Chapter XI (part 8)

This was the difference between the fifth and the sixth, that in the fifth the excrescences were in one sense exteriorized and yet rooted in the same unit; but in the sixth they were differentiated but not exteriorized; they were only in different ways identical with the same base, which was their whole. C. W. Leadbeater on a note to these remarkable pages says: Striking as this drawing is, its value lies chiefly in its suggestiveness to those who have once seen that which it represents. One can hardly hope that it will convey a clear idea of the reality to those who have never seen it. It is difficult to get an animal to understand a picture—apparently because he is incapable of grasping the idea that perspective on a flat surface is intended to represent objects which he knows only as solid. The average man is in exactly the same position with regard to any drawing or model which is intended to suggest to him the idea of the fourth dimension; and so, clever and suggestive as this is, I; doubt whether it will be of much help to the average reader. The man who has seen the reality might well be helped by this to bring into his ordinary life a flash of that higher consciousness; and in that case he might perhaps be able to supply, in his thought, what must necessarily be lacking in the physical-plane drawing. For my part, I may say that the true meaning of Van Manen's "vision" is difficult even to appreciate with the means at our disposal. After seeing the drawing in his book I at once felt and understood all that it means, but I disagree somewhat with the author in the interpretation of his drawing. He says: "We may also call the total impression that of a ring. I think p. 135 it was then that I understood for the first time that so-called fourth-dimensional sight is sight with reference to a space-conception arising from the visual perception of density." This remark though very cautions seems to me dangerous, because it creates the possibility of the same mistake which stopped Hinton in many things and which I partly repeated in the first edition of the book The Fourth Dimension . 1 This mistake consists in the possibility of the construction of some pseudo fourth dimension , which lies in reality completely in three dimensions. In my opinion there is very much of motion in the figure. The entire figure appears to me as a moving one , continuously generating itself, as though it were at the point of contact of the acute ends, coming from there and involving back there. But I shall not analyze and comment upon Van Manen's experience now, leaving it to readers who have had similar experiences. So far as Van Manen's descriptions of his observations of the "fifth" and "sixth" dimensions are concerned, it seems to me that nothing in them warrants the supposition that they are related to any region higher or more complex than the four-dimensional world. In my opinion all these are just observations of the region of the fourth dimension. But the similarity to the experience of certain mystics is very remarkable in them, especially those of Jacob Boehme. Moreover the method of object-lesson is very interesting—i.e., those two images which Van Manen saw and from the comparison of which he deduced his conclusions. Footnotes 125:1 A convention of Russian scientists, named in honor of the famous Russian chemist, Prof. Mendeleeyeff. Transl . 129:1 Italicized by me. P. Ouspensky . 133:1 The works on Relativity by Dr. A. Einstein make possible a more thorough acquaintance with the scientific (physical) treatment of this subject. 135:1 One of P. D. Ouspensky's books. Transl .