{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_11906/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_11906","id":"gutenberg_11906","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11906","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Mathematics","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Fourth dimension"],"text":"FOUR-DIMENSIONAL\nVISTAS\n\nby\n\nClaude Bragdon\n\n[Illustration]\n\nNew York\n\n\n\n   \"_Perception has a destiny_.\"\n                        _Emerson_.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nThere are two notable emancipations of the mind from the tyranny of\nmere appearances that have received scant attention save from\nmathematicians and theoretical physicists.\n\nIn 1823 Bolyai declared with regard to Euclid's so-called axiom of\nparallels, \"I will draw two lines through a given point, both of\nwhich will be parallel to a given line.\" The drawing of these lines\nled to the concept of the curvature of space, and this to the idea\nof _higher_ space.\n\nThe recently developed Theory of Relativity has compelled the\nrevision of the time concept as used in classical physics. One\nresult of this has been to introduce the notion of _curved_ time.\n\nThese two ideas, of curved time and higher space, by their very\nnature are bound to profoundly modify human thought. They loosen the\nbonds within which advancing knowledge has increasingly labored,\nthey lighten the dark abysses of consciousness, they reconcile the\ndiscoveries of Western workers with the inspirations of Eastern\ndreamers; but best of all, they open vistas, they offer \"glimpses\nthat may make us less forlorn.\"\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nI. THE QUEST OF FREEDOM\n\nThe Undiscovered Country--Miracles--The Failure of Common Sense--The\nFunction of Science--Mathematics--Intuition--Our Sense of Space--The\nSubjectivity of Space--The Need of an Enlarged Space-Concept.\n\nII. THE DIMENSIONAL LADDER\n\nLearning to Think in Terms of Spaces--From the Cosmos to the\nCorpuscle--And Beyond--Evolution as Space-Conquest--Dimensional\nSequences--Man the Geometer--Higher, and Highest, Space.\n\nIII.  PHYSICAL PHENOMENA\n\nLooking for the Greater in the Less--Symmetry--Other Allied\nPhenomena--Isomerism--The Orbital Motion of Spheres: Cell-Subdivision--\nThe Electric Current--The Greater Universe--A Hint from Astronomy--\nGravitation--The Ether of Space.\n\nIV.  TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS\n\nZ\u00f6llner--Apparitions--Possession--Clairvoyance in Space--Clairvoyance\nin Time--Pisgah Sights of Life's Pageant.\n\nV. CURVED TIME\n\nTime from the Standpoint of Experiment and of Conscious Experience--\nRelativity--The Spoon-Man--The Orbital Movement of Time--Materiality\nthe Mirror of Consciousness--Periodicity.\n\nVI. SLEEP AND DREAMS\n\nSleep--Dreams--Time in Dreams--The Eastern Teaching in regard to Sleep\nand Dreams--Space in Dreams--The Phenomenon of Pause.\n\n\nVII. THE NIGHT SIDE OF CONSCIOUSNESS\n\nThe Field of Psychic Research--Modifying the Past--Karma and\nReincarnation--Colonel De Rochas' Experiments.\n\nVIII. THE EASTERN TEACHING\n\nOriental Physics and Metaphysics--The Self-Recovered Memory of past\nBirths--Release.\n\nIX. THE MYSTICS\n\nHermes Trismegistus--The Page and the Press--The Ship and its\nCaptain--Direct Vision--Plato's Shadow-Watchers--Swedenborg--Man,\nthe Space-Eater--The Within and Without--Intuition and Reason--The\nCoil of Life.\n\nX. GENIUS\n\nImmanence--Timelessness--Beyond Good and Evil: Beauty--The Daemonic--\n\"A Dream and a Forgetting\"--The Play of Brahm.\n\nXI. THE GIFT OF FREEDOM\n\nConcept and Conduct--Selflessness--Humility--Solidarity--Live Openly--\nNon-Resistance to Evil--The Immanent Divine.\n\n\n\n\n\nFOUR-DIMENSIONAL VISTAS\n\n\n\nI THE QUEST OF FREEDOM\n\n\nTHE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY\n\nExpectancy of freedom is the dominant note of to-day. Amid the crash\nof armies and the clash of systems we await some liberating stroke\nwhich shall release us from the old dreary thralldoms. As Nietzsche\nsays, \"It would seem as though we had before us, as a reward for all\nour toils, a country still undiscovered, the horizons of which no\none has yet seen, a beyond to every country and every refuge of the\nideal that man has ever known, a world so overflowing with beauty,\nstrangeness, doubt, terror and divinity, that both our curiosity and\nour lust of possession are frantic with eagerness.\"\n\nShould a name be demanded for this home of freedom, there are those\nwho would unhesitatingly call it _The Fourth Dimension of Space_.\nFor such readers as may be ignorant of the amazing content of this\nseemingly meaningless phrase, any summary attempt at enlightenment\nwill lead only to deeper mystification. To the question, where and\nwhat is the fourth dimension, the answer must be, it is here--in us,\nand all about us--in a direction toward which we can never point\nbecause at right angles to all the directions that we know. Our\nspace cannot contain it, because it contains our space. No walls\nseparate us from this demesne, not even the walls of our fleshly\nprison; yet we may not enter, even though we are already \"there.\" It\nis the place of dreams, of living dead men: it is _At the Back of\nthe North Wind_ and _Behind the Looking Glass_.\n\nSo might one go on, piling figure upon figure and paradox upon\nparadox, to little profit. The effective method is the ordered and\ndeliberate one; therefore the author asks of his reader the\nendurance of his curiosity pending certain necessary preparations of\nthe mind.\n\n\nMIRACLES\n\nCould one of our aviators have landed in ancient Athens, doubtless\nhe would have been given a place in the Greek Pantheon, for the old\nidea of a demigod was a man with wings. Why, then, does a flying man\nso little amaze us? Because we know about engines, and the smell of\ngasoline has dulled our sense of the sublime. The living voice of a\ndead man leaves us unterrified if only we can be sure that it comes\nfrom a phonograph; but let that voice speak to us out of vacancy and\nwe fall a prey to the same order of alarm that is felt by a savage\nat the report of a gun that he has never seen.\n\nThis illustration very well defines the nature of a miracle: it is a\nmanifestation of power new to experience, and counter to the current\nthought of the time, Miracles are therefore always in order, they\nalways happen. It is nothing that the sober facts of to-day are more\nmarvellous than the fictions of Baron Munchausen, so long as we\nunderstand them: it is everything that phenomena are multiplying,\nthat we are unable to understand. This increasing pressure upon\nconsciousness _from a new direction_ has created a need to found\nbelief on something firmer than a bottomless gullibility of mind.\nThis book is aimed to meet that need by giving the mind the freedom\nof new spaces; but before it can even begin to do so, the reader\nmust be brought to see the fallacy of attempting to measure the\nlimits of the possible by that faculty known as common sense. And by\ncommon sense is meant, not the appeal to abstract reason, but to\nconcrete experience.\n\n\nTHE FAILURE OF COMMON SENSE\n\nCommon sense had scarce had its laugh at Bell, and its shout of\n\"I told you so!\" at poor Langley, when lo! the telephone became the\nworld's nervous system, and aeroplanes began to multiply like summer\nflies. To common sense the alchemist's dream of transmuting lead\ninto gold seems preposterous, yet in a hundred laboratories radium\nis breaking down into helium, and the new chemistry bids fair to\nturn the time-honored jeer at the alchemists completely upside down.\nA wife whose mind was oriented in the new direction effectually\nsilenced her husband's ridicule of what he called her credulity by\nreminding him that when wireless telegraphy was first suggested he\nhad exclaimed, \"Ah, that, you know, is one of the things that is not\npossible!\" He was betrayed by his common sense.\n\nThe lessons such things teach us are summed up in the reply of Arago,\nthe great savant, to the wife of Daguerre. She asked him if he\nthought her husband was losing his mind because he was trying to\nmake permanent the image in a mirror. Arago is said to have answered,\n\"He who, outside of pure mathematics, says a thing is impossible,\nspeaks without reason.\"\n\nCommon sense neither leads nor lags, but is ever limited to the\npassing moment: the common knowledge of to-day was the mystery and\nenchantment of the day before yesterday, and will be the mere\ncommonplace of the day after to-morrow. If common sense can so\nlittle anticipate the ordinary and orderly advancement of human\nknowledge, it is still less able to take that leap into the dark\nwhich is demanded of it now. The course of wisdom is therefore to\nplace reliance upon reason and intuition, leaving to common sense\nthe task of guiding the routine affairs of life, and guiding these\nalone.\n\n\nTHE FUNCTION OF SCIENCE\n\nIn enlisting the aid of reason in our quest for freedom, we shall be\nfollowing in the footsteps of mathematicians and theoretical\nphysicists. In their arduous and unflinching search after truth they\nhave attained to a conception of the background of phenomena of far\ngreater breadth and grandeur than that of the average religionist of\nto-day. As a mathematician once remarked to a neo-theosophist,\n\"Your idea of the ether is a more material one than the materialist's\nown.\" Science has, however, imposed upon itself its own limitations,\nand in this connection these should be clearly understood.\n\nScience is that knowledge which can be gained by exact observation\nand correct thinking. If science makes use of any methods but these\nit ceases to be itself. Science has therefore nothing to do with\nmorals: it gives the suicide his pistol, the surgeon his life-saving\nlance, but neither admonishes nor judges them. It has nothing to do\nwith emotion: it exposes the chemistry of a tear, the mechanism of\nlaughter; but of sorrow and happiness it has naught to say. It has\nnothing to do with beauty: it traces the movements of the stars, and\ntells of their constitution; but the fact of their singing together,\nand that \"such harmony is in immortal souls,\" it leaves to poet and\nphilosopher. The timbre, loudness, pitch, of musical tones, is a\nconcern of science; but for this a Beethoven symphony is no better\nthan the latest ragtime air from the music halls. In brief, science\ndeals only with _phenomena_, and its gift to man is power over his\nmaterial environment.\n\n\nMATHEMATICS\n\nThe gift of pure mathematics, on the other hand, is primarily to the\nmind and spirit: the fact that man uses it to get himself out of his\nphysical predicaments is more or less by the way. Consider for a\nmoment this paradox. Mathematics, the very thing common sense swears\nby and dotes on, contradicts common sense at every turn. Common\nsense balks at the idea of _less than nothing_; yet the _minus_\nquantity, which in one sense is less than nothing in that something\nmust be added to it to make it equal to nothing, is a concept\nwithout which algebra would have to come to a full stop. Again, the\nscience of quaternions, or more generally, a vector analysis in\nwhich the progress of electrical science is essentially involved,\nembraces (explicitly or implicitly) the extensive use of _imaginary_\nor _impossible_ quantities of the earlier algebraists. The very\nwords \"imaginary\" and \"impossible\" are eloquent of the defeat of\ncommon sense in dealing with concepts with which it cannot\npractically dispense, for even the negative or imaginary solutions\nof imaginary quantities almost invariably have some physical\nsignificance. A similar statement might also be made with regard to\n_transcendental_ functions.\n\nMathematics, then, opens up ever new horizons, and its achievements\nduring the past one hundred years give to thought the very freedom\nit seeks. But if science is dispassionate, mathematics is even more\naustere and impersonal. It cares not for teeming worlds and hearts\ninsurgent, so long as in the pure clarity of space, relationships\nexist. Indeed, it requires neither time nor space, number nor\nquantity. As the mathematician approaches the limits already\nachieved by study, the colder and thinner becomes the air and the\nfewer the contacts with the affairs of every day. The Promethean\nfire of pure mathematics is perhaps the greatest of all in man's\ncatalogue of gifts; but it is not most itself, but least so, when,\nimmersed in the manifoldness of phenomenal life, it is made to serve\npurely utilitarian ends.\n\n\nINTUITION\n\nCommon sense, immersed in the mere business of living, knows no more\nabout life than a fish knows about water. The play of reason upon\nphenomena dissects life, and translates it in terms of inertia. The\npure logic of mathematics ignores life and disdains its limitations,\nleading away into cold, free regions of its own. Now our desire for\nfreedom is not to vibrate in a vacuum, but to live more abundantly.\n_Intuition_ deals with life directly, and introduces us into\nlife's own domain: it is related to reason as flame is related to\nheat. All of the great discoveries in science, all of the great\nsolutions in mathematics, have been the result of a _flash_ of\nintuition, after long brooding in the mind. _Intuition illumines_.\nIntuition is therefore the light which must guide us into that\nundiscovered country conceded by mathematics, questioned by science,\ndenied by common sense--_The Fourth Dimension of Space_.\n\n\nOUR SENSE OF SPACE\n\nSpace has been defined as \"room to move about.\" Let us accord to\nthis definition the utmost liberty of interpretation. Let us\nconceive of space not alone as room to move ponderable bodies in,\nbut as room to think, to feel, to strike out in unimaginable\ndirections, to overtake felicities and knowledges unguessed by\nexperience and preposterous to common sense. Space is not measurable:\nwe attribute dimensionality to space because such is the method of\nthe mind; and that dimensionality we attribute to space is\nprogressive because progression is a law of the mind. The so-called\ndimensions of space are to space itself as the steps that a climber\ncuts in the face of a cliff are to the cliff itself. They are not\nnecessary to the cliff: they are necessary only to the climber.\nDimensionality is the mind's method of mounting to the idea of the\ninfinity of space. When we speak of the fourth dimension, what we\nmean is the fourth stage in the apprehension of that infinity. We\nmight as legitimately speak of a fifth dimension, but the\nprofitlessness of any discussion of a fifth and higher stages lies\nin the fact that they can be intelligently approached only through\nthe fourth, which is still largely unintelligible. The case is like\nthat of a man promised an increase of wages after he had worked a\nmonth, who asks for his second month's pay before he is entitled to\nthe first.\n\n\nTHE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE\n\nWithout going deep into the doctrine of the ideality--that is, the\npurely subjective reality--of space, it is easy to show that we have\narrived at our conception of a space of three dimensions by an\nintellectual process. The sphere of the senses is two-dimensional:\nexcept for the slight aid afforded by binocular vision, sight gives\nus moving pictures _on a plane_, and touch contacts _surfaces_ only.\nWhat circumstances, we may ask, have compelled our intellect to\nconceive of _solid_ space? This question has been answered as follows:\n\n\"If a child contemplates his hand, he is conscious of its existence\nin a double manner--in the first place by its tangibility, the\nsecond by its image on the retina of his eye. By repeated groping\nabout and touching, the child knows by experience that his hand\nretains the same form and extension through all the variations of\ndistance and position under which it is observed, notwithstanding\nthat the form and extension of the image on the retina constantly\nchange with the different position and distance of his hand in\nrespect to his eye. The problem is thus set to the child's\nunderstanding: how to reconcile to his comprehension the apparently\ncontradictory facts of the _invariableness_ of the object together\nwith the _variableness_ of its appearance. This is only possible\nwithin a space of three dimensions, in which, owing to perspective\ndistortions and changes, these variations of projection can be\nreconciled with the constancy of the form of a body.\"\n\nThus we have come to the idea of a three-dimensional space in order\nto overcome the apparent contradictoriness of facts of sensible\nexperience. Should we observe in three-dimensional space\ncontradictory facts our reason would be forced to reconcile these\ncontradictions, also, and if they could be reconciled by the idea of\na four-dimensional space our reason would accept this idea without\ncavil. Furthermore, if from our childhood, phenomena had been of\ndaily occurrence requiring a space of four or more dimensions for an\nexplanation conformable to reason, we should feel ourselves native\nto a space of four or more dimensions.\n\nPoincar\u00e9, the great French mathematician and physicist, arrived at\nthese same conclusions by another route. By a process of\nmathematical reasoning of a sort too technical to be appropriately\ngiven here, he discovers an order in which our categories range\nthemselves naturally, and which corresponds with the points of space;\nand that this order presents itself in the form of what he calls a\n\"three circuit distribution board.\" \"Thus the characteristic property\nof space,\" he says, \"that of having three dimensions, is only a\nproperty of our distribution board, _a property residing, so to speak,\nin human intelligence_.\" He concludes that a different association\nof ideas would result in a different distribution board, and that\nmight be sufficient to endow space with a fourth dimension. He\nconcedes that there may be thinking beings, living in our world,\nwhose distribution board has four dimensions, and who do\nconsequently think in hyperspace.\n\n\nTHE NEED OF AN ENLARGED SPACE-CONCEPT\n\nIt is the contrariety in phenomena already referred to, that is\nforcing advanced minds to entertain the idea of higher space.\nMathematical physicists have found that experimental contradictions\ndisappear if, instead of referring phenomena to a set of three space\naxes and one time axis of reference, they be referred to a set of\nfour interchangeable axes involving four homogeneous co-ordinates.\nIn other words, _time_ is made the fourth dimension. Psychic\nphenomena indicate that occasionally, in some individuals,\nthe will is capable of producing physical movements for whose\ngeometrico-mathematical definition a four-dimensional system of\nco-ordinates is necessary. This is only another step along the road\nwhich the human mind has always travelled: our conception of the\ncosmos grows more complete and more just at the same time that it\nrecedes more and more beneath the surface of appearances.\n\nFar from the Higher Space Hypothesis complicating thought, it\nsimplifies by synthesis and co-ordination in a manner analogous to\nthat by which plane geometry is simplified when solid geometry\nbecomes a subject of study. By immersing the mind in the idea of\nmany dimensions, we emancipate it from the idea of dimensionality.\nBut the mind moves most readily, as has been said, in ordered\nsequence. Frankly submitting ourselves to this limitation, even\nwhile recognizing it as such, let us learn such lessons from it as\nwe can, serving the illusions that master us until we have made them\nour slaves.\n\n\n\n\nII THE DIMENSIONAL LADDER\n\n\nLEARNING TO THINK IN TERMS OF SPACES\n\nThe Reader who is willing to consider the Higher Space Hypothesis\nseriously, who would discover, by its aid, new and profound truths\nclosely related to life and conduct, should first of all endeavor to\narouse in himself a new power of perception. This he will best\naccomplish by learning to discern dimensional sequences, not alone\nin geometry, but in the cosmos and in the natural world. By so doing\nhe may erect for himself a veritable Jacob's ladder,\n\n  \"Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross.\"\n\nHe should accustom himself to ascend it, step by step, dimension by\ndimension. Then he will learn to trust Emerson's dictum, \"Nature\ngeometrizes,\" even in regions where the senses fail him, and the mind\nalone leads on. Much profitable amusement is to be gained by such\nexercises as follow. They are in the nature of a running up and down\nthe scales in order to give strength and flexibility to a new set of\nmental fingers. Learning to think in terms of spaces contributes to\nour emancipation from the tyranny of space.\n\n\nFROM THE COSMOS TO THE CORPUSCLE\n\nBy way of a beginning, proceed, by successive stages, from the\ncontemplation of the greatest thing conceivable to the contemplation\nof the most minute, and note the space sequences revealed by this\nshifting of the point of view.\n\nThe greatest thing we can form any conception of is the starry\nfirmament made familiar to the mind through the study of astronomy.\nNo limit to this vastitude has ever been assigned. Since the\nbeginning of recorded time, the earth, together with the other\nplanets and the sun, has been speeding through interstellar space at\nthe rate of 300,000,000 miles a year, without meeting or passing a\nsingle star. A ray of light, travelling with a velocity so great as\nto be scarcely measurable within the diameter of the earth's orbit,\ntakes years to reach even the nearest star, centuries to reach those\nmore distant. Viewed in relation to this universe of suns, our\nparticular sun and all its satellites--of which the earth is\none--shrinks to a point (a _physical_ point, so to speak--not\ngeometrical one).\n\nThe mind recoils from these immensities: let us forsake them, then,\nfor more familiar spaces, and consider the earth in its relation to\nthe sun. Our planet appears as a _moving_ point, tracing out a\n_line_--a _one-space_--its path around the sun. Now let us remove\nourselves in imagination only far enough from the earth for human\nbeings thereon to appear as minute moving things, in the semblance,\nlet us say, of insects infesting an apple. It is clear that from\nthis point of view these beings have a freedom of movement in their\n\"space\" (the surface of the earth), of which the larger unit is not\npossessed; for while the earth itself can follow only a _line_, its\ninhabitants are free to move in the two dimensions of the surface of\nthe earth.\n\nAbandoning our last coign of vantage, let us descend in imagination\nand mingle familiarly among men. We now perceive that these\ncreatures which from a distance appeared as though flat upon the\nearth's surface, are in reality erect at right angles to its plane,\nand that they are endowed with the power to move their members in\n_three dimensions_. Indeed, man's ability to traverse the surface\nof the earth is wholly dependent upon his power of three-dimensional\nmovement. Observe that with each transfer of our attention from\ngreater units to smaller, we appear to be dealing with a power of\nmovement in an additional dimension.