initial commit of ebook 11906HEADmain

8 files changed, 11257 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/11906-0.txt b/11906-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4ad1e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/11906-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3467 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11906 ***
+
+FOUR-DIMENSIONAL
+VISTAS
+
+by
+
+Claude Bragdon
+
+[Illustration]
+
+New York
+
+
+
+   "_Perception has a destiny_."
+                        _Emerson_.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+There are two notable emancipations of the mind from the tyranny of
+mere appearances that have received scant attention save from
+mathematicians and theoretical physicists.
+
+In 1823 Bolyai declared with regard to Euclid's so-called axiom of
+parallels, "I will draw two lines through a given point, both of
+which will be parallel to a given line." The drawing of these lines
+led to the concept of the curvature of space, and this to the idea
+of _higher_ space.
+
+The recently developed Theory of Relativity has compelled the
+revision of the time concept as used in classical physics. One
+result of this has been to introduce the notion of _curved_ time.
+
+These two ideas, of curved time and higher space, by their very
+nature are bound to profoundly modify human thought. They loosen the
+bonds within which advancing knowledge has increasingly labored,
+they lighten the dark abysses of consciousness, they reconcile the
+discoveries of Western workers with the inspirations of Eastern
+dreamers; but best of all, they open vistas, they offer "glimpses
+that may make us less forlorn."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I. THE QUEST OF FREEDOM
+
+The Undiscovered Country--Miracles--The Failure of Common Sense--The
+Function of Science--Mathematics--Intuition--Our Sense of Space--The
+Subjectivity of Space--The Need of an Enlarged Space-Concept.
+
+II. THE DIMENSIONAL LADDER
+
+Learning to Think in Terms of Spaces--From the Cosmos to the
+Corpuscle--And Beyond--Evolution as Space-Conquest--Dimensional
+Sequences--Man the Geometer--Higher, and Highest, Space.
+
+III.  PHYSICAL PHENOMENA
+
+Looking for the Greater in the Less--Symmetry--Other Allied
+Phenomena--Isomerism--The Orbital Motion of Spheres: Cell-Subdivision--
+The Electric Current--The Greater Universe--A Hint from Astronomy--
+Gravitation--The Ether of Space.
+
+IV.  TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS
+
+Zöllner--Apparitions--Possession--Clairvoyance in Space--Clairvoyance
+in Time--Pisgah Sights of Life's Pageant.
+
+V. CURVED TIME
+
+Time from the Standpoint of Experiment and of Conscious Experience--
+Relativity--The Spoon-Man--The Orbital Movement of Time--Materiality
+the Mirror of Consciousness--Periodicity.
+
+VI. SLEEP AND DREAMS
+
+Sleep--Dreams--Time in Dreams--The Eastern Teaching in regard to Sleep
+and Dreams--Space in Dreams--The Phenomenon of Pause.
+
+
+VII. THE NIGHT SIDE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
+
+The Field of Psychic Research--Modifying the Past--Karma and
+Reincarnation--Colonel De Rochas' Experiments.
+
+VIII. THE EASTERN TEACHING
+
+Oriental Physics and Metaphysics--The Self-Recovered Memory of past
+Births--Release.
+
+IX. THE MYSTICS
+
+Hermes Trismegistus--The Page and the Press--The Ship and its
+Captain--Direct Vision--Plato's Shadow-Watchers--Swedenborg--Man,
+the Space-Eater--The Within and Without--Intuition and Reason--The
+Coil of Life.
+
+X. GENIUS
+
+Immanence--Timelessness--Beyond Good and Evil: Beauty--The Daemonic--
+"A Dream and a Forgetting"--The Play of Brahm.
+
+XI. THE GIFT OF FREEDOM
+
+Concept and Conduct--Selflessness--Humility--Solidarity--Live Openly--
+Non-Resistance to Evil--The Immanent Divine.
+
+
+
+
+
+FOUR-DIMENSIONAL VISTAS
+
+
+
+I THE QUEST OF FREEDOM
+
+
+THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
+
+Expectancy of freedom is the dominant note of to-day. Amid the crash
+of armies and the clash of systems we await some liberating stroke
+which shall release us from the old dreary thralldoms. As Nietzsche
+says, "It would seem as though we had before us, as a reward for all
+our toils, a country still undiscovered, the horizons of which no
+one has yet seen, a beyond to every country and every refuge of the
+ideal that man has ever known, a world so overflowing with beauty,
+strangeness, doubt, terror and divinity, that both our curiosity and
+our lust of possession are frantic with eagerness."
+
+Should a name be demanded for this home of freedom, there are those
+who would unhesitatingly call it _The Fourth Dimension of Space_.
+For such readers as may be ignorant of the amazing content of this
+seemingly meaningless phrase, any summary attempt at enlightenment
+will lead only to deeper mystification. To the question, where and
+what is the fourth dimension, the answer must be, it is here--in us,
+and all about us--in a direction toward which we can never point
+because at right angles to all the directions that we know. Our
+space cannot contain it, because it contains our space. No walls
+separate us from this demesne, not even the walls of our fleshly
+prison; yet we may not enter, even though we are already "there." It
+is the place of dreams, of living dead men: it is _At the Back of
+the North Wind_ and _Behind the Looking Glass_.
+
+So might one go on, piling figure upon figure and paradox upon
+paradox, to little profit. The effective method is the ordered and
+deliberate one; therefore the author asks of his reader the
+endurance of his curiosity pending certain necessary preparations of
+the mind.
