Chapter XI (part 7)

Matter, i.e., everything finite, is an illusion in an infinite world. 1 Among many attempts at the psychological investigation of the fourth dimension I shall note one in the book by Johan Van Manen, Some Occult Experiences . In this book is a remarkable drawing of a four-dimensional figure which the author "saw" by means of his inner vision. This interesting experience Van Manen describes in the following way: When residing and touring in the North of England, several years ago, I talked and lectured several times on the fourth dimension. One day after having retired to bed, I lay fully awake, thinking out some problems connected with this subject. I tried to visualize or think out the shape of a four-dimensional cube, which I imagined to be the simplest four-dimensional shape. To my great astonishment I saw plainly before me first a four-dimensional globe and afterwards a four-dimensional cube, and learned only then from this object-lesson that the globe is the simplest body, and not the cube, as the third-dimensional analogy ought to have told me beforehand. The remarkable thing was that the definite endeavor to see the one thing made me see the other. I saw the forms as before me in the air (though the room was dark), and behind the forms I saw clearly a rift in the curtains through which a glimmer of light filtered into the room. This was a case in which I can clearly fix the impression that the objects seen were outside my head. In most of the other cases I could not say so definitely, as they partake of a dual character, being almost equally felt as outside and inside the brain. I forego the attempt to describe the fourth-dimensional cube as to its form. Mathematical description would be possible, but would at the same time disintegrate the real impression in its totality. The fourth-dimensional globe can be better described. It was an ordinary three-dimensional globe, out of which, on each side, beginning at its vertical circumference, bent, tapering horns proceeded, which, with a circular bend, united their points above the globe from which they started. The effect is best indicated by circumscribing the numeral 8 by a circle. So three circles are formed, the lower one representing the initial globe, the upper one representing empty space, and the greater circle circumbscribing the whole. If it be now understood that the upper circle does not exist and the lower (small) circle is identical with the outer (large) circle, the impression will have been conveyed, at least to some extent. p. 134 I have always been easily able to recall this globe; to recall the cube is far more difficult, and I have to concentrate to get it back. I have in a like manner had rare visions of the fifth and sixth-dimensional figures. At least I have felt as if the figures I saw were fifth- and sixth-dimensional. In these matters the greatest caution is necessary. I am aware that I have come into contact with these things as far as the physical brain allows it, without denying that beyond what the brain has caught there was something further, felt at the time, which was not handed on. the sixth-dimensional figure I cannot describe. All I remember of it is that it gave me at the time an impression in form of what we might call diversity in unity, or synthesis in differentiation. The fifth-dimensional vision is best described, or rather hinted at, by saying that it looked like an Alpine relief map, with the singularity that all mountain peaks and the whole landscape represented in the map were one mountain, or again in other words as if all the mountains had one single base.