\n\nLooking now in thought not _at_ the body of man, but _within_ it, we\napprehend an ordered universe immensely vast in proportion to that\nphysical ultimate we name the electron, as is the firmament immensely\nvast in proportion to a single star. It has been suggested that in\nthe infinitely minute of organic bodies there is a power of movement\nin a _fourth_ dimension. If so, such four-dimensional movement may\nbe the proximate cause of the phenomenon of _growth_--of those\nchemical changes and renewals whereby an organism is enabled to\nexpand in three-dimensional space, just as by a three-dimensional\npower of movement (the act of walking) man is able to traverse his\ntwo-dimensional space--the surface of the earth.\n\n\n--AND BEYOND\n\nProceed still further. Behind such organic change--assumed to be\nfour-dimensional--there is the determination of some _will-to-live_,\nwhich manifests itself to consciousness as thought and as desire.\nInto these the idea of space does not enter: we think of them as in\n_time_. But if there are developments of other dimensions of space,\nthought and emotion may themselves be discovered to have space\nrelations; that is, they may find expression in the forms of _higher_\nspaces. Thus is opened up one of those rich vistas in which the\nsubject of the fourth dimension abounds, but into which we\ncan only glance in passing. If there are such higher-dimensional\n_thought-forms_, our normal consciousness, limited to a world of\nthree dimensions, can apprehend only their three-dimensional aspects,\nand these not simultaneously, but successively--that is, in _time_.\nAccording to this view, any unified series of _actions_--for example,\nthe life of an individual, or of a group--would represent the\nstraining, so to speak, of a thought-form through our _time_, as the\nbodies subject to these actions would represent its straining\nthrough our space.\n\n\nEVOLUTION AS SPACE-CONQUEST\n\nEvolution is a struggle for, and a conquest of, space; for evolution,\nas the word implies, is a _drawing out_ of what is inherent from\nlatency into objective reality, or in other words into spatial--and\ntemporal--extension.\n\nThis struggle for space, by means of which the birth and growth of\norganisms is achieved, is the very texture of life, the plot of\nevery drama. Cells subdivide; micro-organisms war on one another;\nplants contend for soil, light, moisture; flowers cunningly suborn\nthe bee to bring about their nuptials; animals wage deadly warfare\nin their rivalry to bring more hungry animals into a space-hungry\nworld. Man is not exempt from this law of the jungle. Nations\nintrigue and fight for land--of which wealth is only the symbol--and\na nation's puissance is measured by its power to push forward into\nthe territory of its neighbor. The self-same impulse drives the\nindividual. One measure of the difference between men in the matter\nof efficiency is the amount of space each can command: one has a\nhouse and grounds in some locality where every square inch has an\nappreciable value; another some fractional part of a lodging house\nin the slums. When this bloodless, but none the less deadly, contest\nfor space becomes acute, as in the congested quarters of great cities,\nman's ingenuity is taxed to devise effective ways of augmenting his\n_space-potency_, and he expands in a vertical direction. This\nthird-dimensional extension, typified in the tunnel and in the\nskyscraper, is but the latest phase of a conquest of space which\nbegan with the line of the pioneer's trail through an untracked\nwilderness.\n\n\nDIMENSIONAL SEQUENCES\n\nNot only does nature everywhere geometrize, but she does so in a\nparticular way, in which we discover dimensional sequences. Consider\nthe transformation of solid, liquid, gas, from one to another, under\nthe influence of heat. A solid, set in free motion, can follow only\na _line_--as is the case of a thrown ball. A liquid has the added\npower of lateral extension. Its tendency, when intercepted, is to\nspread out in the two dimensions of a _plane_--as in the case of a\ngriddle cake; while a gas expands universally in all directions, as\nshown by a soap-bubble. It is a reasonable inference that the fourth\nstate of matter, the corpuscular, is affiliated to some\nfour-dimensional manner of extension, and that there may be states\nbeyond this, involving even higher development of space.\n\nNext glance at the vegetable kingdom. The seed, a _point_, generates\na _line_ system, in stem, branches, twigs, from which depend _planes_\nin the form of leaves and flowers, and from these come fruit,\n_solids_.\n\n  \"The point, the line, the surface and the sphere,\n  In seed, stem, leaf and fruit appear.\"\n\nA similar sequence may be noted within the body: the _line_-network\nof the nerves conveys the message of sensation from the _surface_ of\nthe body to some center in the _solid_, of the brain--and thence to\nthe Silent Thinker, \"he who is without and within,\" or in terms of\nour hypothesis, \"he who dwells in higher space.\"\n\n\nMAN THE GEOMETER\n\nWhen man essays the r\u00f4le of creator he cannot do otherwise than\nfollow similar sequences: it is easy to discern dimensional\nprogression in the products of man's ingenuity and skill. Consider,\nfor example, the evolution of a building from its inception to its\ncompletion. It exists first of all in the mind of the architect, and\nthere it is indubitably higher-spatial, for he can interpenetrate\nand examine every part, and he can consider it all at once, viewing\nit simultaneously from without and from within, just as one would be\nable to do in a space of four dimensions. He begins to give his idea\nphysical embodiment by making with a pencil-_point, lines_ on a\n_plane_ (a piece of paper), the third dimension being represented\nby means of the other two. Next (if he is careful and wise) he makes\na three-dimensional model. From the architect's drawings the engineer\nestablishes his points, lays out his angles, and runs his lines upon\nthe site itself. The mason follows, and with his footing courses\nmakes ponderable and permanent the lines of the engineer. These\nlines become in due course walls--vertical planes. Floors and\nroofs--horizontal planes--follow, until some portion of\nthree-dimensional space has been enclosed.\n\nSubstantially the same sequence holds, whatever the kind of building\nor the character of the construction--whether a steel-framed\nskyscraper or a wooden shanty. A line system, represented by columns\nand girders in the one case, and by studs and rafters in the other,\nbecomes, by overlay or interposition, a system of planes, so\nassembled and correlated as to define a solid.\n\nWith nearly everything of man's creating--be it a bureau or a\nbattleship--the process is as above described. First, a pattern to\nscale; next, an actual linear framework; then planes defining a solid.\nConsider almost any of the industries practiced throughout the ages:\nthey may be conceived of thus in terms of dimensions; for example,\nthose ancient ones of weaving and basket making. _Lines_ (threads in\nthe one case, rushes in the other) are wrought into _planes_ to\nclothe a body or to contain a burden. Or think, if you choose, of\nthe modern industry of book-making, wherein types are assembled,\nimpressed upon sheets of paper, and these bound into volumes--\n_points, lines, planes, solids_. The book in turn becomes the unit\nof another dimensional order, in the library whose serried shelves\nform lines, which, combined into planes, define the lateral limits\nof the room.\n\n\nHIGHER--AND HIGHEST--SPACE\n\nThese are truisms. What have they to do, it may be asked, with the\nidea of _higher_ spaces? They have everything to do with it, for in\nachieving the enclosure of any portion of solid space the limit of\nknown dimensions has been reached without having come to any end.\nMore dimensions--higher spaces--are required to account for higher\nthings. All of the products of man's ingenuity are inanimate except\nas he himself animates them. They remain as they were made, machines,\nnot organisms. They have no inherent life of their own, no power of\ngrowth and renewal. In this they differ from animate creation\nbecause the highest achievement of the creative faculty in man in a\nmechanical way lacks the life principle possessed by the plant. And\nas the most perfect machine is inferior in this respect to the\nhumblest flower that grows, so is the highest product of the\nvegetable kingdom inferior to man himself, the maker of the machine;\nfor he can reflect upon his own and the world's becoming, while the\nplant can only become.\n\nWhat is the reason for these differences of power and function?\nAccording to the Higher Space Hypothesis they are due to varying\npotencies of movement in the secret causeways and corridors of space.\nThe higher functions of consciousness--volition, emotion,\nintellection--may be in some way correlated with the higher powers\nof numbers, and with the corresponding higher developments of space.\nThus would the difference between physics and metaphysics become a\ndifference of degree and not of kind. Evolution is to be conceived\nof as a continuous pushing back of the boundary between\nrepresentation and reality, or as a conquest of space. We may\nconceive of space as of an infinite number of dimensions, and of\nconsciousness as a moving--or rather as an expanding--point,\nembracing this infinity, involving worlds, powers, knowledges,\nfelicities, within itself in everlasting progression.\n\n\n\n\nIII PHYSICAL PHENOMENA\n\n\nLOOKING FOR THE GREATER IN THE LESS\n\nAfter the assured way in which the author has conducted the reader\nrepeatedly up and down the dimensional ladder, it may be a surprise\nto learn that physical phenomena offer no irrefragable evidences of\nhyper-dimensionality. We could not think in higher space if\nconsciousness were limited to three dimensions. The mathematical\nreality of higher space is never in question: the higher dimensions\nare as valid as the lower, but the hyper-dimensionality of matter is\nstill unproven. Man's ant-like efforts to establish this as a truth\nhave thus far been vain.\n\nLest this statement discourage the reader at the very outset, he\nshould understand the reason for such failure. We are _embedded_ in\nour own space, and if that space be embedded in higher space, how are\nwe going to discover it? If space is curved, how are we going to\nmeasure its curvature? Our efforts to do so may be compared to\nmeasuring the distance between the tips of a bent bow by measuring\nalong the bow instead of along the string.\n\nImagine a scientifically-minded threadworm to inhabit a page of\nEuclid's solid geometry: the evidences of three-dimensionality are\nthere, in the very diagrams underneath his eyes; but you could not\n_show_ him a solid--the flat page could not contain it, any more\nthan our space can contain a form of four dimensions. You could only\nsay to him, \"These lines _represent_ a solid.\" He would have to\ndepend on his _faith_ for belief and not on that \"knowledge gained\nby exact observation and correct thinking\" in which alone the\nscientist finds a sure ground for understanding.\n\nIt is an axiom of science never to look outside three-space horizons\nfor an understanding of phenomena when these can logically be\naccounted for within those horizons. Now because, on the Higher\nSpace Hypothesis, each space is the container of all phenomena of\nits own order, the futility, for practical purposes, of going\noutside is at once apparent. The highly intelligent threadworm\nneither knows nor cares that the point of intersection of two lines\nin his diagram _represents_ a point in a space to which he is a\nstranger. The point is there, on his page: it is what he calls a\n_fact_. \"Why raise\" (he says) \"these puzzling and merely academic\nquestions? Why attempt to turn the universe completely upside down?\"\n\nBut though no _proofs_ of hyper-dimensionality have been found in\nnature, there are equally no contradictions of it, and by using a\nmethod not inductive, but deductive, the Higher Space Hypothesis\nis plausibly confirmed. Nature affords a sufficient number of\n_representations_ of four-dimensional forms and movements to justify\ntheir consideration.\n\n\nSYMMETRY\n\nLet us first flash the light of our hypothesis upon an all but\nuniversal characteristic of living forms, yet one of the most\ninexplicable--_symmetry_.\n\nAnimal life exhibits the phenomenon of the right-and left-handed\nsymmetry of solids. This is exemplified in the human body, wherein\nthe parts are symmetrical with relation to the axial _plane_.\nAnother more elementary type of symmetry is characteristic of the\nvegetable kingdom. A leaf in its general contour is symmetrical:\nhere the symmetry is about a _line_--the midrib. This type of\nsymmetry is readily comprehensible, for it involves simply a\nrevolution through 180 degrees. Write a word on a piece of paper and\nquickly fold it along the line of writing so that the wet ink\nrepeats the pattern, and you have achieved the kind of symmetry\nrepresented in a leaf.\n\nWith the symmetry of solids, or symmetry with relation to an axial\n_plane_, no such simple movement as the foregoing suffices to\nproduce or explain it, because symmetry about a plane implies\n_four-dimensional_ movement. It is easy to see why this must be so.\nIn order to achieve symmetry in any space--that is, in any given\nnumber of dimensions--there must be revolution in the next higher\nspace: one more dimension is necessary. To make the (two-dimensional)\nink figure symmetrical, it had to be folded over _in the third\ndimension_. The revolution took place about the figure's _line_ of\nsymmetry, and in a _higher_ dimension. In _three_-dimensional\nsymmetry (the symmetry of solids) revolution must occur about the\nfigure's _plane_ of symmetry, and in a higher--i.e., the _fourth_\ndimension. Such a movement we can reason about with mathematical\ndefiniteness: we see the result in the right- and left-handed\nsymmetry of solids, but we cannot picture the movement ourselves\nbecause it involves a space of which our senses fail to give any\naccount.\n\nNow could it be shown that the two-dimensional symmetry observed in\nnature is the result of a three-dimensional movement, the right-and\nleft-handed symmetry of solids would by analogy be the result of a\n_four_-dimensional movement. Such revolution (about a plane) would\nbe easily achieved, natural and characteristic, in four space, just\nas the analogous movement (about a line) is easy, natural, and\ncharacteristic, in our space of three dimensions.\n\n\nOTHER ALLIED PHENOMENA\n\nIn the mirror image of a solid we have a representation of what\nwould result from a four-dimensional revolution, the surface of the\nmirror being the plane about which the movement takes place. If such\na change of position were effected in the constituent parts of a\nbody as a mirror image of it _represents_, the body would have\nundergone a revolution in the fourth dimension. Now two varieties of\ntartaric acid crystallize in forms bearing the relation to one\nanother of object to mirror image. It would seem more reasonable to\nexplain the existence of these two identical, but reversed,\nvarieties of crystal, by assuming the revolution of a single variety\nin the fourth dimension, than by any other method.\n\nThere are two forms of sugar found in honey, dextrose and levulose.\nThey are similar in chemical constitution, but the one is the\nreverse of the other when examined by polarized light--that is, they\nrotate the plane of polarization of a ray of light in opposite ways.\nIf their atoms are conceived to have the power of motion in the\nfourth dimension, it would be easy to understand why they differ.\nCertain snails present the same characteristics as these two forms\nof sugar. Some are coiled to the right and others to the left; and\nit is remarkable that, like dextrose and levulose, their juices are\noptically the reverse of each other when studied by polarized light.\n\nRevolution in the fourth dimension would also explain the change in\na body from producing a right-handed, to producing a left-handed,\npolarization of light.\n\n\nISOMERISM\n\nIn chemistry the molecules of a compound are assumed to consist of\nthe atoms of the elements contained in the compound. These atoms are\nsupposed to be at certain distances from one another. It sometimes\nhappens that two compound substances differ in their chemical or\nphysical properties, or both, even though they have like chemical\nelements in the same proportion. This phenomenon is called isomerism,\nand the generally accepted explanation is that the atoms in isomeric\nmolecules are differently arranged, or grouped, in space. It is\ndifficult to imagine how atoms, alike in number, nature, and\nrelative proportion, can be so grouped as somehow to produce\ncompounds with different properties, particularly as in\nthree-dimensional space four is the greatest number of points whose\nmutual distances, six in number, are all independent of each other.\nIn four-dimensional space, however, the _ten_ equal distances\nbetween any two of _five_ points are geometrically independent, thus\ngreatly augmenting the number and variety of possible arrangements\nof atoms.\n\nThis just escapes being the kind of proof demanded by science. If\nthe independence of all the possible distances between the atoms of\na molecule is absolutely required by theoretical chemical research,\nthen science is really compelled, in dealing with molecules of more\nthan four atoms, to make use of the idea of a space of more than\nthree dimensions.\n\n\nTHE ORBITAL MOTION OF SPHERES: CELL SUB-DIVISION\n\nThere is in nature another representation of hyper-dimensionality\nwhich, though difficult to demonstrate, is too interesting and\nsignificant to be omitted here.\n\nImagine a helix, intersected, in its vertical dimension, by a moving\nplane. If necessary to assist the mind, suspend a spiral spring\nabove a pail of water, then raise the pail until the coils, one\nafter another, become immersed. The spring would represent the helix,\nand the surface of the water the moving plane. Concentrating\nattention upon this surface, you would see a point--the elliptical\ncross-section of the wire where it intersected the plane--moving\nround and round in a circle. Next conceive of the wire itself as a\nlesser helix of many convolutions, and repeat the experiment. The\npoint of intersection would then continually return upon its own\ntrack in a series of minute loops forming those lesser loops, which,\nmoving circle-wise, registered the involvement of the helix in the\nplane.\n\nIt is easy to go on imagining complicated structures of the nature\nof the spiral, and to suppose also that these structures are\ndistinguishable from each other at every section. If we think of the\nintersection of these with the rising surface, as the atoms, or\nphysical units, of a plane universe, we shall have a world of\napparent motion, with bodies moving harmoniously amongst one another,\neach a cross-section of some part of an unchanging and unmoving\nthree-dimensional entity.\n\nNow augment the whole by an additional dimension--raise everything\none space. The helix of many helices would become four-dimensional,\nand superficial space would change to solid space: each tiny circle\nof intersection would become a sphere of the same diameter,\ndescribing, instead of loops, helices. Here we would be among\nfamiliar forms, describing familiar motions: the forms, for example,\nof the earth and the moon and of their motion about the sun; of the\natom, as we imagine it, the molecule and the cell. For is not the\nsphere, or ovoid, the unit form of nature; and is not the spiral\nvortex its characteristic motion, from that of the nebula in the sky\nto the electron in the atom? Thus, on the hypothesis that our space\nis traversing four-dimensional space, and that the forms of our\nspace are cross-sections of four-dimensional forms, the unity and\nharmony of nature would be accounted for in a remarkably simple\nmanner.\n\nThe above exercise of the imagination is a good preparation for the\nnext demand upon it. Conceive a dichotomous tree--one that always\ndivides into two branches--to pass through a plane. We should have,\nas a plane section, a circle of changing size, which would elongate\nand divide into two circles, each of which would do the same. This\nreminds us of the segmentation of cell life observed under the\nmicroscope, as though a four-dimensional figure were registering its\npassage through our space.\n\n\nTHE ELECTRIC CURRENT\n\nHinton conceived of an electric current as a four-dimensional vortex.\nHe declared that on the Higher Space Hypothesis the revolution of\nthe ether would yield the phenomenon of the electric current. The\nreader is referred to Hinton's book, _The Fourth Dimension_, for an\nextended development of this idea. What follows is a brief summary\nof his argument. First, he examines the characteristics of a vortex\nin a three-dimensional fluid. Then he conceives of what such a\nvortex would be in a four-dimensional medium of analogous properties.\nThe whirl would be about a _plane_, and the contour of this plane\nwould correspond to the ends of the axis line in the former vortex;\nand as before, the vortex would extend to the boundary. Every\nelectric current forms a closed circuit: this is equivalent to the\nhyper-vortex having its ends in the boundary of the hyper-fluid. The\nvortex with a _surface_ as its axis, therefore, affords a geometric\nimage of a closed circuit.\n\nHinton supposes a conductor to be a body which has the property\nof serving as a terminal abutment to such a hyper-vortex as has\nbeen described. The conception that he forms of a closed current,\ntherefore, is of a vortex sheet having its _edge_ along the\ncircuit of the conducting wire. The whole wire would then be like\nthe centers on which a spindle turns in three-dimensional space,\nand any interruption of the continuity of the wire would produce\na _tension_ in place of a continuous revolution. The phenomena\nof electricity--polarity, induction, and the like--are of the nature\nof the stress and strain of a medium, but one possessing properties\nunlike those of ordinary matter. The phenomena can be explained in\nterms of higher space. If Hinton's hypothesis be the true explanation,\nthe universality of electro-magnetic action would again point to the\nconclusion that our three-dimensional world is _superficial_--the\nsurface, that is, of a four-dimensional universe.\n\n\nTHE GREATER UNIVERSE\n\nThis practically exhausts the list of accepted and accredited\nindications of hyper-dimensionality in our physical environment. But\nif the collective human consciousness is moving into the fourth\ndimension, such indications are bound to multiply out of all measure.\nIt should be remembered that in Franklin's day electricity was\nmanifest only in the friction of surfaces and in the thunderbolt.