+
+
+MIRACLES
+
+Could one of our aviators have landed in ancient Athens, doubtless
+he would have been given a place in the Greek Pantheon, for the old
+idea of a demigod was a man with wings. Why, then, does a flying man
+so little amaze us? Because we know about engines, and the smell of
+gasoline has dulled our sense of the sublime. The living voice of a
+dead man leaves us unterrified if only we can be sure that it comes
+from a phonograph; but let that voice speak to us out of vacancy and
+we fall a prey to the same order of alarm that is felt by a savage
+at the report of a gun that he has never seen.
+
+This illustration very well defines the nature of a miracle: it is a
+manifestation of power new to experience, and counter to the current
+thought of the time, Miracles are therefore always in order, they
+always happen. It is nothing that the sober facts of to-day are more
+marvellous than the fictions of Baron Munchausen, so long as we
+understand them: it is everything that phenomena are multiplying,
+that we are unable to understand. This increasing pressure upon
+consciousness _from a new direction_ has created a need to found
+belief on something firmer than a bottomless gullibility of mind.
+This book is aimed to meet that need by giving the mind the freedom
+of new spaces; but before it can even begin to do so, the reader
+must be brought to see the fallacy of attempting to measure the
+limits of the possible by that faculty known as common sense. And by
+common sense is meant, not the appeal to abstract reason, but to
+concrete experience.
+
+
+THE FAILURE OF COMMON SENSE
+
+Common sense had scarce had its laugh at Bell, and its shout of
+"I told you so!" at poor Langley, when lo! the telephone became the
+world's nervous system, and aeroplanes began to multiply like summer
+flies. To common sense the alchemist's dream of transmuting lead
+into gold seems preposterous, yet in a hundred laboratories radium
+is breaking down into helium, and the new chemistry bids fair to
+turn the time-honored jeer at the alchemists completely upside down.
+A wife whose mind was oriented in the new direction effectually
+silenced her husband's ridicule of what he called her credulity by
+reminding him that when wireless telegraphy was first suggested he
+had exclaimed, "Ah, that, you know, is one of the things that is not
+possible!" He was betrayed by his common sense.
+
+The lessons such things teach us are summed up in the reply of Arago,
+the great savant, to the wife of Daguerre. She asked him if he
+thought her husband was losing his mind because he was trying to
+make permanent the image in a mirror. Arago is said to have answered,
+"He who, outside of pure mathematics, says a thing is impossible,
+speaks without reason."
+
+Common sense neither leads nor lags, but is ever limited to the
+passing moment: the common knowledge of to-day was the mystery and
+enchantment of the day before yesterday, and will be the mere
+commonplace of the day after to-morrow. If common sense can so
+little anticipate the ordinary and orderly advancement of human
+knowledge, it is still less able to take that leap into the dark
+which is demanded of it now. The course of wisdom is therefore to
+place reliance upon reason and intuition, leaving to common sense
+the task of guiding the routine affairs of life, and guiding these
+alone.
+
+
+THE FUNCTION OF SCIENCE
+
+In enlisting the aid of reason in our quest for freedom, we shall be
+following in the footsteps of mathematicians and theoretical
+physicists. In their arduous and unflinching search after truth they
+have attained to a conception of the background of phenomena of far
+greater breadth and grandeur than that of the average religionist of
+to-day. As a mathematician once remarked to a neo-theosophist,
+"Your idea of the ether is a more material one than the materialist's
+own." Science has, however, imposed upon itself its own limitations,
+and in this connection these should be clearly understood.
+
+Science is that knowledge which can be gained by exact observation
+and correct thinking. If science makes use of any methods but these
+it ceases to be itself. Science has therefore nothing to do with
+morals: it gives the suicide his pistol, the surgeon his life-saving
+lance, but neither admonishes nor judges them. It has nothing to do
+with emotion: it exposes the chemistry of a tear, the mechanism of
+laughter; but of sorrow and happiness it has naught to say. It has
+nothing to do with beauty: it traces the movements of the stars, and
+tells of their constitution; but the fact of their singing together,
+and that "such harmony is in immortal souls," it leaves to poet and
+philosopher. The timbre, loudness, pitch, of musical tones, is a
+concern of science; but for this a Beethoven symphony is no better
+than the latest ragtime air from the music halls. In brief, science
+deals only with _phenomena_, and its gift to man is power over his
+material environment.
+
+
+MATHEMATICS
+
+The gift of pure mathematics, on the other hand, is primarily to the
+mind and spirit: the fact that man uses it to get himself out of his
+physical predicaments is more or less by the way. Consider for a
+moment this paradox. Mathematics, the very thing common sense swears
+by and dotes on, contradicts common sense at every turn. Common
+sense balks at the idea of _less than nothing_; yet the _minus_
+quantity, which in one sense is less than nothing in that something
+must be added to it to make it equal to nothing, is a concept
+without which algebra would have to come to a full stop. Again, the
+science of quaternions, or more generally, a vector analysis in
+which the progress of electrical science is essentially involved,
+embraces (explicitly or implicitly) the extensive use of _imaginary_
+or _impossible_ quantities of the earlier algebraists. The very
+words "imaginary" and "impossible" are eloquent of the defeat of
+common sense in dealing with concepts with which it cannot
+practically dispense, for even the negative or imaginary solutions
+of imaginary quantities almost invariably have some physical
+significance. A similar statement might also be made with regard to
+_transcendental_ functions.
