This presentation may seem rather abstract, but it is worth investing time in understanding the concept of the 4th dimension because it is the gateway to the truth. There has been much speculation about what precisely the 4th dimension is. Some people say it is Time. This, from a Hylozoic perspective, is not the case. Time is a dimension that is found on all planes. The Emotional World has many characteristics, aligning the concept of a world with four dimensions conceived by geometry and mathematics. So close is this agreement that cases are known where a purely intellectual study of the geometry of the fourth dimension has opened up emotional (clairvoyant) sight in the student.
The classic books on the subject are those of C. H. Hinton: Scientific Romances, Vols. I and II: A New Era of Thought: The Fourth Dimension. These are strongly recommended by C. W. Leadbeater, who states that the study of the fourth dimension is the best method he knows to obtain a conception of the conditions which prevail on the emotional plane and that Hinton’s explanation of the fourth dimension is the only one, which gives any reason in our world of the constantly observed facts of emotional vision (clairvoyance).
You don’t have to go and read these books; I am here to give you the barest outline of some of the main features underlying the fourth dimension. Let’s start: A point, which has “position but no magnitude”, has no dimensions: a line, created by the movement of a point, has one dimension, length: a surface, created by the movement of a line, at right angles to itself, has two dimensions, length and breadth: a solid, created by the movement of a surface at right angles to itself, has three dimensions, length, breadth and height. A tesseract is a hypothetical object created by the movement of a solid in a new direction at right angles to itself, having four dimensions, length, breadth, height and another, at right angles to these three, but incapable of being represented in our world of three dimensions. Another way of putting it is that a tesseract is a hypercube, is a four-dimensional cube, or, alternately, it is the extension of the idea of a square to a four-dimensional space in the same way that a cube is the extension of the concept of a square to a three-dimensional space. Hold that thought.
The table shows the additional points, lines, surfaces and solids a tesseract can display:—
Consider the following relationship between a 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional world:
(1) By being lifted through the third dimension, objects could be made to appear in or disappear from the two-dimensional world at will. You are moving a plane through a box.
(2) An object surrounded by a line could be lifted from the enclosed space through the third dimension. The object has appeared to disappear from its constriction within the line.
(3) By bending a two-dimensional world, represented by a sheet of paper, two distant points could be brought together or even made to coincide, thus destroying the two-dimensional concept of distance.
(4) A right-handed object, in two dimensions, could be turned over through the cube’s third dimension and re-appear as a left-handed object.
(5) By looking down, from the third dimension, onto a two-dimensional object, every point of the 2-D object could be seen at once and be free from the distortion of perspective.
If you were limited to a concept of two dimensions, what has just been said would appear “miraculous” and completely incomprehensible. How could something just disappear?
It should be realised that similar tricks can be and are constantly being played upon us, as is well known to clairvoyants: (1) entities and objects appear and disappear; (2) “apports”, those material objects conjured up spiritualists, are made to appear from great distances: (3) articles are removed from closed boxes: (4) space appears to be practically annihilated; (5) an object can be reversed, i.e., a right hand turned into a left hand: (6) all parts of an object, e.g., of a cube, are seen simultaneously and free from all distortion of perspective: similarly the whole of the matter of a closed book can be seen at once. This explains how the welling-up of force, e.g., in Chakras, apparently from nowhere, is because it comes from the fourth dimension.
A liquid, poured onto a surface, tends to spread itself out in two dimensions, becoming very thin in the third dimension. Similarly, a gas tends to spread itself in three dimensions. In doing so, it may become smaller in the fourth dimension, i.e., the density of a gas may be a measure of its relative height or thickness in the fourth dimension. There is no need to stop at four dimensions; according to Hylozoics, there are 52 dimensions in the Universe if you count Time as a dimension. From what we have discussed, the Emotional World is four-dimensional, the Mental World is five-dimensional, and the Unity World is six-dimensional.
The Hylozoic model makes it clear that if there are seven dimensions, there are seven dimensions always and everywhere: i.e., there is no such thing as a third—or fourth-dimensional being. The apparent difference is due to the entity’s limited perception power, not to any change in the objects perceived. Ouspensky describes this idea very well in Tertium Organum.
Nevertheless, a person may develop emotional consciousness and still be unable to perceive or appreciate the fourth dimension. The average person does not perceive the fourth dimension at all when they enter the emotional plane. They realise it only as a blurring, and most people go through their emotional lives on Plane 48 without discovering the reality of the fourth dimension in the matter surrounding them.
Entities, such as nature spirits belonging to the emotional plane, have, by nature, the faculty of seeing the four-dimensional aspect of all objects. Still, even they do not see them perfectly since they perceive only the emotional matter in them and not the physical, just as we perceive the physical and not the emotional. The passage of an object through another does not necessarily mean there is a fourth dimension but may be brought about by disintegration — a three-dimensional phenomenon.
Now consider this: The passage of a cone through a sheet of paper would appear to an entity living on the sheet of paper as a circle altering in size. The entity would, of course, be incapable of perceiving all the stages of the circle as existing together as parts of one cone. Similarly, for us, the growth of a solid object viewed from the Unity plane (46) corresponds to the view of the cone as a whole. If you can grasp what is being suggested here, you begin to understand how the past, present and future to someone on that plane (46) would appear as a single event. However, someone on Plane 46 could not see further than what the cone represented. However, someone on a higher plane could see even further in time and space. Taken to its extreme, to the Absolute, the lifespan of the Universe may appear as a single event.
Our current concept of geometry is a fragment, an exoteric preparation for the esoteric reality. Having lost the true sense of space, the first step towards that knowledge is the recognition of the fourth dimension. If we conduct a thought experiment, we may conceive the Monad at the beginning of its evolution as being able to move and to “see” in all 51 dimensions, excluding Time. This is not the case as the Monad, as it enters the 1st plane from the Ante-Verse, is unconscious but sticks with the experiment. As the Monad involves one dimension at a time, it is cut off until only three dimensions are left for the physical brain consciousness. Thus, by involution into matter, we are cut off from knowing all but a minute part of the world surrounding us and even what is left is imperfectly seen.
With four-dimensional sight, it may be observed that the planets, which are isolated in our three dimensions, are, in fact, joined in four dimensions. These globes are the points of petals, which are part of one great flower, hence the Hindu conception of the solar system as a lotus. There is also, via a higher dimension, a direct connection between the heart of the Sun and the Earth’s centre so that elements appear in the Earth without passing through what we perceive as the surface.
A study of the fourth dimension leads us on a direct path to mysticism. Thus, C. H. Hinton constantly uses the phrase “casting out the self”. He points out that to appreciate a four-dimensional solid, it is necessary to regard the object simultaneously from all points of view. I.e., the “self” or particular isolated point of view must be transcended and replaced by the general and “unselfish” view. We are also reminded of the famous saying of St. Paul (Ephesians iii, 17-18): “That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth and height.” Who would have believed St. Paul was eluding to the Emotional World and its four-dimensional nature.