"When we come to the problem of what goes on in the minute and apply ourselves to the mechanism of the minute, we find our habitual conceptions inadequate. The captain in us must wake up to his own intimate nature, realize those functions of movement which are his own, and in the virtue of his knowledge of them apprehend how to deal with the problems he has come to."
_The Fourth Dimension_.
How more accurately and eloquently could "the captain in us,"
momentarily aroused, give voice to his predicament, than in the words, "_Instead of the sublime and open world, the narrow prison of the breast_."
DIRECT VISION
The "watery spheres" in the Hermetic fragment are of course the eyes, a mechanism inferior in many ways to the camera of man"s own devising.
The phenomena of clairvoyance make known a mode of vision which is confined to no specific sense organ, approximating much more closely to true perception than does physical sight. Mr. C.W. Leadbeater in _Clairvoyance_ specifically affirms that this higher power of sight is four-dimensional. He says: "The idea of the fourth dimension as expounded by Mr. Hinton is the only one which gives any kind of explanation down here of astral vision ... which lays every point in the interior of a solid body absolutely open to the gaze of the seer, just as every point of the interior of a circle lies open to the gaze of a man looking down upon it." "I can see all around and every way," exclaims one of the psychometers reported in William Denton"s _The Soul of Things_.
The "outer light" by which the physical eye is able to see objects is sunlight. Upon this clairvoyant vision in no wise depends, involving, as it does, other octaves of vibration. We should be able to receive ideas of this order without incredulity since the advent of "dark" photography and the ultra-violet microscope. By aid of the latter, photographs are taken in absolute darkness, the lenses used being transparent to light rays invisible to the eye, but active photographically.
The foregoing pa.s.sages from _The Virgin of the World_ show a remarkable resemblance between the Hermetic philosophy and modern higher-s.p.a.ce thought. The parallelism is not less striking in the case of certain other mystic philosophers of the East.
PLATO"S SHADOW-WATCHERS
"Parmenides," says Hinton, "and the Asiatic thinkers with whom he is in close affinity, propound a theory of existence which is in close accord with a conception of a possible relation between a higher and a lower-dimensional s.p.a.ce." He concludes, "Either one of two things must be true, that four-dimensional conceptions give a wonderful power of representing the thought of the East, or that the thinkers of the East must have been looking at and regarding four-dimensional existence."
It would not be difficult to re-state, in terms of our hypothesis, Plato"s doctrine of an enduring archetypal world of ideas reflected in a world of transitory images and appearances. Fortunately, Plato has relieved the author of that necessity by doing it himself in his wonderful allegory of the shadow-watchers in _The Republic_. The trend of his argument is clear; as its shadow is to a solid object, so is the object itself to its archetypal idea. This is the manner in which he presents this thought:
"Imagine a number of men living in an underground cavernous chamber, with an entrance open to the light, extending along the entire length of the cavern, in which they have been confined, from their childhood, with their legs and neck so shackled, that they are obliged to sit still and look straight forwards, because their chains render it impossible for them to turn their heads round: and imagine a bright fire burning some way off, above and behind them, and an elevated roadway pa.s.sing between the fire and the prisoners, with a low wall built along it, like the screens which conjurors put up in front of their audience, and above which they exhibit their wonders."
"I have it," he replied.
"Also, figure to yourself a number of persons walking behind this wall, and carrying with them statues of men, and images of other animals, wrought in wood, stone, and all kinds of materials, together with various other articles, which overtop the wall; and, as you might expect, let some of the pa.s.sers-by be talking, and others silent"
"You are describing a strange scene, and strange prisoners."
"They resemble us," I replied. "For let me ask you, in the first place, whether persons so confined could have seen anything of themselves or of each other, beyond the shadows thrown by the fire upon the part of the cavern facing them."
"Certainly not, if you suppose them to have been compelled all their lifetime to keep their heads unmoved."
"And is not their knowledge of the things carried past them equally limited?"
"Unquestionably it is."