+
+Mathematics, then, opens up ever new horizons, and its achievements
+during the past one hundred years give to thought the very freedom
+it seeks. But if science is dispassionate, mathematics is even more
+austere and impersonal. It cares not for teeming worlds and hearts
+insurgent, so long as in the pure clarity of space, relationships
+exist. Indeed, it requires neither time nor space, number nor
+quantity. As the mathematician approaches the limits already
+achieved by study, the colder and thinner becomes the air and the
+fewer the contacts with the affairs of every day. The Promethean
+fire of pure mathematics is perhaps the greatest of all in man's
+catalogue of gifts; but it is not most itself, but least so, when,
+immersed in the manifoldness of phenomenal life, it is made to serve
+purely utilitarian ends.
+
+
+INTUITION
+
+Common sense, immersed in the mere business of living, knows no more
+about life than a fish knows about water. The play of reason upon
+phenomena dissects life, and translates it in terms of inertia. The
+pure logic of mathematics ignores life and disdains its limitations,
+leading away into cold, free regions of its own. Now our desire for
+freedom is not to vibrate in a vacuum, but to live more abundantly.
+_Intuition_ deals with life directly, and introduces us into
+life's own domain: it is related to reason as flame is related to
+heat. All of the great discoveries in science, all of the great
+solutions in mathematics, have been the result of a _flash_ of
+intuition, after long brooding in the mind. _Intuition illumines_.
+Intuition is therefore the light which must guide us into that
+undiscovered country conceded by mathematics, questioned by science,
+denied by common sense--_The Fourth Dimension of Space_.
+
+
+OUR SENSE OF SPACE
+
+Space has been defined as "room to move about." Let us accord to
+this definition the utmost liberty of interpretation. Let us
+conceive of space not alone as room to move ponderable bodies in,
+but as room to think, to feel, to strike out in unimaginable
+directions, to overtake felicities and knowledges unguessed by
+experience and preposterous to common sense. Space is not measurable:
+we attribute dimensionality to space because such is the method of
+the mind; and that dimensionality we attribute to space is
+progressive because progression is a law of the mind. The so-called
+dimensions of space are to space itself as the steps that a climber
+cuts in the face of a cliff are to the cliff itself. They are not
+necessary to the cliff: they are necessary only to the climber.
+Dimensionality is the mind's method of mounting to the idea of the
+infinity of space. When we speak of the fourth dimension, what we
+mean is the fourth stage in the apprehension of that infinity. We
+might as legitimately speak of a fifth dimension, but the
+profitlessness of any discussion of a fifth and higher stages lies
+in the fact that they can be intelligently approached only through
+the fourth, which is still largely unintelligible. The case is like
+that of a man promised an increase of wages after he had worked a
+month, who asks for his second month's pay before he is entitled to
+the first.
+
+
+THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE
+
+Without going deep into the doctrine of the ideality--that is, the
+purely subjective reality--of space, it is easy to show that we have
+arrived at our conception of a space of three dimensions by an
+intellectual process. The sphere of the senses is two-dimensional:
+except for the slight aid afforded by binocular vision, sight gives
+us moving pictures _on a plane_, and touch contacts _surfaces_ only.
+What circumstances, we may ask, have compelled our intellect to
+conceive of _solid_ space? This question has been answered as follows:
+
+"If a child contemplates his hand, he is conscious of its existence
+in a double manner--in the first place by its tangibility, the
+second by its image on the retina of his eye. By repeated groping
+about and touching, the child knows by experience that his hand
+retains the same form and extension through all the variations of
+distance and position under which it is observed, notwithstanding
+that the form and extension of the image on the retina constantly
+change with the different position and distance of his hand in
+respect to his eye. The problem is thus set to the child's
+understanding: how to reconcile to his comprehension the apparently
+contradictory facts of the _invariableness_ of the object together
+with the _variableness_ of its appearance. This is only possible
+within a space of three dimensions, in which, owing to perspective
+distortions and changes, these variations of projection can be
+reconciled with the constancy of the form of a body."
+
+Thus we have come to the idea of a three-dimensional space in order
+to overcome the apparent contradictoriness of facts of sensible
+experience. Should we observe in three-dimensional space
+contradictory facts our reason would be forced to reconcile these
+contradictions, also, and if they could be reconciled by the idea of
+a four-dimensional space our reason would accept this idea without
+cavil. Furthermore, if from our childhood, phenomena had been of
+daily occurrence requiring a space of four or more dimensions for an
+explanation conformable to reason, we should feel ourselves native
+to a space of four or more dimensions.
+
+Poincaré, the great French mathematician and physicist, arrived at
+these same conclusions by another route. By a process of
+mathematical reasoning of a sort too technical to be appropriately
+given here, he discovers an order in which our categories range
+themselves naturally, and which corresponds with the points of space;
+and that this order presents itself in the form of what he calls a
+"three circuit distribution board." "Thus the characteristic property
+of space," he says, "that of having three dimensions, is only a
+property of our distribution board, _a property residing, so to speak,
+in human intelligence_." He concludes that a different association
+of ideas would result in a different distribution board, and that
+might be sufficient to endow space with a fourth dimension. He
+concedes that there may be thinking beings, living in our world,
+whose distribution board has four dimensions, and who do
+consequently think in hyperspace.
+
+
+THE NEED OF AN ENLARGED SPACE-CONCEPT
+
+It is the contrariety in phenomena already referred to, that is
+forcing advanced minds to entertain the idea of higher space.
+Mathematical physicists have found that experimental contradictions
+disappear if, instead of referring phenomena to a set of three space
+axes and one time axis of reference, they be referred to a set of
+four interchangeable axes involving four homogeneous co-ordinates.