\nTo-day all physical phenomena, in their last analysis, are considered\nto be electrical. The world is not different, but perception has\nevolved, and is evolving.\n\nThere is another field, in which some of our ablest minds are\nsearching for evidences of the curvature of space, the field of\nastronomy and astro-physics. But into this the layman hesitates to\nenter because the experts themselves have found no common ground of\nunderstanding. The ether of space is a battlefield strewn with dead\nand dying hypotheses; gravitation, like multiplication, is vexation;\nthe very nature of time, form and movement is under vivid discussion,\nin connection with what is known as the Theory of Relativity.\n\nNotwithstanding these counter-currents of speculation, which should\nmake the wise man speak smilingly of his wisdom, this summary\nremains incomplete without a reference to the pressure of higher\nspace upon those adventurous minds that essay to deal with the\nprofound problems of the greater universe, and a statement of the\nreasons for their feeling this pressure. These reasons are well\nsuggested by Professor B.G. Harrison, in his _Popular Astronomy_. He\nsays: \"With the idea of a universe of finite dimensions there is the\nobvious difficulty of the beyond. The truth is that a universe of\nfinite proportions is equally difficult to realize as one of\ninfinite extent. Perhaps the nearest analogy to infinity that we can\nunderstand lies in our conception of a closed curve. It seems easier\nto imagine the endless movement of a sphere in a circular path than\nthe case of one travelling in a straight line. Possibly this analogy\nmay apply in some way to fourth-dimensional space, but the manner of\nits application is certainly not easy to understand. If we would\nimagine that all co-ordinates of time and space were curved, and\neventually return to the same point, it might bring the ultimate\ncomprehension one degree nearer.\"\n\n\nA HINT FROM ASTRONOMY\n\nThe physical evidence that our space is thus curved in higher space,\nsome have considered astronomy to furnish in what is called the\n\"negative parallax\" of certain distant stars. This cannot be passed\nby, though it is too deeply involved with the probable error of the\nobservers themselves to be considered more than an interesting fact\nin this connection. Every one knows that the difference of angle\nunder which an object is seen from two standpoints is called its\nparallax. The parallax of the stars--and the consequent knowledge of\ntheir distance--is obtained by observing them from opposite points\nof the earth's orbit around the sun. When a star is within measurable\ndistance, these angles are acute, and the lines from the star to the\nearth at opposite sides of its orbit converge, therefore. But when\nthese lines, as sometimes happens, appear to be _divergent_, the\nresult is called a _negative_ parallax, and is explainable by higher\nspace relationships. Obviously, the divergence of the lines would\nindicate that the object lies _behind_ the observer instead of in\nfront of him. This anomaly can be explained by the curvature of space\nin the fourth dimension. If space is so curved, the path of light\nitself is curved also, and a man--were his vision immeasurably keen,\nnot to say telescopic--could see the back of his own head! It is not\nworth while to give this question of negative parallax too much\nimportance, by reason of the probability of error, but in this\nconnection it should be stated that there appears to be an undue\nnumber of negative parallaxes recorded.\n\n\nGRAVITATION\n\nGravitation remains a puzzle to science. The tendency of modern\nphysics is to explain all material phenomena in terms of electrons\nand the ether, but the attempt to account for gravitation in this\nway is attended with difficulties. In order to cope with these, it\nseems necessary to assume that our universe is only a portion of a\ngreater universe. This assumption readily lends itself to the\nconception of our universe as a three-dimensional meeting place of\ntwo portions of a universe of four dimensions--that is, its\nconception as a \"higher\" surface. This is a fundamental postulate of\nhigher space speculation.\n\nOne hypothesis advanced to explain gravitation assumes the existence\nof a constant hydrostatic pressure transmitted through the ether. A\nsteady flow of ether into every electron in a gravitating system of\nbodies would give rise to forces of attraction between them, varying\ninversely as the square of the distance, according to Newton's law.\nBut in order to avoid the conception of the continual destruction\nand creation of ether, it is necessary to assume a steady flow\nthrough every electron between our universe and the greater universe\nof which it is assumed to form a part Now because the electrons, in\norder to receive this flow, must lie on the boundary of this greater\nuniverse, the latter must be four-dimensional. Every electron, in\nother words, must be the starting point of a pathway into--and a\nterminal point out of--four-dimensional space. Here we have another\nfamiliar higher space concept.\n\n\nTHE ETHER OF SPACE\n\nThe ether of space, because it has at last found entrance, must be\ngiven a grudging hospitality in these pages, even though the\nmysterious stranger prove but a ghost. The Relativists would have it\nthat with the acceptance of their point of view the ether may be\neliminated; but if they take away the ether, they must give us\nsomething in its stead. In whatever way the science of the future\ndisposes of this problem, it must take into account the fact of\nlight transmission. On the theory that the ether is an elastic solid\nof amazing properties, in which the light waves vibrate _transversely_\nto their direction, it assists the mind to think of the ether as\nfour-dimensional, because then a light wave would be a superficial\ndisturbance of the medium--superficial, but three-dimensional, as\nmust needs be the case with the surface of a four-dimensional solid.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis search for evidences of hyper-dimensionality in the universe\naccessible to our senses is like looking, not for a needle in a\nhaystack, but for a haystack in a needle--for the greater in the less.\nFrom the purely physical evidences, all that can with certainty be\nsaid is that the hypothesis is not inconsistent with the facts of\nscience or its laws; that it is being verified and rendered more\nprobable by the investigations of science; that it is applicable to\nthe description or explanation of all the observed phenomena, and\nassigns a cause fully adequate to have produced them.\n\nNow there is an order of phenomena that we call psychic. Because\nthey are phenomenal they cannot occur outside of time and space\naltogether; because they are psychic they defy explanation in terms\nof the space and time of every-day life. Let us next examine these\nin the light of our hypothesis.\n\n\n\n\nIV  TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS\n\nZ\u00d6LLNER\n\nIn the year 1877, Johann Friedrich Z\u00f6llner, professor of physics and\nastronomy at the University of Leipsic, undertook to prove that\ncertain (so-called) psychic phenomena were susceptible of explanation\non the hypothesis of a four-dimensional space. He used as\nillustrations the phenomena induced by the medium Henry Slade. By\nthe irony of events, Slade was afterward arrested and imprisoned for\nfraud, in England. This fact so prejudiced the public mind against\nZ\u00f6llner that his name became a word of scorn, and the fourth dimension\na synonym for what is fatuous and false. Z\u00f6llner died of it, but\nsince his death public opinion has undergone a change. There is a\ngreat and growing interest in everything pertaining to the fourth\ndimension, and belief in that order of phenomena upon which Z\u00f6llner\nbased his deductions is supported by evidence at once voluminous and\nimpressive.\n\nIt is unnecessary to go into the question of the genuineness of the\nparticular phenomena which Z\u00f6llner witnessed. His conclusions are\nalone important, since they apply equally to other manifestations,\nwhose authenticity has never been successfully impeached. Z\u00f6llner's\nreasoning with regard to certain psychic phenomena is somewhat along\nthe following lines.\n\n\nAPPARITIONS\n\n_The intrusion (as an apparition) of a person or thing into a\ncompletely enclosed portion of three-space; or contrariwise, the\nexit (as an evanishment) out of such a space_.\n\nBecause we lack the sense of four-dimensional space, we must here\nhave recourse to analogy, and assume three-dimensional space to be\nthe unsensed higher region encompassing a world of two dimensions,\nTo a hypothetical flat-man of a two-space, any portion of his plane\nsurrounded by an unbroken line would constitute an enclosure. Were\nhe confined within it, escape would be impossible by any means known\nto him. Had he the ability to move in the third dimension, however,\nhe could rise, pass over the enclosing line without disturbing it,\nand descend on the other side. The moment he forsook the plane he\nwould disappear from two-dimensional space. Such a disappearance\nwould constitute an occult phenomenon in a world of two dimensions.\n\nCorrespondingly, an evanishment from any three-dimensional\nenclosure--such as a room with locked doors and windows--might be\neffected by means of a movement in the fourth dimension. Because a\nbody would disappear from our perception the moment it forsook our\nspace, such a disappearance would be a mystery; it would constitute\nan occult phenomenon. The thing would be no more mysterious, however,\nto a consciousness embracing four dimensions within its ken, than\nthe transfer of an object from the inside to the outside of a plane\nfigure without crossing its linear boundary is mysterious to us.\n\n\nPOSSESSION\n\n_The temporary possession of a person's body, or some member of\nthat body, by an alien will, as exemplified in automatic writing and\nobsession_.\n\nIt would doubtless amaze the scientifically orthodox to know how\nmany people habitually and successfully practice the dubious art of\nautomatic writing--not mediums, so-called, but people of refinement\nand intelligence. Although the messages received in this way may\nemanate from the subconscious mind of the performer, there is\nevidence to indicate that they come sometimes from an intelligence\ndiscarnate, or from a person remote from the recipient in space.\n\nIf such is indeed the case, if the will is extraneous, how does it\npossess itself of the nerves and muscles of the hand of the writer?\nThe Higher Space Hypothesis is of assistance here. It is only\nnecessary to remember that from the fourth dimension the interior of\na solid is as much exposed as the interior of a plane figure is\nexposed from the region of the third dimension. A four-dimensional\nbeing would experience no difficulty, under suitable conditions, in\npossessing itself of any part of the bodily mechanism of another.\n\nThe same would hold true in cases of possession and obsession; for\nif the bastion of the hand can thus be captured, so also may the\ncitadel of the brain. Certain familiar forms of hypnotism are not\ndifferent from obsession, the hypnotizer using the brain and body of\nhis subject as though they were his own. All unconsciously to himself,\nhe has called into play four-dimensional mechanics. Many cases of\nso-called dual personality are more easily explicable as possession\nby an alien will than on the less credible hypothesis that the\ncharacter, habits, and language of a person can change utterly in a\nmoment of time.\n\n\nCLAIRVOYANCE IN SPACE\n\n_Vision at a distance and the exercise of a superior power of sight_.\n\nClairvoyance in space is of various kinds and degrees. Sometimes it\nconsists in the perception of super-physical phenomena--the\nunfurling of a strange and wonderful land; and again it appears to\nbe a higher power of ordinary vision, a kind of seeing to which the\nopacity of solids offers no impediment, or one involving spatial\ndistances too great and too impeded for normal physical vision to be\neffective.\n\nThat clairvoyance which consists in the ability to perceive not\nalone the superficies of things as ordinary vision perceives them,\nbut their interiors as well, is analogous to the power given by the\nX-ray, by means of which, on a fluorescent screen, a man may behold\nthe beating of his own heart. But, if the reports of trained\nclairvoyants are to be believed, there is this difference:\neverything appears to them without the distortions due to perspective,\nobjects being seen as though they were inside and not outside of the\nperceiving organ, or as though the observer were in the object\nperceived; or in all places at the same time.\n\nOur analogy makes all this intelligible. To the flat-man,\nclairvoyance in space would consist in that power of perception\nwhich we exercise in reference to his plane. From the third\ndimension the boundaries of plane figures offer no impediment\nto the view of their interiors, and they themselves in no way\nimpede our vision of surrounding objects. If we assume that\nclairvoyance in space is the perception of the things of our world\nfrom the region of the fourth dimension, the phenomena exactly\nconform to the demands of our analogy. It is no more difficult\nfor a four-dimensional intelligence to understand the appearance\nor disappearance of a body in a completely closed room, or the\nwithdrawal of an orange from its skin, without cutting or breaking\nthat skin, than it is for us to see the possibility of taking up a\npencil point from the center of a circle and putting it down outside.\nWe are under no compulsion to draw a line across the circumference\nof the circle in order to enter or leave it. Moreover, the volume of\nour sensible universe embraced in the clairvoyant's field of view\nwill increase in the same way that a balloonist's view increases in\narea as he rises above the surface of the earth. To account for\nclairvoyant vision at a distance, it is of course necessary to posit\nsome perceptive organ other than the eye, but the fact that in\ntrance the eyes are closed, itself demands this assumption.\n\n\nCLAIRVOYANCE IN TIME\n\n_The perception of a past event as in process of occurring, or the\nprevision of something which comes to pass later_.\n\nNo mechanistic explanation will serve to account for this order of\nclairvoyance since it is inextricably involved in the mystery of\nconsciousness itself. Yet our already overworked analogy can perhaps\ncast a little light even here.\n\nTo the flat-man, the third dimension of objects passing through his\nplane translates itself to his experience into _time_. Were he\ncapable of rising in the positive direction of the third dimension,\nhe would have pre-vision, because he would be cognizant of that\nwhich had not yet intersected his plane: by sinking in the negative\ndirection, he would have post-vision, because he could re-cognize\nthat which had already passed.\n\nNow there are excellent reasons, other than those based on analogy,\nthat the fourth-dimensional aspect of things may manifest itself to\nour ordinary experience, not as spatial extension, but as temporal\nchange. Then, if we conceive of clairvoyance as a transcending by\nconsciousness of our three-dimensional space, prevision and\npost-vision would be logically possible as corresponding to the\npositive and negative of the fourth dimension. This may be made\nclearer by the aid of a homely illustration.\n\n\nPISGAH SIGHTS OF LIFE'S PAGEANT\n\nSuppose you are standing on a street corner, watching a procession\npass. You see the pageant as a sequence of objects and individuals\nappearing into view near by and suddenly, and disappearing in the\nsame manner. This would represent our ordinary waking consciousness\nof what goes on in the world round about. Now imagine that you walk\nup the street in a direction opposite to that in which the\nprocession is moving. You then rapidly pass in review a portion of\nthe procession which had not yet arrived at the point you were a few\nmoments before. This would correspond to the seeing of something\nbefore it \"happened,\" and would represent the positive aspect of\nclairvoyance in time--prevision. Were you to start from your\noriginal position, and moving in the direction in which the\nprocession was passing, overtake it at some lower street corner, you\ncould witness the thing you had already seen. This would represent\npost-vision--clairvoyance of the past.\n\nA higher type of clairvoyance would be represented by the sweep of\nvision possible from a balloon. From that place of vantage the\nprocession would be seen, not as a sequence, but simultaneously, and\ncould be traced from its formation to its dispersal. Past, present\nand future would be merged in one.\n\nIt is true that this explanation raises more questions than it\nanswers: to account in this way for a marvel, a greater marvel must\nbe imagined--that of transport out of one's own \"space.\" The whole\nsubject bristles with difficulties, not the least of which is that\neven to conceive of such a thing as prevision all our old ideas\nabout time must be recast. This is being done in the Principle of\nRelativity, a subject which may appropriately engage our attention\nnext.\n\n\n\n\nV  CURVED TIME\n\n\nTIME FROM THE STANDPOINT OF EXPERIMENT AND OF CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE\n\nIn some moment of \"sudden light\" what one of us has not been able to\nsay, with Rossetti,\n\n    \"I have been here before,\n    But when or how I cannot tell.\"\n\nAre such strange hauntings of our House of Life due to the cyclic\nreturn of time? Perhaps,--but what is time?\n\nSuppose some one should ask you, \"What is an hour?\" Your answer\nmight be, \"It is the interval marked off by the clock-hand between 1\nand 2.\" \"But what if your clock is running down or speeding up?\" To\nthis you would probably reply, \"The clock is set and corrected by\nthe earth, the sun and the stars, which are constant in their\nmovements.\" _But they are not_. The earth is known to be running slow,\nby reason of tide friction, and this is likely to continue until it\nwill revolve on its axis, not once a day, but once a year,\npresenting always the same face to the sun.\n\nWe can only measure time by _uniform_ motion. Observe the vicious\ncircle. Uniform motion means the covering of equal spaces in equal\ntimes. But how are we to determine our equal times? Ultimately we\nhave no other criterion save the uniform motion of the clock-hand or\nthe star dial. The very expressions, \"uniform motion,\" \"equal times,\"\nbeg the whole question of the nature of time.\n\nLet us then, in this predicament, consider time not from the\nstandpoint of experiment, but of conscious experience--what Bergson\ncalls \"real duration.\"\n\nEvery point along the line of memory, of conscious experience, has\nbeen traced out by that unresting stylus we call \"the present moment.\"\nThe question of its rate of motion we will not raise, as it is one\nwith which we have found ourselves impotent to deal. We believe on\nthe best of evidence that the conscious experience of others is\nconditioned like our own. For better understanding let us have\nrecourse to a homely analogy: let us think of these more or less\nparallel lines of individual experience in the semblance of the\nstrands of a skein of flax. Now if, _at the present moment_, this\nskein were cut with a straight knife at right angles to its length,\nthe cut end would represent the _time plane_--that is, the present\nmoment of all--and it would be the same for all providing that the\ntime plane were flat _But is it really flat_? Isn't the straightness\nof the knife a mere poverty of human imagination? Existence is always\nricher and more dramatic than any diagram.\n\n  \"Line in nature is not found;\n  Unit and universe are round.\n  In vain produced, all rays return;\n  Evil will bless and ice will burn.\"\n\nUndoubtedly the flat time-plane represents with fair accuracy the\ntemporal conditions that obtain in the human aggregate in this world\nunder normal conditions of consciousness, but if we consider our\nrelation to intelligent beings upon distant worlds of the visible\nuniverse the conditions might be widely different The time section\ncorresponding to what our straight knife made flat in the case of\nthe flax may be--nay, probably is--strongly curved.\n\n\nRELATIVITY\n\nThis crude analogy haltingly conveys what is meant by curved time.\nIt is an idea which is implicit in the Theory of Relativity. This\ntheory has profoundly modified many of our basic conceptions about\nthe universe in which we are immersed. It is outside the province of\nthis book and beyond the power of its author even so much as to\nsketch the main outlines of this theory, but certain of its\nconclusions are indispensable, since they baldly set forth our\ndilemma in regard to the measurement of space and time. We can\nmeasure neither except relatively, because they must be measured one\nby the other, and no matter how they vary, these variations always\ncompensate one another, leaving us in the same state of ignorance\nthat we were in before.\n\nSuppose that two intelligent beings, one on Mars, let us say, and\nthe other on the earth, should attempt to establish _the same moment\nof time_, by the interchange of light signals, or by any other\nmethod which the most rigorous science could devise. Assume that\nthey have for this purpose two identically similar and mechanically\nperfect chronometers, and that every difficulty of manipulation were\nsuccessfully overcome. Their experiment could end only in failure,\nand the measure of this failure neither one, in his own place, could\npossibly know. If, after the experiment, the Martian, chronometer in\nhand, could be instantly and miraculously transported to the earth,\nand the two settings compared, they would be found to be different:\nhow different, we do not know.\n\nThe reason for the failure of any such experiment anywhere conducted\ncan best be made plain by a crude paraphrase of a classic\nproposition from Relativity. Suppose it is required to determine the\nsame moment of time at two different places on the earth's surface,\nas must be attempted in finding their difference in longitude. Take\nthe Observatory at Greenwich for one place, and the observatory at\nWashington for the other. At the moment the sun is on the meridian\nof Greenwich, the exact time of crossing is noted and cabled to\nWashington. The chronometer at Washington is set accordingly, and\nthe time checked back to Greenwich. This message arrives two seconds,\nsay, after the original message was sent. Washington is at once\nnotified of this double transmission interval. On the assumption\nthat HALF of it represents the time the message took to travel from\neast to west, and the other half the time from west to east again,\nthe Washington chronometer is set one second ahead of the signalled\ntime, to compensate for its part of the loss. When the sun has\nreached the meridian of Washington, the whole process is repeated,\nand again as before, half of the time the message has taken to cross\nand recross the Atlantic is added to the Greenwich record of noon at\nWashington. The number of hours, minutes, seconds, and fractions of\na second between these two corrected records represents the\ndifference in solar time between the two places, and incidentally\nthe same moment of time has been established for both--at least, so\nit would appear.