Chapter V (part 1)

p. 52 CHAPTER V Four-dimensional space. "Temporal body"— Linga Sharîra . The form of a human body from birth to death. Incommensurability of three-dimensional and four-dimensional bodies. Newton's fluents. The unreality of constant quantities in our world. The right and the left hands in three-dimensional and in four-dimensional space. Difference between three-dimensional and four-dimensional space. Not two different spaces but different methods of receptitivity of one and the same world. FOUR-DIMENSIONAL space, if we try to imagine it to ourselves, will be the infinite repetition of our space, of our infinite three-dimensional sphere, as a line is the infinite repetition of a point. Many things that have been said before will become much clearer to us when we dwell on the fact that the fourth dimension must be sought for in time . It will become clear what is meant by the fact that it is possible to regard a four-dimensional body as the tracing of the movement in space of a three-dimensional body in a direction not confined within that space. Now the direction not confined in three-dimensional space in which any three-dimensional body moves—this is the direction of time. Any three-dimensional body, existing , is at the same time moving in time and leaves as a tracing of its movement the temporal, or four-dimensional body. We never see or feel this body, because of the limitations of our receptive apparatus, but we see the section of it only, which section we call the three-dimensional body. Therefore we are in error in thinking that the three-dimensional body is in itself something real. It is the projection of the four-dimensional body—its picture—the image of it on our plane . The four-dimensional body is the infinite number of three-dimensional bodies. That is, the four-dimensional body is the infinite number of moments of existence of the three-dimensional one—its states and positions. The three-dimensional body which we see p. 53 appears as a single figure—one of a series of pictures on a cinematographic film as it were. Four-dimensional space (time) is really the distance between the forms, states, and positions of one and the same body (and different bodies, i.e., those seeming different to us). It separates those states, forms, and positions each from the other, and it binds them also into some to us incomprehensible whole. This incomprehensible whole can be formed in time out of one physical body—and out of different bodies. It is easier for us to imagine the temporal whole as related to one physical body. If we consider the physical body of a man, we shall find in it besides its "matter" something , it is true, changing, but undoubtedly one and the same from birth until death. This something is the Linga-Sharîri of Hindu philosophy, i.e., the form on which our physical body is moulded . (H. P. Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine .) Eastern philosophy regards the physical body as something impermanent which is in a condition of perpetual interchange with its surroundings. The particles come and go. After one second the body is already not absolutely the same as it was one second before. Today it is in a considerable degree not that which it was yesterday. After seven years it is a quite different body . But despite all this, something always persists from birth to death, changing its aspect a little, but remaining the same. This is the Linga-Sharîra . The Linga-Sharîra is the form, the image : it changes, but remains the same. That image of a man which we are able to represent to ourselves is not the Linga-Sharîra . But if we try to represent to ourselves mentally the image of a man from birth to death, with all the particularities and traits of childhood, manhood and senility, as if extended in time, when it will be the Linga-Sharîra .