+In other words, _time_ is made the fourth dimension. Psychic
+phenomena indicate that occasionally, in some individuals,
+the will is capable of producing physical movements for whose
+geometrico-mathematical definition a four-dimensional system of
+co-ordinates is necessary. This is only another step along the road
+which the human mind has always travelled: our conception of the
+cosmos grows more complete and more just at the same time that it
+recedes more and more beneath the surface of appearances.
+
+Far from the Higher Space Hypothesis complicating thought, it
+simplifies by synthesis and co-ordination in a manner analogous to
+that by which plane geometry is simplified when solid geometry
+becomes a subject of study. By immersing the mind in the idea of
+many dimensions, we emancipate it from the idea of dimensionality.
+But the mind moves most readily, as has been said, in ordered
+sequence. Frankly submitting ourselves to this limitation, even
+while recognizing it as such, let us learn such lessons from it as
+we can, serving the illusions that master us until we have made them
+our slaves.
+
+
+
+
+II THE DIMENSIONAL LADDER
+
+
+LEARNING TO THINK IN TERMS OF SPACES
+
+The Reader who is willing to consider the Higher Space Hypothesis
+seriously, who would discover, by its aid, new and profound truths
+closely related to life and conduct, should first of all endeavor to
+arouse in himself a new power of perception. This he will best
+accomplish by learning to discern dimensional sequences, not alone
+in geometry, but in the cosmos and in the natural world. By so doing
+he may erect for himself a veritable Jacob's ladder,
+
+  "Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross."
+
+He should accustom himself to ascend it, step by step, dimension by
+dimension. Then he will learn to trust Emerson's dictum, "Nature
+geometrizes," even in regions where the senses fail him, and the mind
+alone leads on. Much profitable amusement is to be gained by such
+exercises as follow. They are in the nature of a running up and down
+the scales in order to give strength and flexibility to a new set of
+mental fingers. Learning to think in terms of spaces contributes to
+our emancipation from the tyranny of space.
+
+
+FROM THE COSMOS TO THE CORPUSCLE
+
+By way of a beginning, proceed, by successive stages, from the
+contemplation of the greatest thing conceivable to the contemplation
+of the most minute, and note the space sequences revealed by this
+shifting of the point of view.
+
+The greatest thing we can form any conception of is the starry
+firmament made familiar to the mind through the study of astronomy.
+No limit to this vastitude has ever been assigned. Since the
+beginning of recorded time, the earth, together with the other
+planets and the sun, has been speeding through interstellar space at
+the rate of 300,000,000 miles a year, without meeting or passing a
+single star. A ray of light, travelling with a velocity so great as
+to be scarcely measurable within the diameter of the earth's orbit,
+takes years to reach even the nearest star, centuries to reach those
+more distant. Viewed in relation to this universe of suns, our
+particular sun and all its satellites--of which the earth is
+one--shrinks to a point (a _physical_ point, so to speak--not
+geometrical one).
+
+The mind recoils from these immensities: let us forsake them, then,
+for more familiar spaces, and consider the earth in its relation to
+the sun. Our planet appears as a _moving_ point, tracing out a
+_line_--a _one-space_--its path around the sun. Now let us remove
+ourselves in imagination only far enough from the earth for human
+beings thereon to appear as minute moving things, in the semblance,
+let us say, of insects infesting an apple. It is clear that from
+this point of view these beings have a freedom of movement in their
+"space" (the surface of the earth), of which the larger unit is not
+possessed; for while the earth itself can follow only a _line_, its
+inhabitants are free to move in the two dimensions of the surface of
+the earth.
+
+Abandoning our last coign of vantage, let us descend in imagination
+and mingle familiarly among men. We now perceive that these
+creatures which from a distance appeared as though flat upon the
+earth's surface, are in reality erect at right angles to its plane,
+and that they are endowed with the power to move their members in
+_three dimensions_. Indeed, man's ability to traverse the surface
+of the earth is wholly dependent upon his power of three-dimensional
+movement. Observe that with each transfer of our attention from
+greater units to smaller, we appear to be dealing with a power of
+movement in an additional dimension.
+
+Looking now in thought not _at_ the body of man, but _within_ it, we
+apprehend an ordered universe immensely vast in proportion to that
+physical ultimate we name the electron, as is the firmament immensely
+vast in proportion to a single star. It has been suggested that in
+the infinitely minute of organic bodies there is a power of movement
+in a _fourth_ dimension. If so, such four-dimensional movement may
+be the proximate cause of the phenomenon of _growth_--of those
+chemical changes and renewals whereby an organism is enabled to
+expand in three-dimensional space, just as by a three-dimensional
+power of movement (the act of walking) man is able to traverse his
+two-dimensional space--the surface of the earth.
+
+
+--AND BEYOND
+
+Proceed still further. Behind such organic change--assumed to be
+four-dimensional--there is the determination of some _will-to-live_,
+which manifests itself to consciousness as thought and as desire.
+Into these the idea of space does not enter: we think of them as in
+_time_. But if there are developments of other dimensions of space,
+thought and emotion may themselves be discovered to have space
+relations; that is, they may find expression in the forms of _higher_
+spaces. Thus is opened up one of those rich vistas in which the
+subject of the fourth dimension abounds, but into which we
+can only glance in passing. If there are such higher-dimensional
+_thought-forms_, our normal consciousness, limited to a world of
+three dimensions, can apprehend only their three-dimensional aspects,
+and these not simultaneously, but successively--that is, in _time_.