\n\nBut is it established? That each message took an equal time to\ntravel each way is pure assumption, and happens to be a false one.\nThe accuracy of the result is vitiated by a condition of things to\nwhich the Relativists have called attention. Our determination might\nbe defended if Washington and Greenwich could be assumed to remain\nat rest during the experiments, and some argument might even be made\nin its favor if we could secure any cosmic assurance that the\nresultant motion of the earth should be the same when Greenwich\nsignalled its noon to Washington and Washington its noon to Greenwich.\n\nOur present discussion is merely illustrative, or diagrammatic; so\nwe will neglect the velocity of the earth in its orbit round the sun,\nsome forty times greater than that of a cannon ball, and the more\nuncertain and more vertiginous speed of the whole solar system\ntowards its unknown goal. Let us consider only the rotation of the\nearth on its axis, the tide-speed of day and night. To fix our idea,\nthis may be taken, in our latitudes, at eighteen thousand miles per\nday, or perhaps half the speed of a Mauser rifle bullet.\n\nSo fast, then, will Washington have been moving to meet the message\nfrom Greenwich. So fast will Greenwich have been retreating from\nWashington's message.\n\nNow the ultimate effect of motion on the time-determination cannot\nbe calculated along any such simple lines as these. Indeed, it\ncannot be exactly calculated at all, for we have not all the data.\nBut there is certainly _some_ effect. Suppose one rows four miles up\na river against a current of two miles per hour, at a rowing speed\nof four miles per hour. This will take two hours, plainly. The\nreturn trip with the river's gift of two miles per hour will\nevidently require but forty minutes. _Two hours and forty minutes_\nfor the round trip, then, of eight miles.\n\nNow then, to row eight miles in still water, according to our\nsupposition, would have required but _two hours_. But, some one\nobjects, the current must help the return trip as much as it\nhindered the outgoing! Ah, here is the snare that catches\nrough-and-ready common sense! How long would the double journey have\ntaken _if the river current had been faster than our rowing speed_?\nHow shall we schedule our trip if we cannot learn the correct speed,\n_or if it varies from minute to minute_?\n\nThese explanations are necessarily symbolistic rather than\ndemonstrative, but any one who will seriously follow out these lines\nof thought, or, still better, study the attitude of the hard-headed\nmodern physicist towards our classical geometry and mechanics,\ncannot fail to realize how conventional, artificial--even\nphantasmal--are the limitations set by the primitive idea of flat\nspace and straight time.\n\nThe inferences which we may draw from our hypothetical experiment\nare plain. The settings of the two chronometers would be defective,\nthey would not show the same time, but each of them would mark the\n_local_ time, proper to its own place. There would be no means of\ndetecting the amount of error, since the messages were transmitted\nby a medium involved with them in their transportation. If only\nlocal time can be established, the possibility of a warped\ntime-plane--the curvature of time--is directly opened up. Doubtless\nit is true that on so relatively minute a scale as is offered by the\nearth, any deviation from perfect flatness of the time-plane would\nbe so inconsiderable and imperceptible as to make it scientifically\nnegligible; but this by no means follows when we consider our\nrelation to other worlds and other systems.\n\nA similar condition holds with regard to space-distortion. The\nTheory of Relativity enforces the conclusion that from the\nstandpoint of our conventions in regard to these matters, all bodies\ninvolved in transportation undergo a contraction in the direction of\nthat transportation, while their dimensions perpendicular to the\ntransportation remain invariable. This contraction is the same for\nall bodies. For bodies of low velocity, like the earth, this\ndistortion would be almost immeasurably slight; but great or little,\nno measuring instruments on the body transporting would ever\ndisclose it, for a measure would undergo the same contraction as the\nthing measured.\n\n\nTHE SPOON-MAN\n\nThese concepts that space and time are not as immutable as they\nappear: that our universe may suffer distortion, that time may lag\nor hasten without our being in the least aware, may be made\ninterestingly clear by an illustration first suggested by Helmholtz,\nof which the following is in the nature of a paraphrase.\n\nIf you look at your own image in the shining surface of a teapot, or\nthe back of a silver spoon, all things therein appear grotesquely\ndistorted, and all distances strangely altered. But if you choose to\nmake the bizarre supposition that this spoon-world is real, and your\nimage--the spoon-man--a thinking and speaking being, certain\ninteresting facts could be developed by a discussion between\nyourself and him.\n\nYou say, \"Your world is a distorted transcript of the one in which I\nlive.\"\n\n\"Prove it to me,\" says the spoon-man.\n\nWith a foot-rule you proceed to make measurements to show the\nrectangularity of the room in which you are standing. Simultaneously\nhe makes measurements giving the same numerical results; for his\nfoot-rule shrinks and curves in the exact proportion to give the\ntrue number of feet when he measures his shrunken and distorted rear\nwall. No measurement you can apply will prove you in the right, nor\nhim in the wrong. Indeed he is likely to retort upon you that it is\nyour room which is distorted, for he can show that in spite of all\nits nightmare aspects his world is governed by the same orderly\ngeometry that governs yours.\n\nThe above illustration deals purely with space relations, for such\nrelations are easily grasped; but certain distortions in time\nrelations are no less absolutely imperceptible and unprovable. So\nfar from having any advantage over the spoon-man, our plight is his.\nThe Principle of Relativity discovers us in the predicament of the\nMikado's \"prisoner pent,\" condemned to play with crooked cues and\nelliptical billiard balls, and of the opium victim, for whom\n\"space swells\" and time moves sometimes swift and sometimes slow.\n\n\nTHE ORBITAL MOVEMENT OF TIME\n\nNow if our space is curved in higher space, since such curvature is\nat present undetectable by us, we must assume, as Hinton chose to\nassume, that it curves in the minute, or, as some astronomers assume,\nthat its curve is vast. These assumptions are not mutually exclusive:\nthey are quite in analogy with the general curvature of the earth's\nsurface which is in no wise interfered with by the lesser curvatures\nrepresented by mountains and valleys. It is easiest to think of our\nspace as completely curved in higher space in analogy with the\nsurface of a sphere.\n\nSimilarly, if time is curved, the idea of the cyclic return of time\nnaturally (though not inevitably) follows, and the division of the\ngreater cycles into lesser loops; for it is easier to assign this\nelliptical movement to time than any other, by reason of the orbital\nmovements of the planets and their satellites. What results from\nconceptions of this order? Amazing things! If our space is curved in\nhigher space, you may be looking toward the back of your own head.\nIf time flows in cycles, in travelling toward to-morrow you may be\nfacing yesterday.\n\nThis \"eternal return,\" so far from being a new idea, is so old that\nit has been forgotten. Its reappearance in novel guise, along with\nso many other recrudescences, itself beautifully illustrates time\ncurvature in consciousness. _Yugas_, time cycles, are an integral\nand inexpugnable part of Oriental metaphysics. \"Since the soul\nperpetually runs,\" says Zoroaster, \"in a certain space of time it\npasses through all things, which circulation being accomplished, it\nis compelled to run back again through all things, and unfold the\nsame web of generation in the world.\" Time curvature is implicit in\nthe Greek idea of the iron, bronze, silver, and golden ages,\nsucceeding each other in the same order: the winter, seed-time,\nsummer and harvest of the larger year. Astrology, seership, prophecy,\nbecome plausible on the higher-time hypothesis. From this point of\nview history becomes less puzzling and paradoxical. What were the\nMiddle Ages but a forgetting of Greek and Roman civilization, and\nwhat was the Renaissance but a remembering of them--a striving to\nre-create the ruined stage-settings and to re-enact the urbane play\nof Pagan life. The spirit of the Crusades is now again animate\nthroughout Europe. Nations are uniting in a Holy War against the\nInfidel _de nos jours_.\n\nBut it is in the individual consciousness that time curvature\nreceives its most striking confirmation--those lesser returns and\nrhythms to which we give the name of periodicity. Before considering\nthese, however, a fundamental fallacy of the modern mind must be\nexposed.\n\n\nMATERIALITY THE MIRROR OF CONSCIOUSNESS\n\nOur vicious habit of seeking the explanation of everything--even\nthought and emotion--in materiality, has betrayed us into the error\nof attributing to organic and environic changes the very power by\nwhich they are produced. We are wont to think of feeling, the form\nin which Being manifests to consciousness, as an effect instead of\nas a cause. When Sweet Sixteen becomes suddenly and mysteriously\ninteresting to the growing boy, it is not because sex has awakened\nin his body, but because the dread time has come for him to\ncontemplate the Idea of Woman in his soul. If you are sleepy, it is\nnot because the blood has begun to flow away from your brain, but\nbecause your body has begun to bore you. Night has brought back the\nIdea of Freedom, and consciousness chloroforms the thing that\nclutches it. If you are ill, you grow cold or your temperature rises:\nit is the signal by which you know that your consciousness is\nturning toward the Idea of Pain.\n\nJust as a savage looks for a man behind a mirror, we foolishly seek\nin materiality for that which is not there. The soul determines\ncircumstance: the soul contains the event which shall befall. The\norganic and environic rearrangements incident to obscure rotations\nin higher space are like the changes a mirror-image undergoes as an\nobject draws near and then recedes from its plane. This is only a\nfigure of speech, but it is susceptible of almost literal application.\nIdeas, emerging from the subconscious, appproach, intersect, recede\nfrom, and re-approach the stream of conscious experience; taking the\nforms of aversions and desires, they register themselves in action,\nand by reason of time curvature, everything that occurs, recurs.\n\n\nPERIODICITY\n\nWe recognize and accept this cyclic return of time in such familiar\nmanifestations of it as Nature affords in _periodicity_. We recognize\nit also in our mental and emotional life, when the periods can be\nco-ordinated with known physical phenomena, as in the case of the\nwanderlust which comes in the mild melancholy of autumn, the moods that\ngo with waning day, and winter night. It is only when these recurrences\ndo not submit themselves to our puny powers of analysis and measurement\nthat we are incredulous of a larger aspect of the law of time-return.\nSleep for example, is not less mysterious than death which, too,\nmay be but \"a sleep and a forgetting.\" The reason that sleep fails to\nterrify us as death does is because experience has taught that\n_memory leafs the chasm_. Why should death bedreaded any more than\nbedtime? Because we fear that we shall forget. But do we really forget?\nAs Pierre Janet so tersely puts it, \"Whatever has gone into the mind\nmay come out of the mind,\" and in a subsequent chapter this aphorism\nwill be shown to have extension in a direction of which the author of\nit appears not to have been aware. Memory links night to night and\nwinter to winter, but such things as \"the night-time of the spirit\"\nand \"the winter of our discontent\" are not recognized as having either\ncause or consequence. Now though the well-springs of these states of\nconsciousness remain obscure, there is nothing unreasonable in\nbelieving that they are recrudescences of far-off, forgotten moods\nand moments; neither is it absurd to suppose that they may be related\nto the movements and positions of the planets, as night and winter\nare related to the axial and orbital movements of the earth.\n\nBut there are other, and even more interesting, evidences of time\ncurvature in consciousness. These lead away into new regions which\nit is our pleasure now to explore.\n\n\n\n\nVI SLEEP AND DREAMS\n\n\nSLEEP\n\nOur space is called three-dimensional because it takes three\nnumbers--measurement in three mutually perpendicular directions--to\ndetermine and mark out any particular point from the totality of\npoints. Time, as the individual experiences it, is called\none-dimensional for an analogous reason: one number is all that is\nrequired to determine and mark out any particular event of a series\nfrom all the rest. Now in order to establish a position in a space of\nfour dimensions it would be necessary to measure in _four_ mutually\nperpendicular directions. Time curvature opens up the possibility of\na corresponding higher development in time: one whereby time would\nbe more fittingly symbolized by a plane than by a linear figure.\nIndeed, the familiar mystery of memory calls for such a conception.\nMemory is a carrying forward of the past into the present, and the\nfact that we can recall a past event without mentally rehearsing\nall the intermediate happenings in inverse order, shows that in\nthe time aspect of memory there is simultaneity as well as\nsequence--time ceases to be linear and becomes _plane_. More\nremarkable illustrations of the sublimation of the time-sense are\nto be found in the phenomena of sleep and dreams.\n\n\"Oh, thou that sleepest, what is sleep?\" asks the curious Leonardo.\nModern psychological science has little to offer of a positive\nnature in answer to this world-old question, but it has at least\neffectively disposed of the absurd theories of the materialists who\nwould have us believe that sleep is a mere matter of blood\ncirculation or of intoxication by accumulation of waste products in\nthe system. Sleep states are not abnormal, but part and parcel of\nthe life existence of the individual. When a person is asleep he has\nonly become unresponsive to the mass of stimuli of the external\nworld which constitutes his environment. As Sidis says, \"When our\ninterest in external existence fags and fades away, we go to sleep.\nWhen our interests in the external world cease, we draw up the\nbridges, so to say, interrupt all external communication as far as\npossible, and become isolated in our own fortress and repair to our\nown world of organic activity and inner dream life. Sleep is the\ninterruption of our intercourse with the external world: it is the\nlaying down of our arms in the struggle of life. Sleep is a truce\nwith the world.\"\n\nThe twin concepts of higher space and curved time sanction a view of\nsleep even bolder. Sleep is more than a longing of the body to be\nfree of the flame which consumes it: the flame itself aspires to be\nfree--that is to say, consciousness, tiring of its tool, the brain,\nand of the world, its workshop, takes a turn into the plaisance of\nthe fourth dimension, where time and space are less rigid to resist\nthe fulfillment of desire.\n\n\nDREAMS\n\nWe find a confirmation of this view in dream phenomena. But however\ngood the evidence, we shall fail to make out a case unless dream\nexperiences are conceded to be as real as any other. The reluctance\nwe may have to make this concession comes first from the purely\nsubjective character of dreams, and secondly from their triviality\nand irrationality--it is as though the muddy sediment of daytime\nthought and feeling and that alone were there cast forth. In answer\nto the first objection, advanced psychology affirms that the\nsubconscious mind, from which dreams arise, approaches more nearly\nto the omniscience of true being than the rational mind of waking\nexperience. The triviality and irrationality of dreams are\nsufficiently accounted for if the dream state is thought of as the\nmeeting place of two conditions of consciousness: the foam and\nflotsam \"of perilous seas in fa\u00ebry lands forlorn,\" whose vastitude,\nwhose hidden life, and rich argosies of experience, can only be\ninferred from the fret of the tide on their nether shore--the tired\nbrain in sleep.\n\nFor it is the _remembered_ dream alone that is incoherent--the dream\nthat comes clothed in the rags and trappings of this work-a-day world,\nand so leaves some recoverable record on the brain. We all feel that\nthe dreams we cannot remember are the most wonderful. Who has not\nwakened with the sense of some incommunicable experience of terror or\nfelicity, too strange and poignant to submit itself to concrete\nsymbolization, and so is groped for by the memory in vain? We know\nthat dreams grow more ordered and significant as they recede from\nthe surface of consciousness to its depths. Deep sleep dreams are in\nthe true sense clairvoyant, though for the most part irrecoverable--\n\"Canst thou draw out Leviathan with an hook?\" DuPrel and others have\nshown that the difference between ordinary dreaming, somnambulance,\ntrance and ecstasy, is only a matter of redistribution of\nthresholds--that they are all related states and merge into one\nanother. We have, therefore, every right to believe that for a\ncertain number of hours out of the twenty-four we are all sybils and\nseers, however little most of us are able to profit by it.\nInfrequently, in moments of peculiar susceptibility, the veil is\nlifted, but the art of _dreaming true_ remains for the most part\nunmastered--one of the precious gifts which the future holds in store\nfor the sons and daughters of men.\n\nThe partial waking state is the soil in which remembered dreams\ndevelop most luxuriously. Paradoxical as it may sound, they are the\nproduct, not of our sleep, but of our waking. Such dreams belong to\nboth worlds, partly to the three-dimensional and partly to the\nfour-dimensional. While dreams are often only a hodge-podge of\ndaytime experiences, their incredible rapidity, alien to that\nexperience, gives us our first faint practicable intimation of a\nhigher development of time.\n\n\nTIME IN DREAMS\n\nThe unthinkable velocity of time in dreams may be inferred from\nthe fact that between the moment of impact of an impression\nat the sense-periphery and its reception at the center of\nconsciousness--moments so closely compacted that we think of them as\nsimultaneous--a coherent series of representations may take place,\ninvolving what seem to be protracted periods for their unfoldment.\nEvery reader will easily call to mind dream experiences of this\ncharacter, in which the long-delayed d\u00e9nouement was suggested and\nprepared for by some extraneous sense-impression, showing that the\nentire dream drama unfolded within the time it took that impression\nto travel from the skin to the brain.\n\nHasheesh dreams, because they so often occur during some momentary\nlapse from normal consciousness and are therefore measurable by its\ntime scale, are particularly rich in the evidence of the looping of\ntime. Fitzhugh Ludlow narrates, in _The Hasheesh Eater_, the dreams\nthat visited him in the brief interval between two of twenty or more\nawakenings, on his walk homeward after his first experience with the\ndrug. He says, \"I existed by turns in different places and various\nstates of being. Now I swept my gondola through the moonlit lagoons\nof Venice. Now Alp on Alp towered above my view, and the glory of\nthe coming sun flashed purple light upon the topmost icy pinnacle.\nNow in the primeval silence of some unexplored tropical forest I\nspread my feathery leaves, a giant fern, and swayed and nodded in\nthe spice-gales over a river whose waves at once sent up clouds of\nmusic and perfume. My soul changes to a vegetable essence, thrilled\nwith a strange and unimagined ecstasy.\"\n\nEarlier in the same evening, when he was forced to keep awake in\norder not to betray his condition, the dream time-scale appears to\nhave imposed itself upon his waking consciousness with the following\ncurious effect. A lady asked him some question connected with a\nprevious conversation. He says, \"As mechanically as an automaton I\nbegan to reply. As I heard once more the alien and unreal tones of\nmy own voice, I became convinced that it was some one else who spoke,\nand in another world. I sat and listened: still the voice kept\nspeaking. Now for the first time I experienced that vast change which\nhasheesh makes in all measurements of time. The first word of the\nreply occupied a period sufficient for the action of a drama; the\nlast left me in complete ignorance of any point far enough back in\nthe past to date the commencement of the sentence. Its enunciation\nmight have occupied years. I was not in the same life which had held\nme when I heard it begun.\"\n\nThis well-known fact, that we cannot measure dreams by our time scale,\nproves that subjective time does not correspond with objective, and\nthat the \"dream organ\" of consciousness has a time scale of its own.\nIf in our waking state we experience one kind of time, and in\ndreams quite another, the solution of the mystery should be sought\nin the _vehicle_ of consciousness, for clearly the limit of\nimpressionability or power of response of the vehicle establishes\nthe time scale, just as the size of the body with relation to\nobjects establishes the space scale. Time must be different for the\nant and the elephant, for example, as space is different.\n\nOur sense of time is wholly dependent upon the rapidity with which\nimpressions succeed one another. Were we capable of receiving only\none impression an hour, like a bell struck every hour with a hammer,\nthe ordinary term of life would seem very short. On the other hand,\nif our time sense were always as acute as it is in dreams, uncounted\naeons would seem to be lived through in the interval between\nchildhood and old age.