial grids we’ve overlaid upon its surface.

This relativity of time becomes even more fascinating when extended beyond human constructs and into the realm of the universe itself. Einstein’s theories of relativity showed us that time is not only location-specific but also observer-dependent.

For example, an astronaut traveling near the speed of light or someone near a black hole would experience time differently from someone on Earth. This isn’t theoretical—it’s been confirmed through experiments, like those with atomic clocks on airplanes or satellites. Time, as it turns out, is intimately tied to the observer’s frame of reference, influenced by speed and gravity.

So, while it’s 2026 on Earth, it could very well be a different “time” for an observer elsewhere in the cosmos. Near the event horizon of a black hole, time slows dramatically compared to the surrounding space.

A hypothetical alien civilization close to such a black hole might still be witnessing epochs that, for us, were long gone—like the age of dinosaurs or even the formation of Earth itself. Conversely, there could be regions where time flows faster relative to us, where civilizations are already far beyond our technological and existential state, living in what we might call the distant future.

This naturally leads to the question: what happens when we leave the context of our universe? Our universe operates with its own spacetime fabric, a framework born from the conditions of the Big Bang. But what lies beyond this framework?

If we remove the scaffolding of spacetime, we also remove the basis for time as we understand it. Without a spatial reference, time ceases to have any meaning. It doesn’t flow; it doesn’t tick—it simply doesn’t exist in the way we experience it. The concept of “10 a.m.” becomes as meaningless as a compass in a place without direction.

This brings us to the idea of nothing/everything. The ultimate base reality—if such a thing exists—is not constrained by time or space because it operates beyond the conditions that give rise to those concepts. In this framework, the distinctions between past, present, and future dissolve.

All possibilities, all configurations, coexist simultaneously in a timeless state. From this perspective, the Big Bang is not an event that happened 13.8 billion years ago—it’s happening now, just as the death of the universe is happening now. All timelines, all realities, exist side by side in this state, each equally valid and timeless.

Time in our universe is real. But just as 10 a.m. loses its meaning without a location, time itself loses its meaning when removed from the spacetime of our universe. And just as there’s no “absolute 10 a.m.” across the globe, there’s no “absolute now” across the cosmos—or beyond it.

All events, from the birth of Alexander the Great to the far future of intergalactic civilizations, exist RIGHT NOW in this framework as valid configurations, experienced differently based on local rules or slices.

Just like there is NO North, South, East or West in the Cosmic Sense. There actually is no common time in the cosmic sense.

In the state of nothing/everything, there is no time—no “before” or “after.” All events exist simultaneously, without hierarchy or sequence. The big bang, the extinction of dinosaurs, your current thoughts, and the heat death of the universe all exist as valid configurations, side by side.

Some reels are “our universe,” governed by specific physical laws.

Others are universes with different laws, dimensions, or rules entirely.

Some reels may contain purely abstract realities, while others may defy any form of understanding.

In such an alternate universe, the idea of a time traveler having dinner in their “3034” and then returning to their “2024” is not inherently impossible; it’s just a feature of how time operates in that universe.

In such a reality, “3034” and “2024” could be accessible “coordinates” rather than sequential points.

A traveler could hypothetically jump to any “time-coordinate,” have dinner in their 3034, and then return to their 2024 as if they were simply visiting different locations.

What a Timeless Ultimate Reality of Nothing/Everything or A Nothing with No Laws ultimately implies

If you could hypothetically step out of the universe into the state of nothing/everything:

You would perceive all events—past, present, and future—as happening simultaneously.

The big bang, the rise of civilizations, and the universe’s end are all occurring right now.

From the perspective of nothing/everything, there is no linear progression. You would see:

The dinosaurs walking the Earth.

The first humans discovering fire.

Your current moment reading this sentence

A universe where you never existed.

All happening “simultaneously,” because time as a sequential construct doesn’t apply in this state.

Now, because this framework is a Nothing with No laws, what we call as “God Like entities” could theoretically exist in other universes. Because even we consider to be an impossibility in our reality has to logically be a part of everything, somewhere.

But at the ultimate state, reality needs no creator, because it is a nothing, with no laws, leading to everything. Therefore, even these “God-Like” entities, should they exist in other universes are simply one of the mathematically probable features of that particular universe.

Therefore, according to this framework, “God” isn’t the author of the book, because a nothing with no laws needs no author. However, a God-like entity logically has to exist as a character who is the “System Administrator” in at least some chapters.

Imagine an infinite network of highways. Each highway is a unique reel of reality. Some highways are straight and predictable; others are winding and chaotic.