+According to this view, any unified series of _actions_--for example,
+the life of an individual, or of a group--would represent the
+straining, so to speak, of a thought-form through our _time_, as the
+bodies subject to these actions would represent its straining
+through our space.
+
+
+EVOLUTION AS SPACE-CONQUEST
+
+Evolution is a struggle for, and a conquest of, space; for evolution,
+as the word implies, is a _drawing out_ of what is inherent from
+latency into objective reality, or in other words into spatial--and
+temporal--extension.
+
+This struggle for space, by means of which the birth and growth of
+organisms is achieved, is the very texture of life, the plot of
+every drama. Cells subdivide; micro-organisms war on one another;
+plants contend for soil, light, moisture; flowers cunningly suborn
+the bee to bring about their nuptials; animals wage deadly warfare
+in their rivalry to bring more hungry animals into a space-hungry
+world. Man is not exempt from this law of the jungle. Nations
+intrigue and fight for land--of which wealth is only the symbol--and
+a nation's puissance is measured by its power to push forward into
+the territory of its neighbor. The self-same impulse drives the
+individual. One measure of the difference between men in the matter
+of efficiency is the amount of space each can command: one has a
+house and grounds in some locality where every square inch has an
+appreciable value; another some fractional part of a lodging house
+in the slums. When this bloodless, but none the less deadly, contest
+for space becomes acute, as in the congested quarters of great cities,
+man's ingenuity is taxed to devise effective ways of augmenting his
+_space-potency_, and he expands in a vertical direction. This
+third-dimensional extension, typified in the tunnel and in the
+skyscraper, is but the latest phase of a conquest of space which
+began with the line of the pioneer's trail through an untracked
+wilderness.
+
+
+DIMENSIONAL SEQUENCES
+
+Not only does nature everywhere geometrize, but she does so in a
+particular way, in which we discover dimensional sequences. Consider
+the transformation of solid, liquid, gas, from one to another, under
+the influence of heat. A solid, set in free motion, can follow only
+a _line_--as is the case of a thrown ball. A liquid has the added
+power of lateral extension. Its tendency, when intercepted, is to
+spread out in the two dimensions of a _plane_--as in the case of a
+griddle cake; while a gas expands universally in all directions, as
+shown by a soap-bubble. It is a reasonable inference that the fourth
+state of matter, the corpuscular, is affiliated to some
+four-dimensional manner of extension, and that there may be states
+beyond this, involving even higher development of space.
+
+Next glance at the vegetable kingdom. The seed, a _point_, generates
+a _line_ system, in stem, branches, twigs, from which depend _planes_
+in the form of leaves and flowers, and from these come fruit,
+_solids_.
+
+  "The point, the line, the surface and the sphere,
+  In seed, stem, leaf and fruit appear."
+
+A similar sequence may be noted within the body: the _line_-network
+of the nerves conveys the message of sensation from the _surface_ of
+the body to some center in the _solid_, of the brain--and thence to
+the Silent Thinker, "he who is without and within," or in terms of
+our hypothesis, "he who dwells in higher space."
+
+
+MAN THE GEOMETER
+
+When man essays the rôle of creator he cannot do otherwise than
+follow similar sequences: it is easy to discern dimensional
+progression in the products of man's ingenuity and skill. Consider,
+for example, the evolution of a building from its inception to its
+completion. It exists first of all in the mind of the architect, and
+there it is indubitably higher-spatial, for he can interpenetrate
+and examine every part, and he can consider it all at once, viewing
+it simultaneously from without and from within, just as one would be
+able to do in a space of four dimensions. He begins to give his idea
+physical embodiment by making with a pencil-_point, lines_ on a
+_plane_ (a piece of paper), the third dimension being represented
+by means of the other two. Next (if he is careful and wise) he makes
+a three-dimensional model. From the architect's drawings the engineer
+establishes his points, lays out his angles, and runs his lines upon
+the site itself. The mason follows, and with his footing courses
+makes ponderable and permanent the lines of the engineer. These
+lines become in due course walls--vertical planes. Floors and
+roofs--horizontal planes--follow, until some portion of
+three-dimensional space has been enclosed.
+
+Substantially the same sequence holds, whatever the kind of building
+or the character of the construction--whether a steel-framed
+skyscraper or a wooden shanty. A line system, represented by columns
+and girders in the one case, and by studs and rafters in the other,
+becomes, by overlay or interposition, a system of planes, so
+assembled and correlated as to define a solid.
+
+With nearly everything of man's creating--be it a bureau or a
+battleship--the process is as above described. First, a pattern to
+scale; next, an actual linear framework; then planes defining a solid.
+Consider almost any of the industries practiced throughout the ages:
+they may be conceived of thus in terms of dimensions; for example,
+those ancient ones of weaving and basket making. _Lines_ (threads in
+the one case, rushes in the other) are wrought into _planes_ to
+clothe a body or to contain a burden. Or think, if you choose, of
+the modern industry of book-making, wherein types are assembled,
+impressed upon sheets of paper, and these bound into volumes--
+_points, lines, planes, solids_. The book in turn becomes the unit
+of another dimensional order, in the library whose serried shelves
+form lines, which, combined into planes, define the lateral limits
+of the room.
+
+
+HIGHER--AND HIGHEST--SPACE
+
+These are truisms. What have they to do, it may be asked, with the
+idea of _higher_ spaces? They have everything to do with it, for in
+achieving the enclosure of any portion of solid space the limit of
+known dimensions has been reached without having come to any end.