\n\nImagine a music machine so cunningly constructed and adjusted as not\nonly to sound each note and chord in its proper sequence and relation,\nbut to regulate also the duration of the sound vibration. If this\nmachine were operated in such a manner as to play, in a single\nsecond of time, the entire overture of an opera which would normally\noccupy half an hour, we should hear only an unintelligible noise a\nsecond long. This would be due to no defect in the _sound-producing_\nmechanism, but to the limitations of the _sound-receiving_ mechanism,\nour auditory apparatus. Could this be altered to conform to the\nunusual conditions--could it capture and convey to consciousness\nevery note of the overture in a second of time--that second would\nseem to last half an hour, provided that every other criterion for\nthe measurement of duration were denied for the time being.\n\nNow dreams _seem_ long: we only discover afterwards and by accident\ntheir almost incredible brevity. May we not--must we not--infer from\nthis that the body is an organ of many stops and more than one\nkeyboard, and that in sleep it gives forth this richer music. The\ntheory of a higher-dimensional existence during sleep accounts in\npart for the great longing for sleep. \"What is it that is much\ndesired by man, but which they know not while possessing?\" again\nasks Leonardo. \"It is sleep,\" is his answer. This longing for sleep\nis more than a physical longing, and the refreshment it brings is\nless of the flesh than of the spirit. It is possible to withstand\nthe deprivation of food and water longer and better than the\ndeprivation of sleep. Its recuperative power is correspondingly\ngreater.\n\nExperiments have been made with mature University students by which\nthey have been kept awake ninety-six hours. When the experiments\nwere finished, the young men were allowed to sleep themselves out,\nuntil they felt they were thoroughly rested. All awoke from a long\nsleep completely refreshed, but the one who took longest to restore\nhimself from his protracted vigil slept only one-third more time\nthan was regular with him. And this has been the experience over and\nover again of men in active life who have been obliged to keep awake\nfor long periods by the absolute necessities of the situation in\nwhich they have been placed.\n\nIn this fact there is surely another hint of the sublimation of the\ntime sense during sleep. While it would be an unwarrantable\nassumption to suppose that the period of recuperation by sleep must\nbe as long, or nearly as long, as the period of deprivation, the\nratio between the two presents a discrepancy so great that it would\nseem as though this might be due to an acceleration of the time\nelement of consciousness.\n\n\nTHE EASTERN TEACHING IN REGARD TO SLEEP AND DREAMS\n\nIn this matter of the wonder, the mystery, the enchantment, of sleep\nand dreams, the most modern psychology and the most ancient wisdom\nmeet on common ground. Eastern wisdom casts such a light upon the\nproblems of subjectivity that it should not be lightly dismissed.\nFor uncounted centuries Hindu-Aryan spiritual science has recognized,\nnot one plane or condition of consciousness, but three; waking,\ndreaming, and deep sleep--the gross, the subtle and the pure. In the\nwaking state--that is, with the vehicle attuned to vibrate to\nmateriality--the individual self is as a captive in a citadel of\nflesh, aware of only so much of the universal life as chances to\nenact itself before the windows of his prison. In the dream state,\nwhen the more violent vibrations of the body are stilled in sleep,\nconsciousness becomes active in its subtle (four-dimensional) vehicle,\nand ranges free throughout the ampler spaces of this subtler world.\nIn deep sleep, consciousness reverts to its pure condition--the\nindividual self becomes the All-Self: the rainbow, no longer\nprismatic by reason of its refraction in materiality, becomes the\npure white light; the melody of life resolves itself into the\nprimordial harmony; sequence becomes simultaneity, and Time, no\nlonger \"besprent with seven-hued circumstance,\" is swallowed up in\nduration.\n\n\"_There are two paths for him, within and without, and they both\nturn back in a day and a night.... After having subdued by sleep all\nthat belongs to the body, he, not asleep himself, looks down upon\nthe sleeping. Having assumed light, he goes again to his place, the\ngolden person, the lonely bird_\"  UPANISHADS.\n\n\nSPACE IN DREAMS\n\nHowever preposterous may appear to us this notion that the waking\nstate, in which we feel ourselves most potent and alive, is really\none of inhibition--that the world is only a \"shoal of time\"--it is\ncuriously borne out by the baffling phenomena of dreams and is in\nperfect accord with the Higher Space Hypothesis. The possibility of\nshaking off the grip of sleep under appropriate circumstances, the\nfact that we can watch in our sleep, and awake at the right moment,\nthat we can sleep and still watch and keep awake in regard to\nspecial objects and particular persons--these things form\ninsuperable difficulties for all those plausible, and apparently\nscientific, theories of sleep current in the West; but they fit\nperfectly with the Eastern idea that \"he, not asleep himself, looks\ndown upon the sleeping.\" And to the questions, \"How, and from whence?\"\nin the light of our hypothesis we may answer, \"By the curvature of\ntime, consciousness escapes into the fourth dimension.\"\n\nMyers shows that he was in need of just this clue in order to\naccount for some of the dream experiences recorded in _Human\nPersonality_, since he asks for \"an intermediate conception of\nspace--something between space as we know it in the material world\nand space as we imagine it to disappear in the ideal world.\" He\nsuggests that in dreams and trance there may be a clearer and more\ncomplete perception of space than is at present possible to us. A\ncorresponding sublimation of the time sense is no less necessary to\naccount for time in dreams. Although we seem to triumph over space\nand time to such a tune as to eliminate them, dream experiences have\nboth form and sequence. Now because form presupposes space, and time\nis implicit in sequence, there arises the necessity for that\n\"intermediate conception\" of both space and time provided by our\nhypothesis.\n\n\nTHE PHENOMENON OF PAUSE\n\nLet us conceive of sleep less narrowly than we are accustomed to:\nthink of it only as one phase of the phenomenon of pause, of\narrested physical activity, universal throughout nature. The cell\nitself experiences fatigue and goes to sleep--\"perchance to dream,\"\nModern experimental science in the domain of physiology and\npsychology proves that we see and do not see, hear and do not hear,\nfeel and do not feel, in successive instants. We are asleep, in\nother words, not merely hour by hour, but moment by moment--and\nperhaps age by age as well.\n\nWhere is consciousness during these intervals, long or short, when\nthe senses fail to respond to the stimuli of the external world? It\nis somewhere else, awake to some other environment. Though we may\nnot be able to verify this from our own experience, there are\nmethods whereby it can be verified. Clairvoyance is one of these,\nhypnotism is another--that kind of hypnotism whereby an entranced\nperson is made to give a report of his excursions and adventures in\nthe mysterious House of Sleep. It is a well-known fact that these\nexperiences increase in intensity, coherence and in a certain sort\nof omniscience, directly in proportion to the depth of the trance.\nThe revelations obtained in this way are sometimes amazing. The\ninherent defect of this method of obtaining information is the\npossibility of deception, and for that reason science still looks\naskance at all evidence drawn from this source. But in essaying to\nwrite a book about the fourth dimension from any aspect but the\nmathematical, the author has put himself outside the pale of\northodox science, so he is under no compulsion to ignore a field so\nrich merely because it appears to be tainted by a certain amount of\nfallibility and is even under suspicion of fraud. Diseased oysters,\nthough not edible, produce pearls, and a pearl of great price is the\nobject of this quest. Let us glance, therefore, at the findings of\nhypnotism and kindred phenomena.\n\n\n\n\nVII  THE NIGHT SIDE OF CONSCIOUSNESS\n\n\nTHE FIELD OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH\n\nIt is difficult to divest the words hypnotism and clairvoyance of\ncertain sordid and sinister associations. We are apt to think of\nthem only as urban flora of the dust and dark, cultivated for profit\nby itinerant professors and untidy sibyls. Larger knowledge of the\nnight side of human nature, however, profoundly modifies this view.\nThe invoked image is then of some hushed and studious chamber where\na little group of people sit attentive to the voice of one\nentranced--listeners at the keyhole of the door to another world.\nThis \"news from nowhere,\" garnered under so-called test conditions\nand faithfully recorded, has grown by now to a considerable\nliterature, accessible to all--one with which every well-informed\nperson is assumed to have at least a passing acquaintance.\n\nA marked and constant characteristic of trance phenomena consists of\nan apparent confusion between past, present and future. As in the\ngame of three-card monte, it appears impossible to tell in what order\nthe three will turn up--_was, is_ and _will be_, lose their special\nsignificance. Clairvoyance, in its time aspect, whether spontaneous,\nhypnotically induced, or self-induced, is susceptible of\nclassification as post-vision, present vision, and prevision.\nPost-vision is that in which past events are not recollected merely,\nbut seen or experienced. It is the past become present. Present\nvision is clairvoyance of things transpiring elsewhere; the present,\nremote in space, but not in time. Prevision is the future in the\npresent. These various orders of _clear-seeing_ transcend the limits\nof the actual knowledge and experience of the seer. This\nclassification and these definitions are important only to us, to\nwhom past, present, and future stand sharply differentiated in\nthought and in experience; not to the clairvoyant, who, though bound\nin body to our space and time, is consciously free in a world where\nthese discriminations vanish. Why do they vanish? This question can\nbest be answered by means of a homely analogy.\n\nFor a symbol of the flow of time in waking consciousness, imagine\nyourself in a railway carriage which jogs along a main-travelled\nline at a rate predetermined by the time-table. You approach, reach\nand pass such stations as are intersected by that particular railway,\nand you get a view of the landscape which every other traveler shares.\nHaving once left a station, you cannot go back to it, nor can you\narrive at places further along the line before the train itself\ntakes you there. Compare this with the freedom to do either of these\nthings, and any number of others, if you suddenly change from the\ntrain to an automobile. Then, in effect, you have the freedom of a\nnew dimension. In the one case, you must travel along a single line\nat a uniform rate; in the other, you are able to strike out in any\ndirection and regulate your speed at will. You can go back to a\nplace after the train has left it; you can go forward to some place\nahead, before the train arrives, or you can strike out into, and\ntraverse, new country. In short, your freedom, temporal and spatial,\nwill be related to that of the train-bound traveler, somewhat as is\ntrance consciousness to everyday waking life.\n\n\nMODIFYING THE PAST\n\nModern psychology has demonstrated the existence of a great\nundercurrent of mental and emotional life, transcending the\nindividual's conscious experience, in which the most complex\nprocesses are carried on without the individual's conscious\nparticipation. The clearest symbol by which this fact may be figured\nto the imagination is the one already presented: the comparison of\nthe subjective field to a plane, in which the conscious experience\nof the individual is represented by a single line. In sleep and\ntrance we have an augmented freedom of movement and so are able to\ntravel here and there, backward and forward, not only among our own\n\"disassociated memories\" but in that greater and more mysterious\ndemesne which comprehends what we call the future, as well as the\npresent and the past.\n\nThe profound significance of the disassociation and sublimation of\nmemory by hypnotism, or by whatever other means the train of\npersonal experience and recollection can be thrown off the track,\nappears to have been ignored on its theoretical side--that is, as\nestablishing the return of time. It has cleverly been turned to\npractical account, however, in the treatment of disease. By a series\nof painstaking and brilliant experiments, the demonstration of the\nrole played by \"disassociated memories\" in causing certain\nfunctional nervous and mental troubles has been achieved. It has\nbeen shown that severe emotional shocks, frights, griefs, worries,\nmay be--and frequently are--completely effaced from conscious\nrecollection, while continuing to be vividly remembered in the\ndepths of the subconscious. It has been shown that thence they may,\nand frequently do, exercise a baleful effect upon the whole organism,\ngiving rise to disease symptoms, the particular type of which were\ndetermined by the victim's self-suggestion. As a preliminary to\neffecting a permanent cure to such disorders, it is necessary to get\nat these disassociated memories and drag them back into the full\nlight of conscious recollection. To get at them, medical\npsychologists make use of hypnotism, automatic writing,\ncrystal-gazing--in short, of any method which will force an entrance\ninto that higher time-world, whereby the forgotten past may become\nthe present. This accomplished, and the crucial moment recovered and\ntransfixed, the victim of the aborted opportunity is led to deal\nwith it as one may deal with the fluid, and may not deal with the\nfixed. Again his past is plastic to the operation of his\nintelligence and his will. Here is glad news for mortals: the past\nrecoverable and in a manner revocable!\n\nBuddha taught that all sin is ignorance, and this teaching has\nescaped oblivion because its truth has echoed in so many human hearts.\nWe find that it is possible to deal with our old ignorances in the\nlight of later knowledge. What is this but the self-forgiveness of\nsins? Subconsciously we may be always at work, mending the past.\nRepentance is the conscious recognition of some culmination of this\nobscure process, when the heart is suffused with the inner gladness\nof liberation from the payment of old karmic debts. Christ's words,\n\"Thy sins are forgiven,\" spoken to the woman who washed his feet\nwith her tears, sanctions this idea--that the past is remediable by\nknowledge and by love.\n\nConceding this much, we must equally admit the possibility of\nmoulding the future, of adjusting the will to the event which shall\nbefall. If the present moment can again intersect the stream of past\nconscious experience, it may equally do so with regard to the future.\nThis brings up the tremendous questions of free-will and\nfore-ordination. Upon these the Oriental doctrines of karma and\nreincarnation cast the only light by which the reason consents to be\nguided. As these doctrines are intimately related both to higher\ntime and to trance revelations, some consideration of karma and\nreincarnation may appropriately find place here.\n\n\nKARMA AND REINCARNATION\n\nKarma is that self-adjusting force in human affairs which restores\nharmony disturbed by action. It is the moral law of compensation,\nand by its operation produces all conditions of life, misery and\nhappiness, birth, death, and re-birth; itself being both the cause\nand the effect of action. Its operation is indicated in the phrase,\n\"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.\"\n\nThe essential idea of reincarnation is indicated in the following\nquotation from the Upanishads: \"And as a goldsmith, taking a piece\nof gold, turns it into another, newer, and more beautiful shape, so\ndoes this Self, having thrown off this body and dispelled all\nignorance, make unto himself another and more beautiful shape.\"\n\nReincarnation is the periodic \"dip\" of an immortal individual into\nmateriality for the working out of karma, after an interval, long or\nshort, spent under other conditions of existence. These alternations\nconstitute the broader and deeper diapason of human life, of which\nthe change from waking to sleeping represents the lesser, and the\nmomentary awareness and unawareness of the sense mechanism to\nstimulation, the least.\n\nThus a physical incarnation, in the broadest sense of the term, is\nthe interval, long or short, of the immersion of consciousness in\nmateriality. Under fatigue, the cell life withdraws; that is, it\nceases to respond to physical stimuli, and so passes out of\nincarnation. When this occurs _en masse_ there transpires that\nhiatus of the personal consciousness called sleep, and while sleep\nlasts the personality is out of incarnation. After death--in the\ninterval between one life and the next--the specific memories of the\npersonality fade out as in sleep, or rather, become latent, leaving\nthe soul, the permanent life-center, clear and colorless, a\nmysterious focus of spiritual forces and affinities (the seeds of\nkarma) ready for another sowing in the world of men. This center\nof consciousness is thereupon drawn to the newly forming body,\nthe life environment of which will rightly and justly--perhaps\nretributively--bring the tendencies and characteristics of the\nconscious center into objectivity again. Character is destiny, and\ncharacter is self-created. \"All that we are is the result of what we\nhave thought.\" But in the vast complexity and volume of human life\nthere is a constant production of forms, with all the varieties of\ncharacteristics and capacities requisite to meet the needs of every\nsoul, thirsty for the destiny that awaits it; and here heredity\nplays its part. Beyond the individual soul is the world-soul, which\nperiodically incarnates in the humanity of a planet, and beyond the\nworlds of a single system, suns and congeries of suns.\n\nThe profound and pregnant doctrines of karma and reincarnation, here\nso sketchily outlined, are but expansions of one of the fundamental\npropositions of all Eastern philosophical systems, that the effect is\nthe unfolding of the cause in time.\n\nTo omit a consideration of karma and reincarnation in connection\nwith higher time would be to force a passage and then not follow\nwhere it leads. The idea of time curvature is implicit in the ideas\nof karma and reincarnation. For what is karma but the return of time,\nthe flowering in the present of some seed sown elsewhere and long ago?\nAnd what is reincarnation but the major cycle of that sweep into\nobjective existence and out again, of which the alternation between\nwaking and sleeping is the lesser counterpart?\n\n\nCOLONEL DE ROCHAS' EXPERIMENTS\n\nDuring the past few years evidence has been accumulating that we\nnever really forget anything. We have rediscovered the memory of the\nsubconscious mind. It is generally known that in the mesmeric or\nsomnambulistic sleep things hopelessly beyond recall for the\nhabitual mind come to the surface, in fragments, or in whole series,\nas the case may be. It is perhaps news to some readers, however,\nthat the memory of past lives has been recovered in this way. This\nbut confirms the Eastern secret teaching that could we remember our\ndream experiences we should recover the knowledge of our past\nincarnations.\n\nAmong the achievements of Eastern hypnotism is the recovery of the\nmemory of past births. Colonel de Rochas appears to have paralleled\nthis achievement in the West. Certain of his experiments have been\nadmirably reported by Maurice Maeterlinck in the eighth chapter of\n_Our Eternity_. Maeterlinck's account, somewhat condensed, is\ngiven here, because it so well illustrates the liberation of\nconsciousness from the tyranny of time as we conceive it. He says:\n\n\"First of all, it is only right to say that Colonel de Rochas is a\nsavant who seeks nothing but objective truth and does so with a\nscientific strictness and integrity that have never been questioned.\nHe puts certain exceptional subjects into a hypnotic sleep and, by\nmeans of downward passes, makes them trace back the whole course of\ntheir existence. He thus takes them successively to their youth,\ntheir adolescence and down to the extreme limits of their childhood.\nAt each of these hypnotic stages, the subject reassumes the\nconsciousness, the character and the state of mind which he\npossessed at the corresponding stage in his life. He goes over the\nsame events, with their joys and their sorrows. If he has been ill,\nhe once more passes through his illness, his convalescence and his\nrecovery.\n\n\"Let us, to come to details, take one of the simplest cases. The\nsubject is a girl of eighteen, called Jos\u00e9phine. She lives at Voiron,\nin the department of Is\u00e9re. By means of downward passes she is\nbrought back to the condition of a baby at its mother's breast The\npasses continue and the wonder-tale runs its course. Jos\u00e9phine can\nno longer speak; and we have the great silence of infancy, which\nseems to be followed by a silence more mysterious still. Jos\u00e9phine\nno longer answers except by signs: _she is not yet born_. 'She is\nfloating in darkness.' They persist; the sleep becomes heavier; and\nsuddenly, from the depths of that sleep, rises the voice of another\nbeing, a voice unexpected and unknown, the voice of a churlish,\ndistrustful and discontented old man. They question him. At first he\nrefuses to answer, saying that 'of course he's there, and he's\nspeaking;' that 'he sees nothing;' and 'he's in the dark.' They\nincrease the number of passes and gradually gain his confidence. His\nname is Jean Claude Bourdon; he is an old man; he has long been\nailing and bedridden. He tells the story of his life. He was born at\nChampvent, in the parish of Polliat, in 1812. He went to school\nuntil he was eighteen and served his time in the army with the\nSeventh Artillery at Besan\u00e7on; and he describes his gay time there,\nwhile the sleeping girl makes gestures of twirling an imaginary\nmoustache. When he goes back to his native place, he does not marry,\nbut he has a mistress. He leads a solitary life (I omit all but the\nessential facts), and dies at the age of seventy, after a long\nillness.\n\n\"We now hear the dead man speak; and his posthumous revelations are\nnot sensational, which, however, is not an adequate reason for\ndoubting their genuineness. He feels himself growing out of his body;\nbut he remains attached to it for a fairly long time. His fluidic\nbody, which is at first diffused, takes a more concentrated form. He\nlives in darkness, which he finds disagreeable; but he does not\nsuffer. At last, the night in which he is plunged is streaked with a\nfew flashes of light. The idea comes to reincarnate himself and he\ndraws near to her who is to be his mother (that is, the mother of\nJos\u00e9phine). He encircles her until the child is born, whereupon he\ngradually enters the child's body. Until about the seventh year, his\nbody is surrounded by a sort of floating mist, in which he used to\nsee many things which he has not seen since.