Where you are on your highway determines your experience of time, space, and events. But countless other highways exist, with entirely different paths and experiences.

The highway you’re on isn’t “better” or “worse” than others. It’s just the one you’re traveling on. The rest exist equally, even if you never experience them.:

Each point on your highway represents a specific moment in time.

Where you are right now is the snapshot you’re currently experiencing—a singular moment of your personal journey on this highway.

Just as no highway is the only one in the world, your universe is one among infinite other highways.

Each highway represents a different universe, governed by its own laws, rules, and possibilities. Some highways are straight and predictable, while others are wild, looping, and chaotic.

Your current position on the highway corresponds to your present experience of time and space.

The past (behind you) and the future (ahead of you) appear as part of this highway.

However, in reality, all points on the highway exist simultaneously. Just because you haven’t reached them yet doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

From the perspective of nothing/everything:

Every possible point on every highway exists right now, side by side.

Your movement along the highway is an illusion created by your experience of time flowing. In truth, all snapshots are static, existing timelessly as part of the infinite structure of reality.

Your highway is just one in an infinite network of highways.

Some highways are parallel to yours, with slightly different versions of events—different laws of physics, different outcomes, or no outcomes at all.

Other highways are utterly alien, with no resemblance to yours, defying all rules you know.

Just as with your highway, each point on every other highway exists simultaneously. There’s no hierarchy—one highway isn’t more “real” or “valid” than another. They all simply are.

Your experience of reality depends on:

The Highway You’re On:

This determines the universe you experience and its specific rules (e.g., gravity, speed of light).

Where You Are on the Highway:

This determines your “now” moment—the specific snapshot you’re experiencing.

While infinite other highways and points exist, you only perceive one at a time.

You could imagine nothing/everything as a giant map where all highways and all snapshots are visible at once.

Your journey down the highway is an illusion of movement within a TIMELESS STRUCTURE

Your so-called “past life” is not behind you, nor is your “future life” ahead of you. They exist now as parallel configurations, just as valid as this version of you reading this text.

But your consciousness, which is trapped in a human brain at one particular coordinate in spacetime, can only experience its version of the present moment, because, at least in our universe, the brain only has access to the immediate present and some saved data from the past, but not the future!

Now, if there are alternate universes with slightly differing features, it is almost certain there are alternate, possibility infinite versions of you who are features of that particular universe.

There may be another version of “you” living as a ruler of a vast empire, another as a wandering monk, another as a bird soaring through the skies, and yet another as a being with entirely different laws of consciousness and physics.

But are these truly “you”? That’s where things get interesting.

If “you” are nothing more than a particular arrangement of atoms and memories, then these alternate configurations share similarities but are not truly “you.”

The version of you as a monk or bird might feel as though they are “you,” but from your perspective, they are just other possibilities. This raises the paradox: is there a “you” at all?

Our differences and similarities exist on a continuum:

The “you” of five years ago is not entirely the “you” of today, yet you recognize a connection.

Similarly, the “you” of another universe might share 99.9999% of your traits but differ in ways that break the continuity we perceive as “self.”

By this logic, the person in front of you, the pigeon next to you, and the dog you are petting could also be “you” in some way, as all exist within the same spectrum of reality.

to this particular configuration.

Once you step outside the frame of this snapshot, the boundaries of “you” dissolve, revealing that all things are interconnected.

Within the nothing/everything framework, infinite variations of “past” and “future” lives are inevitable.

However, whether these lives are truly “yours” is questionable because the concept of “you” itself is fluid and illusory.

If you claim these past or future lives as “yours,” then why not claim the person next to you as “you” as well? Or the bird flying in the sky? Or the tree swaying in the wind?

The “you” that you experience is one snapshot among infinite others, neither more real nor less real than any other.

This might feel unsettling at first, but it’s also freeing. You are not bound by the illusion of beginnings or endings. You are part of something infinite, timeless, and complete.

The next time you wonder, “Why am I here?” or “How did it all start?”—remember that these are questions born how rules and reality SEEMINGLY work in YOUR snapshot.

You may wonder, what are you doing “here”

BUT in a Nothing/Everything framework, the real question is: How could you NOT be here? You Were Always Going to Be Here—Because a Nothing with No Limitations leads to EVERYTHING, and “you” are a PART of that Everything.

Condensed and adapted presentation of core ideas from Anubhav Srivastava’s book Nothing/Everything: The Mindbending Philosophical Theory of Everything (published May 2025, Amazon Kindle ASIN B0F87XV18Y). The full text of the original work is freely available for academic review at https://archive.org/details/nothing-everything-the-mindbending-philosophical-theory-of-everything.