+More dimensions--higher spaces--are required to account for higher
+things. All of the products of man's ingenuity are inanimate except
+as he himself animates them. They remain as they were made, machines,
+not organisms. They have no inherent life of their own, no power of
+growth and renewal. In this they differ from animate creation
+because the highest achievement of the creative faculty in man in a
+mechanical way lacks the life principle possessed by the plant. And
+as the most perfect machine is inferior in this respect to the
+humblest flower that grows, so is the highest product of the
+vegetable kingdom inferior to man himself, the maker of the machine;
+for he can reflect upon his own and the world's becoming, while the
+plant can only become.
+
+What is the reason for these differences of power and function?
+According to the Higher Space Hypothesis they are due to varying
+potencies of movement in the secret causeways and corridors of space.
+The higher functions of consciousness--volition, emotion,
+intellection--may be in some way correlated with the higher powers
+of numbers, and with the corresponding higher developments of space.
+Thus would the difference between physics and metaphysics become a
+difference of degree and not of kind. Evolution is to be conceived
+of as a continuous pushing back of the boundary between
+representation and reality, or as a conquest of space. We may
+conceive of space as of an infinite number of dimensions, and of
+consciousness as a moving--or rather as an expanding--point,
+embracing this infinity, involving worlds, powers, knowledges,
+felicities, within itself in everlasting progression.
+
+
+
+
+III PHYSICAL PHENOMENA
+
+
+LOOKING FOR THE GREATER IN THE LESS
+
+After the assured way in which the author has conducted the reader
+repeatedly up and down the dimensional ladder, it may be a surprise
+to learn that physical phenomena offer no irrefragable evidences of
+hyper-dimensionality. We could not think in higher space if
+consciousness were limited to three dimensions. The mathematical
+reality of higher space is never in question: the higher dimensions
+are as valid as the lower, but the hyper-dimensionality of matter is
+still unproven. Man's ant-like efforts to establish this as a truth
+have thus far been vain.
+
+Lest this statement discourage the reader at the very outset, he
+should understand the reason for such failure. We are _embedded_ in
+our own space, and if that space be embedded in higher space, how are
+we going to discover it? If space is curved, how are we going to
+measure its curvature? Our efforts to do so may be compared to
+measuring the distance between the tips of a bent bow by measuring
+along the bow instead of along the string.
+
+Imagine a scientifically-minded threadworm to inhabit a page of
+Euclid's solid geometry: the evidences of three-dimensionality are
+there, in the very diagrams underneath his eyes; but you could not
+_show_ him a solid--the flat page could not contain it, any more
+than our space can contain a form of four dimensions. You could only
+say to him, "These lines _represent_ a solid." He would have to
+depend on his _faith_ for belief and not on that "knowledge gained
+by exact observation and correct thinking" in which alone the
+scientist finds a sure ground for understanding.
+
+It is an axiom of science never to look outside three-space horizons
+for an understanding of phenomena when these can logically be
+accounted for within those horizons. Now because, on the Higher
+Space Hypothesis, each space is the container of all phenomena of
+its own order, the futility, for practical purposes, of going
+outside is at once apparent. The highly intelligent threadworm
+neither knows nor cares that the point of intersection of two lines
+in his diagram _represents_ a point in a space to which he is a
+stranger. The point is there, on his page: it is what he calls a
+_fact_. "Why raise" (he says) "these puzzling and merely academic
+questions? Why attempt to turn the universe completely upside down?"
+
+But though no _proofs_ of hyper-dimensionality have been found in
+nature, there are equally no contradictions of it, and by using a
+method not inductive, but deductive, the Higher Space Hypothesis
+is plausibly confirmed. Nature affords a sufficient number of
+_representations_ of four-dimensional forms and movements to justify
+their consideration.
+
+
+SYMMETRY
+
+Let us first flash the light of our hypothesis upon an all but
+universal characteristic of living forms, yet one of the most
+inexplicable--_symmetry_.
+
+Animal life exhibits the phenomenon of the right-and left-handed
+symmetry of solids. This is exemplified in the human body, wherein
+the parts are symmetrical with relation to the axial _plane_.
+Another more elementary type of symmetry is characteristic of the
+vegetable kingdom. A leaf in its general contour is symmetrical:
+here the symmetry is about a _line_--the midrib. This type of
+symmetry is readily comprehensible, for it involves simply a
+revolution through 180 degrees. Write a word on a piece of paper and
+quickly fold it along the line of writing so that the wet ink
+repeats the pattern, and you have achieved the kind of symmetry
+represented in a leaf.
+
+With the symmetry of solids, or symmetry with relation to an axial
+_plane_, no such simple movement as the foregoing suffices to
+produce or explain it, because symmetry about a plane implies
+_four-dimensional_ movement. It is easy to see why this must be so.
+In order to achieve symmetry in any space--that is, in any given
+number of dimensions--there must be revolution in the next higher
+space: one more dimension is necessary. To make the (two-dimensional)
+ink figure symmetrical, it had to be folded over _in the third
+dimension_. The revolution took place about the figure's _line_ of
+symmetry, and in a _higher_ dimension. In _three_-dimensional
+symmetry (the symmetry of solids) revolution must occur about the
+figure's _plane_ of symmetry, and in a higher--i.e., the _fourth_
+dimension. Such a movement we can reason about with mathematical
+definiteness: we see the result in the right- and left-handed
+symmetry of solids, but we cannot picture the movement ourselves
+because it involves a space of which our senses fail to give any
+account.