"And if they were able to converse with one another, do you not think that they would be in the habit of giving names to the objects which they saw before them?"
"Doubtless they would."
"Again: if their prison house returned an echo from the part facing them, whenever one of the pa.s.sers-by opened his lips, to what, let me ask you, could they refer the voice, if not to the shadow which was pa.s.sing?"
"Unquestionably they would refer it to that."
"Then surely such persons would hold the shadows of the manufactured articles to be the only realities."
"Without a doubt they would."
Plato (in the person of Socrates) then considers what would happen if the course of nature brought to the prisoners a release from their fetters and a remedy for their foolishness, and concludes as follows:
"Now this imaginary case, my dear Glaucon, you must apply in all its parts to our former statements, by comparing the region which the eye reveals, to the prison-house, and the light of the fire therein to the power of the sun; and if, by the upward ascent and the contemplation of the upper world, you understand the mounting of the soul in the intellectual region, you will hit the tendency of my own surmises ... the view which I take of the subject is to the following effect."
Briefly, the view taken is that the "Form of Good" perceived by the mind is the source of everything that is perceived by the senses.
This is equivalent to saying that the objects of our three-s.p.a.ce world are projections of higher-dimensional realities--that there is a supernal world related to this world as a body is related to the shadow which it casts.
SWEDENBORG
Emerson, in his _Representative Men_, chose Swedenborg as the representative mystic. He accepted Swedenborg"s way of looking at the world as universally characteristic of the mystical temperament.
The Higher s.p.a.ce Theory was unheard of in Swedenborg"s day, nevertheless in his religious writings--thick clouds shot with lightning--the idea is implicit and sometimes even expressed, though in a terminology all his own.
To Swedenborg"s vision, as to Plato"s, this physical world is a world of ultimates, in all things correspondent to the casual world, which he names "heaven." "_It is to be observed_," he says, "_that the natural world exists and subsists from the spiritual world, just as an effect exists from its efficient cause_."
According to Swedenborg, conditions in "heaven" are different from those in the world: s.p.a.ce is different: distance is different He says, "_s.p.a.ce in heaven is not like s.p.a.ce in the world, for s.p.a.ce in the world is fixed, and therefore measurable: but in heaven it is not fixed and therefore cannot be measured_."
Herein is suggested a _fluidic_ condition, singularly in accord with certain modern conceptions in theoretical physics. Commenting upon the significance of Lobatchewsky"s and Bolyai"s work along the lines of non-Euclidian geometry, Hinton says, "By immersing the conception of distance in matter, to which it properly belongs, it promises to be of the greatest aid in a.n.a.lysis, for the effective distance of any two particles is the result of complex material conditions, and cannot be measured by hard and fast rules."
The higher correlative of physical distance is a difference of state or condition, according to the Norwegian seer. "_Those are far apart who differ much_," he says "_and those are near who differ little_."
Distance in the spiritual world, he declares, originates solely "_in the difference in the state of their minds, and in the heavenly world, from the difference in the state of their loves_." This immediately suggests the Oriental teaching that the place and human environment into which a man is born have been determined by his own thoughts, desires, and affections in anterior existences, and that instant by instant all are determining their future births. The reader to whom the idea of reincarnation is repellent or unfamiliar may not be prepared to go this length, but he must at least grant that in the span of a single lifetime thought and desire determine action, and consequently, position in s.p.a.ce. The ambitious man goes from the village to the city; the lover of nature seeks the wilds; the misanthrope avoids his fellowmen, the gregarious man gravitates to crowds. We seek out those whom we love, we avoid those whom we dislike; everywhere the forces of attraction and repulsion play their part in determining the tangled orbits of our every-day lives.
In other words, the subjective, and (hypothetically) higher activity in every man records itself in a world of three dimensions as action upon an environment. Thought expresses itself in action, and so flows outward into s.p.a.ce.
