He explains to a general seeking cultural literacy his own scheme for mastery of this vast, nearly infinite realm: "If you want to know how I know about every book here, I can tell you!
The problem this raises for the formalist is this: the metatheory is itself a substantial piece of mathematics, ostensibly committed to an infinite realm of objects which are not, on the face of it, concrete.
Perhaps a true mark of an extraordinary artist is the ability to not just use the limitations of a medium to make art, but to show that within the set of limitations they've chosen to work within is a near infinite realm of artistic possibility.
In this scenario, the expanse is filled with infinite realms that are so distant, they evolve independently of one another.
As long as he was actively exploring that realm of infinite consistency, he was free.
For Madlenka, who has just discovered that she has a loose tooth, the block is a world unto itself, a familiar, self-contained place and also a realm of infinite newness and variety, always reassuringly the same and yet constantly changing its shape, color and texture.
Tolle says he doesn't mind the fact that some sceptics don't believe this story, though the sceptics might reply that he doesn't have much choice: once you've told the world that you abide in a realm of infinite equanimity, you can't very well start getting all snippy when people don't take you at your word.
The 1950s also saw an approach of Skolem (1957) toward proving the consistency of set theory in the realm of infinite valued logic.
The realm of infinite possibility (or miracles, or supercomputer-level problem-solving skills, if you will) always exists, whether we recognize it or not.
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At best, the formalist can achieve no more than a reduction in commitment from the transfinite realms of some mathematical theories, such as set theory, to the countably infinite, but still presumably abstract, realm of arithmetic, wherein the syntax and proof theory of standard countable languages such as those of standard set theory, can, as Gödel showed, be modelled.