\n\n\"The next thing to be done is to go back beyond Jean Claude. A\nmesmerization lasting nearly three-quarters of an hour, without\nlingering at any intermediate stage, brings the old man back to\nbabyhood. A fresh silence, a new limbo; and then, suddenly, another\nvoice and an unexpected individual. This time it is an old woman who\nhas been very wicked; and so she is in great torment (she is dead,\nat the actual instant; for, in this inverted world, lives go\nbackward and of course begin at the end). She is in deep darkness,\nsurrounded by evil spirits. She speaks at first in a faint voice,\nbut always gives definite replies to the questions put to her,\ninstead of cavilling at every moment, as Jean Claude did. Her name\nis Philom\u00e9ne Carteron.\n\n\"'By intensifying the sleep,' adds Colonel de Rochas, whom I will\nnow quote, 'I induce the manifestations of a living Philom\u00e9ne. She\nno longer suffers, seems very calm and always answers coldly and\ndistinctly. She knows that she is unpopular in the neighborhood, but\nno one is a penny the worse and she will be even with them yet. She\nwas born in 1702; her maiden name was Philom\u00e9ne Cherpigny; her\ngrandfather on the mother's side was called Pierre Machon and lived\nin Ozan. In 1732 she married, at Chevroux, a man named Carterton, by\nwhom she had two children, both of whom she lost.'\"\n\nBefore her incarnation, Philom\u00e9ne had been a little girl who died in\ninfancy. Previous to that, she was a man who committed murder, and\nit was to expiate this crime that she endured such suffering in the\ndarkness, and after her life as a little girl, when she had no time\nto do wrong. Colonel de Rochas did not think it wise to carry the\nhypnosis further, because the subject appeared exhausted and her\nparoxysms were painful to watch. He obtained analogous and even more\nsurprising results with other subjects.\n\nMaeterlinck's comments upon all this are of negligible value. He\npays a fine tribute to the theory of reincarnation. \"There was never\na more beautiful, a juster, a purer, a more moral, fruitful and\nprobable creed,\" he says: yet for all that, it is clear that he has\nnot been at pains fully to inform himself of the Eastern teaching.\n\nColonel de Rochas' success, and that of all other experimenters\nalong these lines, is due to their unconscious following of the\nEastern method. He himself says that he \"avoided everything that\nshould put the subject on a definite tack,\"--that is, he refrained\nfrom voluntary suggestion.\n\nHaving referred so frequently and so familiarly to the Eastern\nbelief in reincarnation, and hinted at a more solid foundation for\nthat belief than the single series of experiments above referred to,\nit would be unfair to the reader not to gratify his curiosity more\nfully in regard to these matters. In the light of our hypothesis\nthey take on an importance which justifies their further\nconsideration here.\n\n\n\n\nVIII THE EASTERN TEACHING\n\n\nORIENTAL PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS\n\nWestern physical science, pursued with ardor and devotion for the\npast hundred years, has attained to a control over physical phenomena\nlittle short of magical, but in our understanding and mastery of\nsubjective phenomena we are far behind those Eastern peoples who\nhave made these matters the subject of study and experiment for\nthousands of years. The informed Hindu, rightly or wrongly, regards\nthe Western practice of hypnotism, both in its methods and in its\nresults, with mingled horror and contempt. To him it is not\ndifferent from Black Magic, pernicious to operator and subject alike,\nsince it involves an unwarrantable tyranny of the will on the part\nof the operator, and a dangerous submission to the obsession of an\ninvading will on the part of the subject. Eastern hypnotism--at its\nhighest and best--is profoundly different from Western, in that the\nsanctity of the individual is respected. Its aim is not to enslave\nthe will, but temporarily to emancipate consciousness, under\nfavorable circumstances, from its physical limitation.\n\nEastern practical psychology and metaphysics can be understood only\nthrough a knowledge of Eastern physics. These we would call\ntranscendental, since they recognize not one theatre of consciousness,\nbut three: the gross, the subtle, and the pure. These correspond to\nthe material, the etherial, and the empyreal worlds of Greek\nphilosophy, and to the physical, astral, and mental planes of modern\nTheosophy. They may be thought of as universal substance in three\ndifferent octaves of vibration. Upon this, the trained will of man\nis able to act directly, for the reason that--as claimed by\nBalzac--it is a _living_ force.\n\nIn Eastern hypnotism the gross vibrations of the physical vehicle\nare inhibited by the will of the operator, putting the body of the\nsubject to sleep, whereat the consciousness, free in its subtle body,\nawakens to a dimensionally higher world. The operator, by means of\nquestions, reaps such profit as he may by following the \"true dreams\"\nof the entranced subject, scrupulously refraining from imposing his\nown will further than is necessary to obtain the information which he\nseeks. The higher power of Eastern hypnotism, totally unknown in the\nWest, consists of inhibiting the subtle vibrations of the astral\nvehicle also, permitting the consciousness to revert to its\n\"pure\" condition. In these deep states of trance the subject is able\nto communicate knowledges shut away from the generality of\nmen--among them the knowledge of past births.\n\n\nTHE SELF-RECOVERED MEMORY OF PAST BIRTHS\n\nThe strength of will necessary to accomplish this higher power of\nhypnotism is achieved by arduous and long-continued exercises in\nconcentration, by the practice of a strict morality, and by\nsubmission to a physical regimen which few Occidentals would care to\nundergo. Severe as is this training, it is less so than that which\nthe true Yogi imposes upon himself, and its fruits are less. The\nachievement to which he addresses himself is far beyond that of the\nmost accomplished hypnotist. The Yogi scorns all supernormal powers,\neven while possessing them. The Yogi, as the word implies--it means\nliterally union--seeks to unite himself with his own higher self, the\neternal and immortal part of his own nature, and the achievement of\nthis brings with it the freedom of the three worlds at all times,\nand in full consciousness. As this involves an inward turning of the\nmind and will, and the withdrawal from the ordinary active life of\naverage humanity, he alone is witness of his own success. \"The rest\nis silence.\"\n\nThe knowledge of past births which may be obtained by the\nquestionable and cumbersome method of hypnotism is one of the\nwayside flowers which the Yogi may pluck, if he will, on his path\ntowards perfection. There are definite rules for the attainment of\nthis knowledge, and they conform so closely to Colonel de Rochas'\nmethod--save for the fact that operator and subject are one and not\ntwain--that it will be interesting to give them here. The ensuing\npassage is from the _Vishuddhi Marga_, or _Path of Purity_, a work\nwritten some sixteen hundred years ago by the famous sage,\nBuddhaghosha, whose name signifies the Voice of Buddha, the revealer\nof Buddha's teachings. It is quoted in Charles Johnston's _The\nMemory of Past Births_.\n\n\"The devotee, then, who tries for the first time to call to mind\nformer states of existence, should choose a time after breakfast,\nwhen he has returned from collecting alms, and is alone and plunged\nin meditation, and has been absorbed in the four trances in\nsuccession. On rising from the fourth trance, which leads to the\nhigher powers, he should consider the event which last took place,\nnamely, his sitting down; next, the spreading of the mat; the\nentering of the room; the putting away of bowl and robe; his eating;\nhis leaving the village; his going the rounds of the village for alms;\nhis entering the village for alms; his departure from the monastery;\nhis offering adoration in the courts of the shrine and of the Bodhi\ntree; his washing the bowl; what he did between taking the bowl and\nrinsing his mouth; what he did at dawn; what he did in the middle\nwatch of the night; what he did in the first watch of the night.\nThus he must consider what he did for a whole day and night, going\nbackwards over it in reverse order.\n\n\"In the same reverse order he must consider what he did the day\nbefore, the day before that, up to the fifth day, the tenth day, a\nfortnight ago, a month ago, a year ago; and having in the same\nmanner considered the previous ten and twenty years, and so on up to\nthe time of his conception in this birth, he must then consider the\nname and form which he had at the moment of death in his last birth.\nBut since the name and form of the last birth came quite to an end,\nand were replaced by others, this point of time is like thick\ndarkness, and difficult to be made out by the mind of any person\nstill deluded. But even such a one should not despair nor say: 'I\nshall never be able to penetrate beyond conception, or take as the\nobject of my thought the name and form which I had in my last birth,\nat the moment of death,' but he should again and again enter the\ntrance which leads to the higher powers, and each time he rises from\nthe trance, he should again intend his mind upon that point of time.\n\n\"Just as a strong man in cutting down a mighty tree to be used as\nthe peaked roof of a pagoda, if the edge of his axe be turned in\nlopping off the branches and twigs, will not despair of cutting down\nthe tree, but will go to an iron-worker's shop, have his axe\nsharpened, return, and go on with his cutting; and if the edge of\nhis axe be turned a second time, he will a second time have it\nsharpened, and return, and go on with his cutting; and since nothing\nthat he chopped once needs to be chopped again, he will in no long\ntime, when there is nothing left to chop, fell that mighty tree. In\nthe same way the devotee rising from the trance which leads to the\nhigher powers, without considering what he has considered once, and\nconsidering only the moment of conception, in no long time will\npenetrate beyond the moment of conception, and take as his object\nthe name and form which he had at the moment of death, in his last\nbirth.\n\n\"His alert attention having become possessed of this knowledge, he\ncan call to mind many former states of existence, as, one birth, two\nbirths, three births, four births, five births, and so on, in the\nwords of the text.\"\n\nThis quotation casts an interesting light upon Eastern monasticism.\nThe Buddhist monasteries are here revealed as schools of practical\npsychology, the life of the monk a life of arduous and unceasing\nlabor, but labor of a sort which seems but idleness. The successive\n\"initiations\" which are the milestones on the \"Path of Perfection\"\nupon which the devotee has set his feet represent successive\nemancipations of consciousness gained through work and knowledge.\nTheir nature may best be understood by means of a fanciful analogy.\n\n\nRELEASE\n\nIf we assume that all life is conscious life, as much aware of its\nenvironment as the freedom of movement of its life vehicle in that\nenvironment permits, a corpuscle vibrating in a solid would have a\ncertain sense of space and of movement in space gained from its own\nexperience. Now imagine the solid, which is its world, to be\nsubjected to the influence of heat. When the temperature reached a\ncertain point the solid would transform itself into a liquid. To the\ncorpuscle all the old barriers would seem to be broken down; space\nwould be different, time would be different, and its world a\ndifferent place. Again, at another increase of temperature, when the\nliquid became a gas, the corpuscle would experience a further\nemancipation: it would possess a further freedom, with all the facts\nof its universe to learn anew.\n\nEach of these successive crises would constitute for it an initiation,\nand since the heat has acted upon it from within, causing an\nexpansion of its life vehicle, it would seem to itself to have\nattained to these new freedoms through self-development.\n\nThe parallel is now plain to the reader: the corpuscle is the Yogi,\nbent on liberation: the heat which warms him is the Divine Love,\ncentered in his heart, his initiations are the successive\nemancipations into higher and higher spaces, till he attains\nNirvana--inherits the kingdom prepared for him from the foundation\nof the world. As latent heat resides in the corpuscle, so is _Release_\nhidden in the heart--release from time and space. The perception of\nthis prompted the exultant apostrophe of Buddha, \"Looking for the\nmaker of this tabernacle, I have run through a course of many births,\nnot finding him; and painful is birth again and again. But now,\nmaker of the tabernacle, thou hast been seen; thou shalt not make up\nthis tabernacle again. All thy rafters are broken, thy ridge-pole is\nsundered; the mind, approaching the Eternal, has attained the\nextinction of all desires.\"\n\nUpon the mystery of Nirvana the Higher Space Hypothesis casts not a\nlittle light. To \"approach the Eternal\" can only be to approach a\ncondition where time is not. Because there is an escape from time in\nproportion as space dimensions are added to, and assimilated by,\nconsciousness, any development involving this element of space\nconquest (and evolution is itself such a development) involves time\nannihilation also. To be in a state of desire is to be conditioned\nby a limitation, because one can desire only that which one has not\nor is not. The extinction of a desire is only another name for the\ntranscending of a limitation--of all desires, of all limitations. If\nthese limitations are of space they are of time also; therefore is\nthe \"approach to the Eternal\" through the \"extinction of all desire.\"\nChrist said, \"Him that overcometh will I make a pillar of the temple\nof my God, and he shall go no more out\"--go out, that is, into\nincarnation--into \"time, besprent with seven-hued circumstance.\"\n\nSuch are the testimonies of the world-saviors regarding the means\nand end of liberation. Below them on the evolutionary ladder stand\nthe mystics, earth-bound, but soul-free; below them, in turn, yet\nfar above common humanity, stand the men of genius, caught still in\nthe net of passion, but able, in their work, to reflect something of\nthe glory of the supernal world. Let us consider, in the next two\nchapters, each of these in turn.\n\n\n\n\nIX  THE MYSTICS\n\n\nHERMES TRISMEGISTUS\n\nThe mystic, however far removed he may be from Nietzsche's ideal of\nthe Superman, nevertheless represents superhumanity in the domain of\nconsciousness. By means of quotations, taken almost at random from\nthe rich literature of mysticism, the author will attempt to show\nthat the consciousness of the mystic involves the awareness of\ndimensionally higher worlds. The first group of quotations is culled\nfrom certain of the Sacred Books of Hermes Trismegistus.\n\n\"_Comprehend clearly_\" (says Hermes to Asclepios) \"_that this\nsensible world is enfolded, as in a garment, by the supernal world_.\"\n\nWe think of our three dimensional space, \"the sensible world,\" as\n_immersed_ in higher space; \"enfolded as in a garment,\" therefore.\nAnd we think of the objects of our world as having extension in a\ndimensionally higher region, that \"supernal world\" in which the\nphenomena of this sensible world arise. For:\n\n\"_Celestial order reigns over terrestrial order: all that is done\nand said upon earth has its origin in the heights, from which all\nessences are dispensed with measure and equilibrium: nor is there\nanything which does not emanate from one above and return thither_\"\n\n\nTHE PAGE AND THE PRESS\n\nThe idea of an all-embracing unity within and behind the seeming\nmanifoldness of life forms the ground rhythm of all inspired\nliterature, sacred and profane alike. For clarity and conciseness it\nwould be difficult to improve upon the formulation of this idea\ncontained in the following fragment:\n\n\"_In the manifold unity of universal life the innumerable\nindividualities distinguished by their variations are, nevertheless,\nunited in such a manner that the whole is one, and that everything\nproceeds from unity_.\n\n\"_For all things depend upon unity, or develop from it, and because\nthey appear distant from one another it is believed that they are\nmany, whereas in their collectivity they form but one_.\"\n\nNow nothing so successfully resolves this paradox of the one and the\nmany as the concept that the things of this world are embraced and\nunited in a dimensionally higher world in a manner analogous to that\nin which all conic sections are embraced and united within the cone.\nA more elaborate and fanciful figure may serve to make this clearer\nto the mind.\n\nConceive of this printed page as a plane world in which every letter\nis a person; every word a family; phrases and sentences, larger\ncommunities and groups. These \"innumerable individualities,\ndistinguished by their variations\" must needs seem to themselves as\n\"distant from one another,\" their very differences of form and\narrangement a barrier to any superior unity. Yet all the while,\nsolely by reason of this diversity, they are co-operating towards an\nend of which they cannot be aware. The mind of the reader unites and\ninterprets the letters into continuous thought, though they be\nvoiceless as stones to one another. Even so may our sad and stony\nidentities spell out a world's word which we know not of, by reason\nof our singularity and isolation. Moreover, in the electrotype block,\nthe solid of which the printed page constitutes a plane presentment,\nall the letters are actually \"united in such a manner that the whole\nis one.\" The metal that has moulded each into its significant form\namalgamates them into a higher unity. So also the power that makes\nus separate is the same power that makes us one.\n\n\nTHE SHIP AND ITS CAPTAIN\n\nHere follows the lament of the souls awaiting incarnation:\n\n  \"_Behold the sad future in store for us--to minister to the wants of\n  a fluctuating and dissoluble body! No more may our eyes distinguish\n  the souls divine! Hardly through these watery spheres shall we\n  perceive, with sighs, our ancestral heaven: at intervals even we\n  shall cease altogether to behold it. By this disastrous sentence\n  direct vision is denied to us; we can see only by the aid of the\n  outer light; these are but windows that we possess--not eyes. Nor\n  will our pain be less when we hear in the fraternal breathing of the\n  winds with which no longer can we mingle our own, since ours will\n  have for its dwelling, instead of the sublime and open world, the\n  narrow prison of the breast_!\"\n\nThat the soul--the so-called subliminal self--draws from a broader,\ndeeper experience than the purely rational consciousness is a\ncommonplace of modern psychology. Hinton conceives of the soul as\n_higher-dimensional_ with relation to the body, but so concerned\nwith the management and direction of its lower-dimensional vehicle\nas to have lost, for the time being, its orientation, thinking and\nmoving only in those ways of which the body is capable. The analogy\nhe uses, of a ship and its captain, is so happy, and the whole\npassage has so direct a bearing upon the Hermetic fragment quoted,\nthat it is given here entire.\n\n\"I adopt the hypothesis that that which thinks in us has an ample\nexperience, of which the intuitions we use in dealing with the world\nof real objects are a part; of which experience, the intuition of\nfour-dimensional forms and motions is also a part. The process we\nare engaged in intellectually is the reading of the obscure signals\nof our nerves into a world of reality, by means of intuitions\nderived from the inner experience.\n\n\"The image I form is as follows: Imagine the captain of a modern\nbattleship directing its course. He has his charts before him; he is\nin communication with his associates and subordinates; can convey his\nmessages and commands to every part of the ship, and receive\ninformation from the conning tower and the engine room. Now suppose\nthe captain, immersed in the problem of the navigation of his ship\nover the ocean, to have so absorbed himself in the problem of the\ndirection of the craft over the plane surface of the sea that he\nforgets himself. All that occupies his attention is the kind of\nmovement that his ship makes. The operations by which that movement\nis produced have sunk below the threshold of his consciousness; his\nown actions, by which he pushes the buttons, gives the orders, are\nso familiar as to be automatic; his mind is on the motion of the\nship as a whole. In such a case we can imagine that he identifies\nhimself with the ship; all that enters his conscious thought is the\ndirection of its movement over the plane surface of the ocean.\n\n\"Such is the relation, as I imagine it, of the soul to the body. A\nrelation which we can imagine as existing momentarily in the case of\nthe captain is the normal one in the case of the soul with its craft.\nAs the captain is capable of a kind of movement, an amplitude of\nmotion, which does not enter into his thoughts with regard to the\ndirecting of the ship over the plane surface of the ocean, so the\nsoul is capable of a kind of movement, has an amplitude of motion,\nwhich is not used in its task of directing the body in the\nthree-dimensional region in which the body's activity lies. If for\nany reason it becomes necessary for the captain to consider\nthree-dimensional motions with regard to his ship, it would not be\ndifficult for him to gain the materials for thinking about such\nmotions; all he has to do is to call experience into play. As far as\nthe navigation of the ship is concerned, however, he is not obliged\nto call on such experience. The ship as a whole simply moves on a\nsurface. The problem of three-dimensional movement does not\nordinarily concern its steering. And thus with regard to ourselves\nall those movements and activities which characterize our bodily\norgans are three-dimensional; we never need to consider the ampler\nmovements. But we do more than use these movements of our body to\neffect our aims by direct means; we have now come to the pass when\nwe act indirectly on nature, when we call processes into play which\nlie beyond the reach of any explanation we can give by the kind of\nthought which has been sufficient for the steering of our craft as a\nwhole.\n\n\"When we come to the problem of what goes on in the minute and apply\nourselves to the mechanism of the minute, we find our habitual\nconceptions inadequate. The captain in us must wake up to his own\nintimate nature, realize those functions of movement which are his\nown, and in the virtue of his knowledge of them apprehend how to\ndeal with the problems he has come to.