Observe how perfectly this fits in with Swedenborg"s contention that physical remoteness has for its higher correspondence a difference of love and of interest; and physical juxtaposition, a similarity of these. In heaven, he says, "Angels of similar character are as it were spontaneously drawn together." So would it be on earth, but for impediments inherent in our terrestrial s.p.a.ce. Swedenborg"s angels are men freed from these limitations. We suffer because the free thing in us is hampered by the restrictions of a s.p.a.ce to which it is not native. Reason sufficient for such restriction is apparent in the success that crowns every effort at the annihilation of s.p.a.ce, and the augmentation of power and knowledge that such effort brings.
It would appear that a narrowing of interest and endeavor is always the price of efficiency. The angel is confined to "the narrow prison of the breast" that it may react upon matter just as an axe is narrowed to an edge that it may cleave.
MAN THE s.p.a.cE-EATER
Man has been called the thinking animal. _s.p.a.ce-eater_ would be a more appropriate t.i.tle, since he so dauntlessly and persistently addresses himself to overcoming the limitations of his s.p.a.ce. To realize his success in this, compare, for example, the voyage of Columbus" caravels with that of an ocean liner; or traveling by stage coach with _train de luxe_. Consider the telephone, the phonograph, the cinematograph, from the standpoint of s.p.a.ce-conquest--and wireless telegraphy which sends forth messages in every direction, over sea and land. Most impressive of all are the achievements in the domain of astronomy. One by one the sky has yielded its amazing secrets, till the mind roams free among the stars.
The reason why there are to-day so many men braving death in the air is because the conquest of the third dimension is the task to which the Zeit-Geist has for the moment addressed itself, and these intrepid aviators are its chosen instruments--sacrificial p.a.w.ns in the dimension-gaining game.
All these things are only the outward and visible signs of the angel, incarnate in a world of three dimensions, striving to realize higher spatial, or heavenly, conditions. This spectacle, for example, of a millionaire hurled across a continent in a special train to be present at the bedside of a stricken dear one, may be interpreted as the endeavor of an incarnate soul to achieve, with the aid of human ingenuity applied to s.p.a.ce annihilation, that which, discarnate, it could compa.s.s without delay or effort.
THE WITHIN AND WITHOUT
In Swedenborg"s heaven "_all communicate by the extension of the sphere which goes forth from the life_ _of every one. The sphere of their life is the sphere of their affections of love and hate_."
This is as fair a description of thought transference and its necessary condition as could well be devised, for as in wireless telegraphy, its mechanical counterpart, it depends upon synchronism of vibration in a "sphere which goes forth from the life of every one."
Thought transference and kindred phenomena in which all categories of s.p.a.ce and time lose their significance baffle our understanding because they appear to involve the idea of being in two places--in many places--at once, a thing manifestly at variance with our own conscious experience. It is as though the pen point should suddenly become the sheet of paper. But strange as are these matters and mysterious as are their method, no other hypothesis so well explains them as that they are higher-dimensional experiences of the self. We have the universal testimony of all mystics that the attainment of mystical consciousness is by inward contemplation--turning the mind back upon itself. Swedenborg says, "_It can in no case be said that heaven is outside of any one, but it is within him for every angel partic.i.p.ates in the heaven around him by virtue of the heaven which is within him_." Christ said, "_The Kingdom of Heaven is within you_,"
and there is a saying attributed to Him to the effect that "_When the outside becomes the inside, then the Kingdom of Heaven is come_."
These and such arcane sayings as "_Know Thyself_" engraved upon the lintels of ancient temples of initiation, powerfully suggest the possibility that by penetrating to the center of our individual consciousness we expand outwardly into the cosmic consciousness as though _in_ and _out_ were the positive and negative of a new dimension. By exerting a force in the negative direction upon a slender column of water in a hydraulic press, it is possible to raise in the positive direction a vast bulk of water with which that column, through the mechanism of the press, is connected. This is because both columns, the little and the big, enclose one body of fluid. The attainment of higher states of consciousness is potential in every one, for the reason that the consciousness of a greater being flows through each individual.
INTUITION AND REASON