The Fourth Dimension: Sacred Geometry, Alchemy and Mathematics
This is the final book lent to me by my son, Derek. The other three I have already reviewed. This one seems the most difficult to comprehend, and yet, once you grasp the concept, it’s easy.
As this book is made up of a series of lectures, some of which come from 1905, the ideas contained therein are ‘revolutionary’, to be sure. At least they were, more than 100 years ago. Now, we have more awareness of different dimensions.
The Fourth Dimension
To clarify how each successive dimension relates to the previous one, please follow this line of thought. A cube has three dimensions. To imagine the third, you tell yourself that it is perpendicular to the second and the second is perpendicular to the first. It is characteristic of the three dimensions that they are perpendicular to each other. We also can conceive of the third dimension as arising out of the next dimension, the fourth. Envision coloring the faces of a cube and manipulating the colors in a specific way, as Hinton did. The changes you induce correspond exactly to the change undergone by a three-dimensional being when it develops over time, thus passing into the fourth dimension. When you cut through a four-dimensional being at any point — that is, when you take away its fourth dimension — you destroy its fourth dimension, the time factor, and the result is a three-dimensional figure. When time, the fourth dimension, is critically important to any three-dimensional being, that being must be alive.
The Fifth Dimension
And now we come to the fifth dimension. You might say that this dimension must have another boundary that is perpendicular to the fourth dimension. We saw that the relationship between the fourth dimension and the third is similar to the relationship between the third and second dimensions. It is more difficult to imagine the fifth dimension, but once again we can use an analogy to give us some idea about it. How does any dimension come about? When you draw a line, no further dimensions emerge as long as the line simply continues in the same direction. Another dimension is added only when you imagine two opposing directions or forces that meet and neutralize at a point. The new dimension arises only as an expression of the neutralization of forces. We must be able to see the new dimension as the addition of a line in which two streams of forces are neutralized. We can imagine the dimension as coming either from the right or from the left, as positive in the first instance and negative in the second. Thus I grasp each independent dimension as a polar stream of forces with both a positive and a negative component. The neutralization of the polar component forces is the new dimension.
Taking this as our starting point, let’s develop a mental image of the fifth dimension. We must first imagine positive and negative aspects of the fourth dimension, which we know is the expression of time. Let’s picture a collision between two beings for whom time is meaningful. The result will have to be similar to the neutralization of opposing forces that we talked about earlier. When two four-dimensional beings connect, the result is their fifth dimension. The fifth dimension is the result or consequence of an exchange or neutralization of polar forces, in that two living things who influence each other produce something that they do not have in common either in the three ordinary dimensions of space or in the fourth dimension, in time. This new element has its boundaries outside these dimensions. It is what we call empathy or sensory activity, the capacity that informs one being about another. It is the recognition of the inner (soul-spiritual) aspect of another being. Without the addition of the higher, fifth dimension — that is, without entering the realm of sensory activity — no being would ever be able to know about any aspects of another being that lie outside time and space. Of course, in this sense we understand sensory activity simply as the fifth dimension’s projection or expression in the physical world.
The Sixth Dimension
It would be too difficult to build up the sixth dimension in the same way, so for now I will simply tell you what it is. If we continue along the same line of thinking, we would find that the expression of the sixth dimension in the three-dimensional world is self-awareness. As three-dimensional beings, we humans share our image character with other three-dimensional beings. Plants possess an additional dimension, the fourth. For this reason, you will never discover the ultimate being of the plant in the three dimensions of space. You must ascend to a fourth dimension, to the astral sphere. If you want to understand a being that possesses sensory ability, you must ascend to the fifth dimension, lower devachan or the Rupa sphere, and to understand a being with self-awareness — namely, the human being — you must ascend to the sixth dimension, upper devachan or the Arupa sphere. The human beings we encounter at present are really six-dimensional beings. What we have called sensory ability (or empathy) and self-awareness are projections of the fifth and sixth dimensions, respectively, into ordinary three-dimensional space. Albeit unconsciously for the most part, human beings extend all the way into these spiritual spheres; only there can their essential nature be recognized. As six-dimensional beings, we understand the higher worlds only when we attempt to relinquish the characteristic attributes of lower dimensions.
Conclusion
Lately, there’s been a lot of chatter about Ascension and our moving into the Fifth Dimension. I suspect that most New Age individuals are not conversant with what that really means. It seems to me that some of us are already there. But the work’s not over until everyone becomes “Self-aware”.
That’s why I write these blogs. Call them: my little hints…
