The fourth dimension (illustration) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It is at this point that something truly strange occurred. The idea of the “fourth
dimension” was adopted by spiritualists and occultists as the “realm of the ethers”
or the afterlife, the place of the dead.
Séances of the nineteenth-century attracted spirit beings that produced physical
effects as well as peculiar psychological states, and disappeared again – like the
UFOs of our time. It was as convenient then (as it is now) to assign them a home
in the inaccessible dimensions of space, and to make absolutely certain that
everyone was convinced that these dimensions were ethereal.
The nineteenth-century astronomer Zollner set out to demonstrate scientifically
that the ethereal beings attracted to spiritualistic séances were from the fourth
dimension. Even though his demonstrations were never successful, at this point,
the fourth dimension became a means of conceiving of mysterious phenomena in a
non-materialistic way.
In the final phase of nineteenth-century thought, the fourth dimension became a
subject for meditation and was taken up by the Theosophical Society, and later by
Rudolf Steiner, who gave reportedly brilliant lectures on the subject based on the
work of Howard Hinton.
Hinton’s work was the outcome of the ideas of his father, James Hinton, whose
philosophy was based on the ideas of the Kantian noumenal world that lies behind
phenomenal experience. This higher world was feminine, nurturing, free of social
and legal restraint; virtue consisted in “harmonizing one’s intentions with the
noumenal world”, and could not be captured by merely regulating behavior. The
person who acts selflessly for the greater good of humanity was as likely to break
the law as the brutish criminal.
Howard Hinton was inspired by Hamilton’s writings to adopt a materialistic
form of Kantianism. When he began work as a schoolteacher, he came to doubt
that knowledge could ever come from an external authority. In an effort to find
some knowledge about which he could feel certainty, he made himself a set of
colored blocks that he rearranged in various ways to make larger cubes. Using
these blocks, he felt he could acquire knowledge of spatial position that was
beyond all doubt. As he looked for patterns in the rearrangement of these blocks,
he began to investigate the fourth dimension, which he saw as governing
sequences of transformation in three dimensions.
By the time of Hinton’s death in 1907, his writings had inspired theosophists in
India and England to investigate the fourth dimension for themselves. Steiner,
following the theosophists, continued to view the fourth dimension as a “spiritual”
realm, though he had some fascinatingly insightful comments to make about it,
keeping in mind his “esoteric” approach.
130 The Secret History of the World
Everything we do here is simply a symbolic representation of the higher worlds.
[…] Only developing new possibilities for vision can attain what lies within these
higher worlds. Human beings must be active in order to reach these worlds.49
Howard Hinton and the ideas of the fourth dimension also had a profound
influence on P.D. Ouspensky who produced a very simple illustration of the
concept of our relation to the fourth dimension, which actually gives a more
“physicalized” aspect to the concept. In this illustration, he speaks about a snail on
a journey across a garden.
Its movements are governed by pleasure/pain. It always advances toward the one
and retreats from the other. It always moves on one line, from the unpleasant
towards the pleasant. And, in all probability, it senses and knows nothing except
this line. This line constitutes the whole of its world. The snail on this line of
motion senses all the sensations entering from the outside. And, these come to it out
of time — from potentiality they become actuality. For a snail, the whole of our
universe exists in the future and the past, i.e., in time.50
The snail is probably not self-aware — that is, aware that it is surging across the
landscape — all of which exists simultaneously, of which the snail could be aware
if it were possible to expand its awareness through some process of
metamorphosis, lifting it high above the garden to expand its scope. But, it only
perceives the various phenomena — the leaf, the grass, the twig, the sand, the
walkway — at the moment it interacts with them — and then only a little at a time.
They are events of long or short duration, past and future, which come to pass as
the snail inches along.
Ouspensky suggests that this is the way we experience our world relative to the
fourth dimension. Our five sense organs are merely feelers, our means of touching
and interpreting the world, through the mathematical constructs of our brains and
in the limited terms of three-dimensional consciousness. Scientific gadgetry only
lengthens our feelers a bit.
Imagine a consciousness not limited by the conditions of sense perception. Such a
consciousness can rise above the plane on which we move; it can see far beyond the
bounds of the circle illumined by our ordinary consciousness; it can see that not
only does the line along which we move exist, but also all the other lines
perpendicular to it which we cross (in our series of nows.) Rising above the plane,
this consciousness will be able to see the plane, make sure that it actually is a plane
and not only a line; then it will be able to see the past and the future living side by
side and existing simultaneously.
There are several important considerations contained in the analogy of the snail.