\"\n\n  _The Fourth Dimension_.\n\nHow more accurately and eloquently could \"the captain in us,\"\nmomentarily aroused, give voice to his predicament, than in the words,\n\"_Instead of the sublime and open world, the narrow prison of the\nbreast_.\"\n\n\nDIRECT VISION\n\nThe \"watery spheres\" in the Hermetic fragment are of course the eyes,\na mechanism inferior in many ways to the camera of man's own devising.\nThe phenomena of clairvoyance make known a mode of vision which is\nconfined to no specific sense organ, approximating much more closely\nto true perception than does physical sight. Mr. C.W. Leadbeater in\n_Clairvoyance_ specifically affirms that this higher power of\nsight is four-dimensional. He says: \"The idea of the fourth\ndimension as expounded by Mr. Hinton is the only one which gives any\nkind of explanation down here of astral vision ... which lays every\npoint in the interior of a solid body absolutely open to the gaze of\nthe seer, just as every point of the interior of a circle lies open\nto the gaze of a man looking down upon it.\" \"I can see all around and\nevery way,\" exclaims one of the psychometers reported in William\nDenton's _The Soul of Things_.\n\nThe \"outer light\" by which the physical eye is able to see objects\nis sunlight. Upon this clairvoyant vision in no wise depends,\ninvolving, as it does, other octaves of vibration. We should be able\nto receive ideas of this order without incredulity since the advent\nof \"dark\" photography and the ultra-violet microscope. By aid of the\nlatter, photographs are taken in absolute darkness, the lenses used\nbeing transparent to light rays invisible to the eye, but active\nphotographically.\n\nThe foregoing passages from _The Virgin of the World_ show a\nremarkable resemblance between the Hermetic philosophy and modern\nhigher-space thought. The parallelism is not less striking in the\ncase of certain other mystic philosophers of the East.\n\n\nPLATO'S SHADOW-WATCHERS\n\n\"Parmenides,\" says Hinton, \"and the Asiatic thinkers with whom he is\nin close affinity, propound a theory of existence which is in close\naccord with a conception of a possible relation between a higher and\na lower-dimensional space.\" He concludes, \"Either one of two things\nmust be true, that four-dimensional conceptions give a wonderful\npower of representing the thought of the East, or that the thinkers\nof the East must have been looking at and regarding four-dimensional\nexistence.\"\n\nIt would not be difficult to re-state, in terms of our hypothesis,\nPlato's doctrine of an enduring archetypal world of ideas reflected\nin a world of transitory images and appearances. Fortunately, Plato\nhas relieved the author of that necessity by doing it himself in his\nwonderful allegory of the shadow-watchers in _The Republic_. The\ntrend of his argument is clear; as its shadow is to a solid object,\nso is the object itself to its archetypal idea. This is the manner\nin which he presents this thought:\n\n\"Imagine a number of men living in an underground cavernous chamber,\nwith an entrance open to the light, extending along the entire\nlength of the cavern, in which they have been confined, from their\nchildhood, with their legs and neck so shackled, that they are\nobliged to sit still and look straight forwards, because their\nchains render it impossible for them to turn their heads round: and\nimagine a bright fire burning some way off, above and behind them,\nand an elevated roadway passing between the fire and the prisoners,\nwith a low wall built along it, like the screens which conjurors put\nup in front of their audience, and above which they exhibit their\nwonders.\"\n\n  \"I have it,\" he replied.\n\n\"Also, figure to yourself a number of persons walking behind this\nwall, and carrying with them statues of men, and images of other\nanimals, wrought in wood, stone, and all kinds of materials, together\nwith various other articles, which overtop the wall; and, as you\nmight expect, let some of the passers-by be talking, and others\nsilent\"\n\n\"You are describing a strange scene, and strange prisoners.\"\n\n\"They resemble us,\" I replied. \"For let me ask you, in the first\nplace, whether persons so confined could have seen anything of\nthemselves or of each other, beyond the shadows thrown by the fire\nupon the part of the cavern facing them.\"\n\n\"Certainly not, if you suppose them to have been compelled all their\nlifetime to keep their heads unmoved.\"\n\n\"And is not their knowledge of the things carried past them equally\nlimited?\"\n\n\"Unquestionably it is.\"\n\n\"And if they were able to converse with one another, do you not\nthink that they would be in the habit of giving names to the objects\nwhich they saw before them?\"\n\n\"Doubtless they would.\"\n\n\"Again: if their prison house returned an echo from the part facing\nthem, whenever one of the passers-by opened his lips, to what, let\nme ask you, could they refer the voice, if not to the shadow which\nwas passing?\"\n\n\"Unquestionably they would refer it to that.\"\n\n\"Then surely such persons would hold the shadows of the manufactured\narticles to be the only realities.\"\n\n\"Without a doubt they would.\"\n\nPlato (in the person of Socrates) then considers what would happen\nif the course of nature brought to the prisoners a release from\ntheir fetters and a remedy for their foolishness, and concludes as\nfollows:\n\n\"Now this imaginary case, my dear Glaucon, you must apply in all its\nparts to our former statements, by comparing the region which the\neye reveals, to the prison-house, and the light of the fire therein\nto the power of the sun; and if, by the upward ascent and the\ncontemplation of the upper world, you understand the mounting of the\nsoul in the intellectual region, you will hit the tendency of my own\nsurmises ... the view which I take of the subject is to the\nfollowing effect.\"\n\nBriefly, the view taken is that the \"Form of Good\" perceived by the\nmind is the source of everything that is perceived by the senses.\nThis is equivalent to saying that the objects of our three-space\nworld are projections of higher-dimensional realities--that there is\na supernal world related to this world as a body is related to the\nshadow which it casts.\n\n\nSWEDENBORG\n\nEmerson, in his _Representative Men_, chose Swedenborg as the\nrepresentative mystic. He accepted Swedenborg's way of looking at\nthe world as universally characteristic of the mystical temperament.\nThe Higher Space Theory was unheard of in Swedenborg's day,\nnevertheless in his religious writings--thick clouds shot with\nlightning--the idea is implicit and sometimes even expressed, though\nin a terminology all his own.\n\nTo Swedenborg's vision, as to Plato's, this physical world is a\nworld of ultimates, in all things correspondent to the casual world,\nwhich he names \"heaven.\" \"_It is to be observed_,\" he says,\n\"_that the natural world exists and subsists from the spiritual world,\njust as an effect exists from its efficient cause_.\"\n\nAccording to Swedenborg, conditions in \"heaven\" are different from\nthose in the world: space is different: distance is different He says,\n\"_Space in heaven is not like space in the world, for space in the\nworld is fixed, and therefore measurable: but in heaven it is not\nfixed and therefore cannot be measured_.\"\n\nHerein is suggested a _fluidic_ condition, singularly in accord with\ncertain modern conceptions in theoretical physics. Commenting upon\nthe significance of Lobatchewsky's and Bolyai's work along the lines\nof non-Euclidian geometry, Hinton says, \"By immersing the conception\nof distance in matter, to which it properly belongs, it promises to\nbe of the greatest aid in analysis, for the effective distance of\nany two particles is the result of complex material conditions, and\ncannot be measured by hard and fast rules.\"\n\nThe higher correlative of physical distance is a difference of state\nor condition, according to the Norwegian seer. \"_Those are far apart\nwho differ much_,\" he says \"_and those are near who differ little_.\"\nDistance in the spiritual world, he declares, originates solely\n\"_in the difference in the state of their minds, and in the heavenly\nworld, from the difference in the state of their loves_.\" This\nimmediately suggests the Oriental teaching that the place and human\nenvironment into which a man is born have been determined by his own\nthoughts, desires, and affections in anterior existences, and that\ninstant by instant all are determining their future births. The\nreader to whom the idea of reincarnation is repellent or unfamiliar\nmay not be prepared to go this length, but he must at least grant\nthat in the span of a single lifetime thought and desire determine\naction, and consequently, position in space. The ambitious man goes\nfrom the village to the city; the lover of nature seeks the wilds;\nthe misanthrope avoids his fellowmen, the gregarious man gravitates\nto crowds. We seek out those whom we love, we avoid those whom we\ndislike; everywhere the forces of attraction and repulsion play\ntheir part in determining the tangled orbits of our every-day lives.\nIn other words, the subjective, and (hypothetically) higher activity\nin every man records itself in a world of three dimensions as action\nupon an environment. Thought expresses itself in action, and so\nflows outward into space.\n\nObserve how perfectly this fits in with Swedenborg's contention that\nphysical remoteness has for its higher correspondence a difference\nof love and of interest; and physical juxtaposition, a similarity of\nthese. In heaven, he says, \"Angels of similar character are as it\nwere spontaneously drawn together.\" So would it be on earth, but for\nimpediments inherent in our terrestrial space. Swedenborg's angels\nare men freed from these limitations. We suffer because the free\nthing in us is hampered by the restrictions of a space to which it\nis not native. Reason sufficient for such restriction is apparent in\nthe success that crowns every effort at the annihilation of space,\nand the augmentation of power and knowledge that such effort brings.\nIt would appear that a narrowing of interest and endeavor is always\nthe price of efficiency. The angel is confined to \"the narrow prison\nof the breast\" that it may react upon matter just as an axe is\nnarrowed to an edge that it may cleave.\n\n\nMAN THE SPACE-EATER\n\nMan has been called the thinking animal. _Space-eater_ would be a\nmore appropriate title, since he so dauntlessly and persistently\naddresses himself to overcoming the limitations of his space. To\nrealize his success in this, compare, for example, the voyage of\nColumbus' caravels with that of an ocean liner; or traveling by\nstage coach with _train de luxe_. Consider the telephone,\nthe phonograph, the cinematograph, from the standpoint of\nspace-conquest--and wireless telegraphy which sends forth messages\nin every direction, over sea and land. Most impressive of all are\nthe achievements in the domain of astronomy. One by one the sky has\nyielded its amazing secrets, till the mind roams free among the stars.\nThe reason why there are to-day so many men braving death in the air\nis because the conquest of the third dimension is the task to which\nthe Zeit-Geist has for the moment addressed itself, and these\nintrepid aviators are its chosen instruments--sacrificial pawns in\nthe dimension-gaining game.\n\nAll these things are only the outward and visible signs of the angel,\nincarnate in a world of three dimensions, striving to realize higher\nspatial, or heavenly, conditions. This spectacle, for example, of a\nmillionaire hurled across a continent in a special train to be\npresent at the bedside of a stricken dear one, may be interpreted as\nthe endeavor of an incarnate soul to achieve, with the aid of human\ningenuity applied to space annihilation, that which, discarnate, it\ncould compass without delay or effort.\n\n\nTHE WITHIN AND WITHOUT\n\nIn Swedenborg's heaven \"_all communicate by the extension of the\nsphere which goes forth from the life_ _of every one. The sphere of\ntheir life is the sphere of their affections of love and hate_.\"\n\nThis is as fair a description of thought transference and its\nnecessary condition as could well be devised, for as in wireless\ntelegraphy, its mechanical counterpart, it depends upon synchronism\nof vibration in a \"sphere which goes forth from the life of every one.\"\nThought transference and kindred phenomena in which all categories\nof space and time lose their significance baffle our understanding\nbecause they appear to involve the idea of being in two places--in\nmany places--at once, a thing manifestly at variance with our own\nconscious experience. It is as though the pen point should suddenly\nbecome the sheet of paper. But strange as are these matters and\nmysterious as are their method, no other hypothesis so well explains\nthem as that they are higher-dimensional experiences of the self. We\nhave the universal testimony of all mystics that the attainment of\nmystical consciousness is by inward contemplation--turning the mind\nback upon itself. Swedenborg says, \"_It can in no case be said that\nheaven is outside of any one, but it is within him for every angel\nparticipates in the heaven around him by virtue of the heaven which\nis within him_.\" Christ said, \"_The Kingdom of Heaven is within you_,\"\nand there is a saying attributed to Him to the effect that \"_When\nthe outside becomes the inside, then the Kingdom of Heaven is come_.\"\nThese and such arcane sayings as \"_Know Thyself_\" engraved upon the\nlintels of ancient temples of initiation, powerfully suggest the\npossibility that by penetrating to the center of our individual\nconsciousness we expand outwardly into the cosmic consciousness as\nthough _in_ and _out_ were the positive and negative of a new\ndimension. By exerting a force in the negative direction upon a\nslender column of water in a hydraulic press, it is possible to\nraise in the positive direction a vast bulk of water with which that\ncolumn, through the mechanism of the press, is connected. This is\nbecause both columns, the little and the big, enclose one body of\nfluid. The attainment of higher states of consciousness is potential\nin every one, for the reason that the consciousness of a greater\nbeing flows through each individual.\n\n\nINTUITION AND REASON\n\nThere is the utmost unanimity in the testimony of the mystics that\nthe world without and the world within are but different aspects of\nthe same reality--\"_The eye with which I see God is the same eye with\nwhich He sees me_.\" They never weary of the telling of the\nsolidarity and invisible continuity of life, the inclusion not only\nof the minute in the vast, but of the vast in the minute. We may\naccept this form of perception as characteristic of consciousness in\nits free state. Its instrument is the _intuition_, which divines\nrelations between diverse things through a perception of unity. The\ninstrument of the purely mundane consciousness, on the other hand,\nis the _reason_, which dissevers and dissects phenomena, divining\nunity through correlation. Now if physical phenomena, in all their\nmanifoldness, are lower-dimensional projections, upon a\nlower-dimensional space, of a higher unity, then reason and\nintuition are seen to be two modes of one intelligence, engaged in\napprehending life from below (by means of the reason) through its\ndiversity, and from above (by means of intuition) through its unity.\n\nThose who recognize in the intuition a valid organ of knowledge, are\ndisposed to exalt it above the reason, but at our present state of\nevolution, and given our environment, it would seem that the reason\nis the more generally useful faculty of the two. In that unfolding,\nthat manifesting of the higher in the lower--which is the idea the\nfour-dimensionalist has of the world--the painstaking, minute,\nmethodical action of the reasoning mind applied to phenomena\nachieves results impossible to Pisgah-sighted intuition. The power,\npeculiar to the reason, of isolating part after part from the whole\nto which it belongs, and considering them thus isolated, makes\npossible in the end a synthesis in which the whole is not merely\nglimpsed, but known to the last detail.\n\nThe method of the reason is symbolized in so trifling a thing as the\ndealing out one by one of a pack of cards and their reassembling.\nThe pack has been made to show forth its content by a process of\ndisruption--of slicing. Similarly, if a scientist wants to gain a\nthorough comprehension of a complicated organism, he dissects it, or\nsubmits it to a process of slicing, studying each slice separately\nunder the microscope while keeping constantly in mind the relation\nof one slice to another. This amounts to nothing less than reducing\na thing from three dimensions to two, in order to know it thoroughly.\nNow the flux of things corresponds to the four-dimensional aspect of\nthe world, and with this the reason finds it impossible to deal. As\nBergson has so well shown, the reason cuts life into countless\ncross-sections: a thing must be dead before it can be dissected.\nThis is why the higher-dimensional aspect of life, divined by the\nintuition, escapes rational analysis.\n\n\nTHE COIL OF LIFE\n\nSwedenborg's description of \"the ascent and descent of forms\" and\nthe \"forces and powers\" which flow therefrom, suggests, by reason of\nthe increasing amplitude and variety of form and motion, a\nprogression from space to space. This description is too long and\ninvolved to find place here, but its conclusion is as follows:\n\n\"_Such now is the ascent and descent of forms or substances in the\ngreatest, and in our least universe: similar also is the descent of\nall forces and powers which flow from them. But all their perfection\nconsists in the possibility and virtue of varying themselves, or of\nchanging states, which possibility increases with their elevations,\nso that in number it exceeds all the series of calculations unfolded\nby human minds, and still inwardly involved by them: which\ninfinities finally become what is finite in the Supreme. Our ideas\nare merely progressions by variations of form, and thus by actual\nchanges of state_.\"\n\nHis sense of the beauty and orderliness of the whole process, and\nhis despair of communicating it, find characteristic utterance in\nthe following passage:\n\n\"_If thou could'st discern, my beloved, how distinctly and\nordinately these forms are arranged and connected with each other,\nfrom the mere aspect and infinity of so many wonderful things\nconnected with each other, from the mere aspect and infinity of so\nmany wonderful things conspiring into one, thou would'st fall down,\nfrom an inmost impulse, with sacred astonishment, and at the same\ntime pious joy, to perform an act of worship and of love before such\nan architect_.\"\n\nIn his description of the manner in which these forms cohere and\nsuccessively unfold, he introduces one of the basic concepts of\nhigher space thought; namely, that in the \"descent of forms\" from\nspace to space, that which in the higher exists all together--that\nis, _simultaneously_--can only manifest itself in the lower\npiecemeal--that is, _successively_. He says:\n\n\"_Nothing is together in any texture or effect which was not\nsuccessively introduced; and everything is therein, according as\norder itself introduces it: wherefore simultaneous order derives its\nbirth, nature and perfection from successive orders, and the former\nis only rendered perspicuous and plain by the latter.... What is\nsupreme in things successive takes the inmost place in things\nsimultaneous: thus things superior in order super-involve things\ninferior and wrap them together, that these latter may become\nexterior in the same order: by this method first principles, which\nare also called simple, unfold themselves, and involve themselves in\nthings posterior or compound: wherefore every perfection of what is\noutermost flows forth from inmost principles by their series: hence\nthy beauty, my daughter, the only parent of which is order itself_.\"\n\nThis passage, like a proffered dish full of rare fruit, tempts the\nmetaphysical appetite by the wealth and variety of its appeal; but\nnot to weary the reader, the author will content himself by the\nabstraction of a single plum. The plum in question is simply this\n(and the reader is asked to read the quotation carefully again): may\nnot every act, incident, circumstance in a human life be the\n\"uncoiling\" of a karmic aggregate? This coil of life may be thought\nof most conveniently in this connection as the _character_ of the\nperson, a character built up, or \"successively introduced\" in\nantecedent lives. The sequence of events resultant on its \"unwinding\"\nwould be the destiny of the person--a destiny determined, necessarily,\nby past action. This concept gives a new and more eloquent meaning\nto the phrase \"Character is destiny.\" If we carry our thought no\nfurther, we are plunged into the slough of determinism--sheer\nfatality. But in each reincarnation, however predetermined every act\nand event, their reaction upon consciousness remains a matter of\ndetermination--is therefore _self_-determined. We may not control\nthe event, but our acceptance of it we may control. Moreover, each\n\"unwinding\" of the karmic coil takes place in a new environment, in a\nworld more highly organized by reason of the play upon it of the\ncollective consciousness of mankind. Though the same individual\nagain and again intersects the stream of mundane experience, it is an\nevolving ego and an augmenting stream. Therefore each life of a\ngiven series forms a different, a more intricate, and a more amazing\npattern: in each the thread is drawn from nearer the central energy,\nwhich is divine, and so shows forth more of the coiled power within\nthe soul.\n\n\n\n\nX  GENIUS\n\n\nIMMANENCE\n\nThe greatest largess to the mind which higher thought brings is the\nconviction of a transcendent existence. Though we do not know the\nnature of this existence, except obscurely, we are assured of its\nreality and of its immanence, through a growing sense that all that\nhappens to us is simply our relation to it.\n\nIn our ant-like efforts to attain to some idea of the nature of this\ntranscendent reality, let us next avail ourselves of the help\nafforded by the artist and the man of genius, too troubled by the\nflesh for perfect clarity of vision, too troubled by the spirit not\nto attempt to render or record the Pisgah-glimpses of the\nworld-order now and then vouchsafed. For the genius stands midway\nbetween man and Beyond-man: in Nietzsche's phrase, \"Man is a bridge\nand not a goal.\"\n\nOf all the writers on the subject of genius, Schopenhauer is the\nmost illuminating, perhaps because he suffered from it so. According\nto him, the essence of genius lies in the perfection and energy of\nits _perceptions_. Schopenhauer says, \"He who is endowed with talent\nthinks more quickly and more correctly than others; but the genius\nbeholds another world from them all, although only because he has a\nmore profound perception of the world which lies before them also,\nin that it presents itself in his mind more objectively, and\nconsequently in greater purity and distinctness.