+
+Now could it be shown that the two-dimensional symmetry observed in
+nature is the result of a three-dimensional movement, the right-and
+left-handed symmetry of solids would by analogy be the result of a
+_four_-dimensional movement. Such revolution (about a plane) would
+be easily achieved, natural and characteristic, in four space, just
+as the analogous movement (about a line) is easy, natural, and
+characteristic, in our space of three dimensions.
+
+
+OTHER ALLIED PHENOMENA
+
+In the mirror image of a solid we have a representation of what
+would result from a four-dimensional revolution, the surface of the
+mirror being the plane about which the movement takes place. If such
+a change of position were effected in the constituent parts of a
+body as a mirror image of it _represents_, the body would have
+undergone a revolution in the fourth dimension. Now two varieties of
+tartaric acid crystallize in forms bearing the relation to one
+another of object to mirror image. It would seem more reasonable to
+explain the existence of these two identical, but reversed,
+varieties of crystal, by assuming the revolution of a single variety
+in the fourth dimension, than by any other method.
+
+There are two forms of sugar found in honey, dextrose and levulose.
+They are similar in chemical constitution, but the one is the
+reverse of the other when examined by polarized light--that is, they
+rotate the plane of polarization of a ray of light in opposite ways.
+If their atoms are conceived to have the power of motion in the
+fourth dimension, it would be easy to understand why they differ.
+Certain snails present the same characteristics as these two forms
+of sugar. Some are coiled to the right and others to the left; and
+it is remarkable that, like dextrose and levulose, their juices are
+optically the reverse of each other when studied by polarized light.
+
+Revolution in the fourth dimension would also explain the change in
+a body from producing a right-handed, to producing a left-handed,
+polarization of light.
+
+
+ISOMERISM
+
+In chemistry the molecules of a compound are assumed to consist of
+the atoms of the elements contained in the compound. These atoms are
+supposed to be at certain distances from one another. It sometimes
+happens that two compound substances differ in their chemical or
+physical properties, or both, even though they have like chemical
+elements in the same proportion. This phenomenon is called isomerism,
+and the generally accepted explanation is that the atoms in isomeric
+molecules are differently arranged, or grouped, in space. It is
+difficult to imagine how atoms, alike in number, nature, and
+relative proportion, can be so grouped as somehow to produce
+compounds with different properties, particularly as in
+three-dimensional space four is the greatest number of points whose
+mutual distances, six in number, are all independent of each other.
+In four-dimensional space, however, the _ten_ equal distances
+between any two of _five_ points are geometrically independent, thus
+greatly augmenting the number and variety of possible arrangements
+of atoms.
+
+This just escapes being the kind of proof demanded by science. If
+the independence of all the possible distances between the atoms of
+a molecule is absolutely required by theoretical chemical research,
+then science is really compelled, in dealing with molecules of more
+than four atoms, to make use of the idea of a space of more than
+three dimensions.
+
+
+THE ORBITAL MOTION OF SPHERES: CELL SUB-DIVISION
+
+There is in nature another representation of hyper-dimensionality
+which, though difficult to demonstrate, is too interesting and
+significant to be omitted here.
+
+Imagine a helix, intersected, in its vertical dimension, by a moving
+plane. If necessary to assist the mind, suspend a spiral spring
+above a pail of water, then raise the pail until the coils, one
+after another, become immersed. The spring would represent the helix,
+and the surface of the water the moving plane. Concentrating
+attention upon this surface, you would see a point--the elliptical
+cross-section of the wire where it intersected the plane--moving
+round and round in a circle. Next conceive of the wire itself as a
+lesser helix of many convolutions, and repeat the experiment. The
+point of intersection would then continually return upon its own
+track in a series of minute loops forming those lesser loops, which,
+moving circle-wise, registered the involvement of the helix in the
+plane.
+
+It is easy to go on imagining complicated structures of the nature
+of the spiral, and to suppose also that these structures are
+distinguishable from each other at every section. If we think of the
+intersection of these with the rising surface, as the atoms, or
+physical units, of a plane universe, we shall have a world of
+apparent motion, with bodies moving harmoniously amongst one another,
+each a cross-section of some part of an unchanging and unmoving
+three-dimensional entity.
+
+Now augment the whole by an additional dimension--raise everything
+one space. The helix of many helices would become four-dimensional,
+and superficial space would change to solid space: each tiny circle
+of intersection would become a sphere of the same diameter,
+describing, instead of loops, helices. Here we would be among
+familiar forms, describing familiar motions: the forms, for example,
+of the earth and the moon and of their motion about the sun; of the
+atom, as we imagine it, the molecule and the cell. For is not the
+sphere, or ovoid, the unit form of nature; and is not the spiral
+vortex its characteristic motion, from that of the nebula in the sky
+to the electron in the atom? Thus, on the hypothesis that our space
+is traversing four-dimensional space, and that the forms of our
+space are cross-sections of four-dimensional forms, the unity and
+harmony of nature would be accounted for in a remarkably simple
+manner.
+
+The above exercise of the imagination is a good preparation for the
+next demand upon it. Conceive a dichotomous tree--one that always
+divides into two branches--to pass through a plane. We should have,
+as a plane section, a circle of changing size, which would elongate
+and divide into two circles, each of which would do the same. This
+reminds us of the segmentation of cell life observed under the
+microscope, as though a four-dimensional figure were registering its
+passage through our space.
+
+
+THE ELECTRIC CURRENT
+
+Hinton conceived of an electric current as a four-dimensional vortex.
