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We now have the background necessary to move on and learn what all this has to do with hiking a trail to reality – aside from the fact that reality isn’t always what it seems.  While much of the above is not directly related to the topic at hand, it has hopefully enticed my audience to continue reading.  But this introduction to topology also provides a fitting segue into a text, entitled Flatland, that was very influential in my spiritual evolution.  This work, a satirical novella penned by English schoolmaster, theologian, and Anglican priest Edwin A. Abbott in 1884, was intended as a commentary on the hierarchy of Victorian era culture; but what turned out to be most appealing about it was its examination of spatial dimensions:

To:
The Inhabitants of SPACE IN GENERAL, And H. C. IN PARTICULAR
This Work is Dedicated By a Humble Native of Flatland
In the Hope that Even as he was Initiated into the Mysteries
Of THREE Dimensions Having been previously conversant With ONLY Two
So the Citizens of that Celestial Region May aspire yet higher and higher
To the Secrets of FOUR FIVE OR EVEN Six Dimensions
Thereby contributing To the Enlargement of THE IMAGINATION
And the possible Development Of that most rare and excellent Gift of MODESTY
Among the Superior Races Of SOLID HUMANITY


Flatland was depicted as a two-dimensional plane – like a sheet of paper without thickness – with two-dimensional creatures living within it, flat upon its surface.  These creatures were made up of straight lines (soldiers who could become nearly invisible if they directed their end point towards the observer, and could deliver a nice puncture wound), very narrow triangular females (almost as deadly), larger degree triangles (working class), squares and other multi-sided representatives of the upper class, up to priestly circles.

If one were to draw a box around any of these it would have the same thickness as the inhabitants, and they would thus be confined within it - only being able to look and move side to side, and not up and down (i.e. go over the wall).  But one day, as one such square was quietly relaxing in his house, he heard a voice calling “Hello down there”!!  A young boy from our world had spotted Flatland and was trying to contact the occupant.

The square looked about him…left and right and left and right, and then announced in an annoyed manner, “Where are you??  Who are you??  I can’t see anyone else here!!  How did you get in??”.

In the book, the boy picks him up and aims his eyes downward toward the top of the house, upon which the square immediately grasps the significance of there being another dimension that he was not previously familiar with.  But I was immediately aware that this would not work, as he would see only one line – with one dot as he looked down on one wall, and another dot as his gaze moved to the other side.

In my version, formed by a THC-altered consciousness perhaps, but nonetheless presumably valid, the boy would have put his hand partially down through the plane inside the house and, wiggling his fingers, said “Here I am!!”.  At this point the resident would have seen four lines dancing about, but upon exclaiming “I see you now!!  There are four of you”, the boy would have corrected him by affirming that there was indeed only one of him.  No matter how hard the square tried though, he could not see how these four separate lines could be tied together as one being.

The hero of our story later dreams about visiting a one-dimensional plane to understand how it looks to him, and how he would appear to them.  This, of course, begs the question of how this experience might be extrapolated to understand how a fourth dimensional universe, if one existed, might appear to us.

In short, what I took from pondering this question was the fact that we would see separate objects that could be connected in a higher dimension, and we couldn’t see that connection.  

But in which direction should we look for this higher dimension??  Well, to form a three-dimensional cube from a number of the two-dimensional Flatland houses, one would stack them atop each other with the inside of each against the inside of the next one.  Could this be a clue??  I had heard of the concept of “looking within”, and immediately seized upon the notion that the direction might have something to do with the mind.  After all, some folks do believe that we are all one common mind stuck inside separate bodies.  And it would explain ESP and other psychic events, although not why some people have the gift and others don’t.

It turns out this is not exactly right, but it does give us a starting point on the journey.  I recall making a list of things that involved the mind.  

Since LSD and other psychotropic substances were just becoming known to those of us living far from the Haight-Ashbury scene, that went on the list.  So did occult and mystical phenomena, the philosophical pursuits of humankind, and finally the eastern spiritual thought that was often identified with the idea of “one mind”.

As an aside, note that when the boy sat him down again – this time outside of his house - the square spent quite a while attempting to discern how he got there without going through a door.  Hmmmm…think about the Klein bottle for a second!!  Could we perhaps take it to a higher dimension and get to the other side of the glass surface without going through it that manner??

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This page was last updated on February 12, 2023

 

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