\" This profounder\nperception arises from his detachment: his intellect has to a\ncertain extent freed itself from the service of his will, and leads\nan independent life. So long as the intellect is in the service of\nthe will, that which has no relation to the will does not exist for\nthe intellect; but along with this partial severance of the two\nthere comes a new power of perception, synthetic in its nature, a\ncomplex of relationships not reproducible in _linear_ thought, for\nthe mind is oriented simultaneously in _many_ different directions.\nOf this order of perception the well-known case of Mozart is a\nclassic example. He is reported to have said of his manner of\ncomposing, \"I can see the whole of it in my mind at a single glance ...\nin which way I do not hear it in my imagination at all as\nsuccession--the way it comes later--but all at once, as it were. It\nis a rare feast! all the inventing and making goes on in me as in a\nbeautiful strong dream.\"\n\n\nTIMELESSNESS\n\nThe inspirations of genius come from a failure of attention to life,\nwhich, all paradoxically, brings vision--the power to see life\nclearly and \"see it whole.\" Consciousness, unconditioned by time,\n\"in a beautiful strong dream,\" awakens to the perception of a world\nthat is timeless. It brings thence some immortelle whose power of\nsurvival establishes the authenticity of the inspiration. However\nlocal and personal any masterpiece may be, it escapes by some potent\nmagic all geographical and temporal categories, and appears always\nnew-born from a sphere in which such categories do not exist.\n\nNo writer was more of his period than Shakespeare, yet how\ncontemporary he seems to each succeeding generation. Leonardo, in a\nperfect portrait, showed forth the face of a subtle, sensuous, and\nmocking spirit, against a background of wild rocks. It represents\nnot alone the soul-phase of the later Renaissance, but of every\nindividual and of every civilization which on life's dangerous and\norgiastic substratum has reared a mere garden of delight. Living\nhearts throb to the music penned by the dead hand of Mozart and of\nBeethoven; the clownings of Aristophanes arouse laughter in our\nmusic halls; Euripides is as subtle and world-weary as any modern;\nthe philosophies of Parminides and Heraclitus are recrudescent in that\nof Bergson; and Plato discusses higher space under a different name.\n\n\nBEYOND GOOD AND EVIL: BEAUTY\n\nThe second characteristic of works of genius is their indifference\nto all man-made moral standards. They are beyond all that goes by\nthe name of good and evil, in that the two are used indifferently\nfor the furtherance of a purely aesthetic end. The Beyond-man\ndiscovers beauty in the abyss, and ugliness in mere worldly rectitude.\nLeonardo painted the Medusa head, with its charnel pallor and its\ncrown of writhing snakes, no less lovingly than the sweet-tender\nface of the Christ of the Cenacolo, and the beauty is not less,\nthough of an opposite sort. Shakespeare's most profound sayings and\nmost magical poetry are as often as not put in the mouths of his\nvillains and his clowns. To genius, pain is purgation; ugliness,\nbeauty in disturbance. It injects the acid of irony into success,\nand distils the attar of felicity from failure. It teaches that the\nblows of fate are aimed, not at us, but at our fetters; that death\nis swallowed up in victory, that the Hound of Heaven is none other\nthan the Love of God.\n\nThough genius rebels at our moralities, it always submits itself to\nbeauty. Emerson says, \"Goethe and Carlyle, and perhaps Novalis, have\nan undisguised dislike or contempt for common virtue standing on\ncommon principles. Meantime they are dear lovers, steadfast\nmaintainers of the pure, ideal morality. But they worship it as the\nhighest beauty, their love is artistic.\" And so it is throughout the\nwhole hierarchy of men of genius. \"Beauty is Truth: Truth, Beauty,\"\nis the motto which guides their far-faring feet, as they lead us\nwheresoever they will. With Victor Hugo, we follow, undisgusted,\nthrough the sewers of old Paris: his sense of beauty disinfects them\nfor us. With Balzac and Tolstoy we gaze unrevolted upon the\nnethermost depths of human depravity, discerning moral beauty even\nthere; while with Virgil, Dante and Milton, we walk unscathed in\nHell itself. The _terribilita_ of Michaelangelo, the chaos and\nanarchy of Shakespeare at his greatest, as in Lear--these find\nexpression in perfect rhythms, so potent that we recognize them as\nproceeding from a supernal beauty, the beauty of that soul \"from\nwhich also cometh the life of man and of beast, and of the birds of\nthe air and of the fishes of the sea.\"\n\n\nTHE DAEMONIC\n\n  \"Unknown,--albeit lying near,--\n  To men the path to the Daemon sphere.\"\n\nBut to men of genius--\"Minions of the Morning Star\"--the path is not\nunknown, and for this reason the daemonic element constantly shows\nitself in their works and in their lives. Dante, Cellini, Goethe,\nthree men as unlike in the nature of their several gifts and in\ntheir temperaments as could easily be named together, are drawn to a\ncommon likeness through the daemonic gleam which plays and hovers\nover them at times. With William Blake it was a flame that wrapped\nhim round. Today no one knows how Brunelleschi was able to construct\nhis great dome without centering, nor how Michaelangelo could limn\nhis terrible figures on the wet plaster of the Sistine vault with\nsuch extraordinary swiftness and skill; but we have their testimony\nthat they invoked and received divine aid. Shakespeare, the\nmaster-magician, is silent on this point of supernatural\nassistance--as on all points--except as his plays speak for him;\nbut how eloquently they speak! \"The Tempest\" is made up of the\ndaemonic; the murky tragedy of \"Macbeth\" unfolds under the guidance\nof incarnate forces of evil which drive the hero to his doom and\nfinal deliverance in death: Hamlet sees and communes with the ghost\nof his father; in short, the supernatural is as much a part of these\nplays as salt is part of the ocean. If from any masterpiece we could\nabstract everything not strictly rational--every element of wonder,\nmystery, and enchantment--it would be like taking all of the unknown\nquantities out of an equation: there would be nothing left to solve.\nThe mind of genius is a wireless station attuned to the vibrations\nfrom the daemonic sphere; the works of genius fascinate and delight\nus largely for this reason: we, too, respond to these vibrations and\nare demonologists in our secret hearts.\n\nFor the interest which we take in genius has its root in the\ninterest which we take in ourselves. Genius but utters experiences\ncommon to us all, records perceptions of a world-order which we too\nhave glimpsed. Love, hope, pain, sorrow, disappointment, often\neffect that momentary purgation which enables consciousness to\nfunction independently of the tyrant will. These hours have for us a\nnoetic value--\"some veil did fall\"--revealing visions remembered\neven unto the hour of death.\n\n\n\"DEATH\"\n\nThat \"failure of attention to life\" which begets inspiration in the\nman of genius comes, indeed, daily to every one, but without his\nbeing able to profit by it. For what is sleep but a failure of\nattention to life--so complete a failure that memory brings back\nnothing save that little caught in the net of dreams--yet even this\nlittle is so charged with creative energy as to give rise to the\nsaying that every man is a genius in his dreams.\n\nDeath also is a failure of attention to life, the greatest that we\nknow, and poorest therefore in plunder from supernatural realms.\nNevertheless reports of persons who have narrowly escaped death give\nevidence at least that to those emancipated by death, life, viewed\nfrom some higher region of space, is perceived as a unity. When a\nman is brought face to face with death, the events of life pass\nbefore the mind's eye in an instant, and he comes from such an\nexperience not only with deeper insight into himself, but into the\nmeaning and purpose of life also. The faces of the dead, those\nparchments where are written the last testament of the departed\nspirit, bear an expression of solemn peace, sometimes of joy,\nsometimes of wonder: terror and agony are seldom written there, save\nwhen the fatal change comes in some painful or unnatural way.\n\n\nTHE PLAY OF BRAHM\n\nInspiration, dreams, visions at the moment of death--these things we\nsay are _irrational_, and so in a sense they are. Bergson has\ncompared the play of reason upon phenomena to the action of a\ncinematograph machine which reproduces the effect of motion by\nflashing upon the screen a correlated series of _fixed_ images. In\nlike manner the reason dissects the flux of life and presents it to\nconsciousness part by part, but never as a whole. In supernormal\nstates however we may assume that with the breakdown of some barrier\nlife flows in like a tidal wave, paralyzing the reason, and\ntherefore presenting itself in an irrational manner to consciousness.\nWere reason equal to the strain put upon it under these circumstances,\nin what light might the phantasmagoria of human life appear? Might\nit not be perceived as a representation, merely, of a supernal world,\nhigher-dimensional in relation to our own? Just as a moving picture\nshows us the round and living bodies of men and women as flat\nimages on a plane, enacting there some mimic drama, so on the\nthree-dimensional screen of the world men and women engaged in\nunfolding the drama of personal life may be but the images of souls\nenacting, on higher planes of being, the drama of their own salvation.\nThe reluctance of the American aborigine to be photographed is said\nto have been due to his belief that something of his personality,\nhis human potency, went into the image, leaving him by so much the\npoorer from that time forth. Suppose such indeed to be the case:\nthat the flat-man on the moving picture screen leads his little life\nof thought and emotion, related to the mental and emotional life of\nthe living original as the body is related to its photographic\ncounterpart. In similar manner the potencies of the higher self, the\ndweller in higher spaces, may flow into and express themselves in and\nthrough us. We may be images in a world of images; our thoughts\nshadows of archetypal ideas, our acts a shadow-play upon the\nluminous screen of material existence, revealing there, however\nimperfectly, the moods and movements of a higher self in a higher\nspace.\n\nThe saying, \"All the world's a stage,\" may be true in a sense\nShakespeare never intended. It formulates, in effect, the oldest of\nall philosophical doctrines, that contained in the Upanishads of\nBrahma, the Enjoyer, who takes the form of a mechanically perfect\nuniverse in order to read his own law with eyes of his own creation.\n\"He thought: 'Shall I send forth worlds?' He sent forth these worlds.\"\nTo the question, \"What worlds?\" the Higher Space Hypothesis makes\nanswer, \"Dimensional systems, from lowest to highest, each one a\n_representation_ of the one next above, where it stands _dramatized_,\nas it were. This is the play of Brahm; endlessly to dissever, in\ntime and space, and to unite in consciousness, like the geometrician\nwho discovers every ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola, in the cone\nwhere all inhere.\"\n\nThe particular act of the drama of unfolding consciousness upon\nwhich the curtain is now upfurled is that wherein we discover the\nworld to be indeed a stage, a playground for forces masquerading as\nforms: \"they have their exits and their entrances,\" or, as expressed\nin the Upanishads, \"All that goes hence (dies on earth) heaven\nconsumes it all; and all that goes thence (returns from heaven to a\nnew life) the earth consumes it all.\"\n\n\n\n\nXI THE GIFT OF FREEDOM\n\n\nCONCEPT AND CONDUCT\n\nA surgeon once remarked to the author that among his professional\nassociates he had noticed an increasing awareness of the invisible.\nThis he claimed was manifest in the fact that the young men educated\nsince the rise of bacteriological science were more punctilious in\nthe matter of extreme personal cleanliness and the sterilization of\ntheir instruments than the older and often more accomplished\nsurgeons whose habits in these matters had been formed before the\ngeneral sense of an _invisible_ menace had become acute.\n\nThis anecdote well illustrates the unconscious reaction of new\nconcepts upon conduct. Preoccupation with the problems of space\nhyper-dimensionality cannot fail to produce profound changes in our\nethical outlook upon life and in our attitude towards our fellow\nbeings. The nature of these changes it is not difficult to forecast.\n\nAlthough higher-space thought makes painfully clear our limitations,\nit nevertheless leads to the perception that these very limitations\nare inhibited powers. In this way it supplies us with a workable\nmethod whereby we may enter that transcendental world of which we\nglimpse so many vistas. This method consists in first becoming aware\nof a limitation, and then in forcing ourselves to dramatize the\nexperience that would be ours if the limitation did not affect us.\nWe then discover in ourselves a power for transcending the limitation,\nand presently we come to live in the new mode as easily as in the old.\nThought, conscious of its own limitations, leads to the New Freedom.\n\"Become what thou art!\" is the maxim engraved upon the lintel of\nthis new Temple of Initiation.\n\n\nSELFLESSNESS\n\nHigher-space speculation is an education in _selflessness_, for it\ndemands the elimination of what Hinton calls _self-elements_ of\nobservation. The diurnal motion of the sun is an example of a\nself-element: it has nothing to do with the sun but everything to do\nwith the observer. The Ptolemaic system founded on this illusion\ntyrannized over the human mind for centuries, but who knows of how\nmany other illusions we continue to be victims--for the worst of a\nself-element is that its presence is never dreamed of until it is\ndone away with. The Theory of Relativity presents us with an effort\nto get rid of the self-element in regard to space and time. A\nself-centered man cannot do full justice to this theory: it requires\nof the mind a certain detachment, and the idea becomes clear in\nproportion as this detachment, this selflessness, is attained.\n\nSo while it would be too much to claim that higher thought makes men\nunselfish, it at least cracks the hard shell in which their\nselfishness abides. If a man disciplines himself to abdicate his\npersonal point of view in thinking about the world he lives in, it\nmakes easier a similar attitude in relation to his fellow men.\n\n\nHUMILITY\n\nOne of the earliest effects of selfless thought is the exorcism of\nall arrogance. The effort to dramatize the relation of an earthworm\nto its environment makes us recognize that its predicament is our own,\ndifferent only in degree. We are exercising ourselves in humility\nand meekness, but of a sort leading to a mastery that may well make\nthe meek the inheritors of the earth. Hinton was himself so meek a\nman that his desire did not rise to the height of expecting or\nlooking for the beautiful or the good: he simply asked for something\nto know. He despaired of knowing anything definitely and certainly\nexcept arrangements in space. We have his testimony as to how\nabundantly this hunger and thirst after that right knowledge which\nis righteousness was gratified. \"All I want to do,\" he says,\n\"is to make this humble beginning of knowledge and show how\ninevitably, by devotion to it, it leads to marvellous and\nfar-distant truths, and how, by strange paths, it leads directly\ninto the presence of some of the highest conceptions which great\nminds have given us.\"\n\nHere speaks the blessed man referred to by the psalmist, \"Whose\ndelight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate\nday and night.\" Abandoning a vain search after abstractions, and\napplying his simple formula to life, Hinton found that it enabled\nhim to express the faith in his heart in terms conformable to reason;\nthat it led back to, and illumined the teachings of every spiritual\ninstructor and inspirer of mankind.\n\n\nSOLIDARITY\n\nThat we are all members of one body, branches of one vine, is a\nmatter of faith and of feeling; but with the first use of the weapon\nof higher thought the paradox of the one and the many is capable of\nso clear and simple a resolution that the sublime idea of human\nsolidarity is brought down from the nebulous heaven of the mystic to\nthe earth of every day life. To our ordinary space-thought, men are\nisolated, distinct, each \"an infinitely repellent particle,\" but we\nconceive of space too narrowly. The broader view admits the idea\nthat men are related by reason of a superior union, that their\nisolation is but an affair of limited consciousness. Applying this\nconcept to conduct, we come to discern a literal truth in the words\nof the Master, \"He who hath done it unto the least of these my\nchildren, hath done it unto me,\" and \"Where two or three are\ngathered together in my name.\" If we conceive of each individual as a\n\"slice\" or cross-section of a higher being, each fragment isolated\nby an inhibition of consciousness which it is moment by moment\nengaged in transcending, the sacrifice of the Logos takes on a new\nmeaning. This disseverance into millions of human beings is that\neach may realize God in himself. Conceiving of humanity as God's\nbroken body, we are driven to make peace among its members, and by\nrealization we become the Children of God.\n\n\nLIVE OPENLY\n\n\"_Blessed are the meek,\" \"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst\nafter righteousness.\" \"Blessed are the peacemakers_.\" It would not\nbe impossible to trace a relation between higher space thought and\nthe other beatitudes also, but it will suffice simply to note the\nfact that the central and essential teaching of the Sermon on the\nMount, \"Let your light shine before men\" is implicit in the\nconviction of every one who thinks on higher space: he must _live\nopenly_. By continual dwelling upon the predicament of the flat-man,\nnaked, as it were, to observation from an eye which looks down upon\nhis plane, we come to realize our own exposure. In that large world\nall that we think, or do, or imagine, lies open, palpable; there is\nno such thing as secrecy. Imbued with this idea, we begin to live\nopenly because we must; but soon we come to do so because we desire\nit. In making toward one another our limited lives open and manifest,\nwe treat each other in the service of truth as though we were all\nmembers of that higher world. We imitate, in our world, our true\nexistence in a higher world, and so help to establish heavenly\nconditions upon earth.\n\n\nNON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL\n\nThe problem of ugliness and evil would seem at first thought to be\ntotally unrelated to the subject of space hyperdimensionality, but\nthere is at least a symbolical relation. This was suggested to the\nauthor by the endeavor of two friends whose interests were\npre-eminently mathematical to discover what certain four-dimensional\nfigures would look like in three-dimensional space. They found\nthat in a great number of cases these cross-sections, when\nthus isolated, revealed little of the symmetry and beauty of their\nhigher-dimensional archetypes. It is clear that a beautiful form of\nour world, traversing a plane, would show nothing of its beauty to\nthe planeman, who lacked the power of perceiving it entire; for the\nsense of beauty is largely a matter of co-ordination. We give the\nnames of evil, chance, fate, ugliness, to those aspects of life and\nof the world that we fail to perceive in their true relations, in\nregard to which our power of correlation breaks down. Yet we often\nfind that in the light of fuller knowledge or subsequent experience,\nthe fortune which seemed evil was really good fortune in the making,\nthat the chance act or encounter was too momentous in its\nconsequences to be regarded as other than ordained.\n\nThe self-element plays a large part in our idea of good and evil,\nugliness and beauty. \"All things are as they seem to all.\" Desire of\nher will make any woman beautiful, and fear will exercise an absolute\ninhibition upon the aesthetic sense. As we recede in time from events,\nthey more and more emancipate themselves from the tyranny of our\npersonal prejudices and predilections, and we are able to perceive\nthem with greater clarity, more as they appear from the standpoint\nof higher time and higher space. \"Old, unhappy, far-off things, and\nbattles long ago\" lose their poignancy of pain and take on the\npoignancy of beauty. The memory of suffering endured is often the\nlast thing from which we would be parted, while humdrum happiness we\nare quite willing to forget. Because we realize completely only in\nretrospect, it may well be that the present exists chiefly for the\nsake of the future. Then let the days come with veiled faces, accept\ntheir gifts whose value we are so little able to appraise! There is\na profound and practical truth in Christ's saying, \"Resist not evil.\"\nHonor this truth by use, and welcome destiny in however sinister a\nguise.\n\n\nTHE IMMANENT DIVINE\n\nIn the fact of the limited nature of our space perceptions is found\na connecting link between materialism and idealism. For, passing\ndeeper and deeper in our observation of the material world, that\nwhich we at first felt as real passes away to become but the outward\nsign of a reality infinitely greater, of which our realities are\nappearances only, and we become convinced of the existence of\n_an immanent divine._ \"In Him we live and move and have our being.\"\nOur space is but a limitation of infinite \"room to move about\":\n\"_In my Father's house are many mansions_.\" Our time is but a\nlimitation of infinite duration: \"_Before Abraham was, I am_.\" Our\nsense of space is the consciousness that we abide in Him; our sense\nof time is the consciousness that He abides in us. Both are modes of\napprehension of divinity--growing, expanding modes. In conceiving of\na space of more than three dimensions we prove that our relation to\nGod is not static, but dynamic. Christ said to the man who was sick\nof the palsy, \"Rise, take up thy bed and walk.\" The narrow concept\nof three-dimensional space is a bed in which the human mind has lain\nso long as to become at last inanimate. The divine voice calls to us\nagain to demonstrate that we are alive. Thinking in terms of the\nhigher we issue from the tomb of materialism into the sunlight of\nthat sane and life-giving idealism which is Christ's.","title":"Four-Dimensional Vistas","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":30434}