First, if our true perception is as limited, relatively speaking, as a snail’s, why is
this so if we do, in fact, possess inner knowledge and capabilities unknown to our
waking, ordinary consciousness which often manifest spontaneously, or which can
be developed through long and difficult training? Second, we must note the
implications of a consciousness of this type that DOES exist on the physical,
three-dimensional plane. But, before we endeavor to deal with those questions,
let’s return to the question of time.
The past and future cannot be non-existent. They must exist together somewhere;
only we do not see them. The present, as opposed to the past and the future, is the
most unreal of unrealities. We must admit that the past, the present and the future
do not differ from one another in any way, that the only thing that exists is the
Eternal Now of Indian Philosophy.
The Alpha and Omega. But we do not see this — at least very few of us do. And
then we only see imperfectly, “through a glass darkly”. We are snails crossing the
fields of flowers of the universe, aware only momentarily of the earth, the leaf, the
flower, or the raindrop before us. At any given moment we are only aware of a
small fragment of the universe, and we continue to deny the existence of
everything else: namely the coexistent past and future, and the possibility of
perceiving it.
There are two main theories of the future — that of a predestined future and that
of a free future. The theory of predestination asserts that every future event is the
result of past events. If we know all the past, then we could know all the future.
This is linear time. The idea of a free future is based on quantum “probabilities”.
The future is either only partially determined or undetermined because many of
the varied interactions are possible at any given point. This probable future posits
the idea of true free will and suggests that quite deliberate volitional acts may
bring about a subsequent change in events.
Those who support predestination say that so-called “voluntary” actions are, in
fact, not voluntary. Rather, they are but the results of incompletely understood
causes, which have made them imperative acts — in short, nothing is accidental.
So on the one hand we have “cold predestination”: come what may, nothing can
be changed. On the other hand, we have a reality that is only a point on some sort
of needle named the present, surrounded on all sides by the Gulf of Non-existence
— a world which is born and dies every moment. Ouspensky unifies these views:
At every given moment all the future of the world is predestined and existing, but it
is predestined conditionally, i.e., there must be one or another future in accordance
with the direction of events of the given moment, if no new factor comes in. And a
new factor can come in only from the side of consciousness and the will resulting
from it.
In other words, the snail can choose to change his direction if he increases his
knowledge and becomes more aware. The snail may be following the scent of food
or a need for warmth, and he may crawl into the path of a car, or into a field full of
birds that wish to eat him. In practical terms, this means that snails and human
beings, who are crawling through the universe very often, without knowledge, find
themselves in the path of destruction. Quite often this destruction can only be
overcome by mastering our instinctive urge for pleasure and avoidance of pain.
This can only come about by becoming aware of the probable course he is on. If
his natural tendencies were leading him to an abyss, which will plunge him into a
blazing inferno below, then it would behoove him to learn exactly what it is he
must do to avoid it. And therein lies the rub. In order to do that, a being must
achieve a more aware higher state of consciousness, not a more intense state of
feeling!
In the past, what is behind us lies not only in what was, but also in what could have
been. In the same way, in the future lie not only what will be but also what may
be.
In other words, motion in space is merely an illusion of the brief illuminating
light of our consciousness upon a given construct of consciousness. If it is so that
All exists simultaneously, then it is only we who, singly and collectively, can
change the focus or development of our consciousness.
In time events exist before our consciousness comes into contact with them, and
they still exist after our consciousness has withdrawn from them.55
Now we come back to the questions: Why can we not perceive reality as it is?
Why can we not enlarge our perception — why are we chained in this painful
existence we call “life”? We come back to the idea of the Cave of Plato — or what
is popularly known nowadays as The Matrix. What we are facing is the fact that
the limited way we perceive our world is actually a sort of defect — the effect of
the “fall” – the “ritual fault” that brought the Golden Age to an end.
At the present time, many physicists have suggested “hyperspace” has
explanatory value in terms of bridging the gap between the physical and ethereal
worlds. The New Age market took such ideas up with fiendish glee, producing
endless ignorant variations on “Sacred Science” of millions of words, few of
which are comprehensible to the layperson, much less the scientist. Those who
read this drivel and who say, “oh, it sounds so true, but what is it saying?”, are
contemptuously told that only “initiated understanding” can grasp such lofty ideas!
The fact is, the realities of our world in terms of any connecting principles
between matter and consciousness are not helped by any such philosophical
discussions. What we need is further empirical study and experimentation. What’s
more, it needs to be done by those who are qualified to do it — not charlatans and
con artists.
There are physical scientists of the highest caliber who are open to the
possibility of other forms of matter and other dimensions. They understand that
such hypotheses would have explanatory value in their own fields as well as in
parapsychology. Thus it is that, while the subject matter of parapsychology and
physics is significantly different, their fundamental insights curiously coincide.
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