From the book
The Kybalion
Three Initiates · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordInfinite excludes a boundary, eternal excludes a beginning or end in time, and immutable excludes change in essential nature.
- In The KybalionIV reasons from the comprehensiveness of THE ALL.
- In this editionThe entry groups closely connected attributes but does not replace them with a single synonym.
- A place to readIV.15: “(1) THE ALL must be ALL that REALLY IS. There can be nothing existing outside of” …
Meaning
Infinite excludes a boundary, eternal excludes a beginning or end in time, and immutable excludes change in essential nature. The book joins these attributes in its account of THE ALL, but they remain distinguishable claims.
Use in the book
IV reasons from the comprehensiveness of THE ALL. Nothing outside it can confine, create, destroy, or alter it. It is therefore said to be unlimited in time, space, and power and unchangeable in itself. Finite, changing things are then assigned a lesser or relative reality.
These attributes generate the question of V: how can an unchanging reality produce a changing universe? The mental-image analogy is meant to preserve the source's integrity while allowing changing forms within its manifestation. The later account of cosmic cycles does not revoke the source's supposed eternity.
Places to read
- IV THE ALL · Block 15“(1) THE ALL must be ALL that REALLY IS. There can be nothing existing outside of THE ALL, else THE ALL would not be THE ALL.”
- IV THE ALL · Block 16“(2) THE ALL must be INFINITE, for there is nothing else to define, confine, bound, limit; or restrict THE ALL. It must be Infinite in Time, or ETERNAL,—it must have always” …
- IV THE ALL · Block 17“(3) THE ALL must be IMMUTABLE, or not subject to change in its real nature, for there is nothing to work changes upon it nothing into which it could change, nor” …
- IV THE ALL · Block 18“THE ALL being Infinite, Absolute, Eternal and Unchangeable it must follow that anything finite, changeable, fleeting, and conditioned cannot be THE ALL. And as there is Nothing outside of THE ALL,” …
- V The Mental Universe · Block 4“If the Universe exists at all, or seems to exist, it must proceed in some way from THE ALL—it must be a creation of THE ALL. But as something can never” …
In this edition
The entry groups closely connected attributes but does not replace them with a single synonym. Infinite and very large are not equivalent.
Reading the argument
A definition of all establishes that no outside is admitted by that definition. It does not automatically establish that a being with every subsequent attribute exists. The inferential steps can be followed without treating their verbal closeness as proof of all of them together.
Infinite
“Infinite” — 36 occurrences in 28 text blocks: II.7, 13; IV.4, 7, 16, 18, 22–23; V.2, 8–10, 14, 17–19; VI.2, 8–10, 13; VII.6, 14, 17; VIII.9; IX.3; X.3; XII.13.
Eternal
“Eternal” — 5 occurrences in 4 text blocks: IV.4, 16, 18; VI.13.
Immutable
“Immutable” — 2 occurrences in 2 text blocks: IV.17; XIV.18.
Unchangeable
“Unchangeable” — 1 occurrence in 1 text block: IV.18.