+He declared that on the Higher Space Hypothesis the revolution of
+the ether would yield the phenomenon of the electric current. The
+reader is referred to Hinton's book, _The Fourth Dimension_, for an
+extended development of this idea. What follows is a brief summary
+of his argument. First, he examines the characteristics of a vortex
+in a three-dimensional fluid. Then he conceives of what such a
+vortex would be in a four-dimensional medium of analogous properties.
+The whirl would be about a _plane_, and the contour of this plane
+would correspond to the ends of the axis line in the former vortex;
+and as before, the vortex would extend to the boundary. Every
+electric current forms a closed circuit: this is equivalent to the
+hyper-vortex having its ends in the boundary of the hyper-fluid. The
+vortex with a _surface_ as its axis, therefore, affords a geometric
+image of a closed circuit.
+
+Hinton supposes a conductor to be a body which has the property
+of serving as a terminal abutment to such a hyper-vortex as has
+been described. The conception that he forms of a closed current,
+therefore, is of a vortex sheet having its _edge_ along the
+circuit of the conducting wire. The whole wire would then be like
+the centers on which a spindle turns in three-dimensional space,
+and any interruption of the continuity of the wire would produce
+a _tension_ in place of a continuous revolution. The phenomena
+of electricity--polarity, induction, and the like--are of the nature
+of the stress and strain of a medium, but one possessing properties
+unlike those of ordinary matter. The phenomena can be explained in
+terms of higher space. If Hinton's hypothesis be the true explanation,
+the universality of electro-magnetic action would again point to the
+conclusion that our three-dimensional world is _superficial_--the
+surface, that is, of a four-dimensional universe.
+
+
+THE GREATER UNIVERSE
+
+This practically exhausts the list of accepted and accredited
+indications of hyper-dimensionality in our physical environment. But
+if the collective human consciousness is moving into the fourth
+dimension, such indications are bound to multiply out of all measure.
+It should be remembered that in Franklin's day electricity was
+manifest only in the friction of surfaces and in the thunderbolt.
+To-day all physical phenomena, in their last analysis, are considered
+to be electrical. The world is not different, but perception has
+evolved, and is evolving.
+
+There is another field, in which some of our ablest minds are
+searching for evidences of the curvature of space, the field of
+astronomy and astro-physics. But into this the layman hesitates to
+enter because the experts themselves have found no common ground of
+understanding. The ether of space is a battlefield strewn with dead
+and dying hypotheses; gravitation, like multiplication, is vexation;
+the very nature of time, form and movement is under vivid discussion,
+in connection with what is known as the Theory of Relativity.
+
+Notwithstanding these counter-currents of speculation, which should
+make the wise man speak smilingly of his wisdom, this summary
+remains incomplete without a reference to the pressure of higher
+space upon those adventurous minds that essay to deal with the
+profound problems of the greater universe, and a statement of the
+reasons for their feeling this pressure. These reasons are well
+suggested by Professor B.G. Harrison, in his _Popular Astronomy_. He
+says: "With the idea of a universe of finite dimensions there is the
+obvious difficulty of the beyond. The truth is that a universe of
+finite proportions is equally difficult to realize as one of
+infinite extent. Perhaps the nearest analogy to infinity that we can
+understand lies in our conception of a closed curve. It seems easier
+to imagine the endless movement of a sphere in a circular path than
+the case of one travelling in a straight line. Possibly this analogy
+may apply in some way to fourth-dimensional space, but the manner of
+its application is certainly not easy to understand. If we would
+imagine that all co-ordinates of time and space were curved, and
+eventually return to the same point, it might bring the ultimate
+comprehension one degree nearer."
+
+
+A HINT FROM ASTRONOMY
+
+The physical evidence that our space is thus curved in higher space,
+some have considered astronomy to furnish in what is called the
+"negative parallax" of certain distant stars. This cannot be passed
+by, though it is too deeply involved with the probable error of the
+observers themselves to be considered more than an interesting fact
+in this connection. Every one knows that the difference of angle
+under which an object is seen from two standpoints is called its
+parallax. The parallax of the stars--and the consequent knowledge of
+their distance--is obtained by observing them from opposite points
+of the earth's orbit around the sun. When a star is within measurable
+distance, these angles are acute, and the lines from the star to the
+earth at opposite sides of its orbit converge, therefore. But when
+these lines, as sometimes happens, appear to be _divergent_, the
+result is called a _negative_ parallax, and is explainable by higher
+space relationships. Obviously, the divergence of the lines would
+indicate that the object lies _behind_ the observer instead of in
+front of him. This anomaly can be explained by the curvature of space
+in the fourth dimension. If space is so curved, the path of light
+itself is curved also, and a man--were his vision immeasurably keen,
+not to say telescopic--could see the back of his own head! It is not
+worth while to give this question of negative parallax too much
+importance, by reason of the probability of error, but in this
+connection it should be stated that there appears to be an undue
+number of negative parallaxes recorded.
+
+
+GRAVITATION
+
+Gravitation remains a puzzle to science. The tendency of modern
+physics is to explain all material phenomena in terms of electrons
+and the ether, but the attempt to account for gravitation in this
+way is attended with difficulties. In order to cope with these, it
+seems necessary to assume that our universe is only a portion of a
+greater universe. This assumption readily lends itself to the
+conception of our universe as a three-dimensional meeting place of
+two portions of a universe of four dimensions--that is, its
+conception as a "higher" surface. This is a fundamental postulate of
+higher space speculation.
+
+One hypothesis advanced to explain gravitation assumes the existence
+of a constant hydrostatic pressure transmitted through the ether. A
+steady flow of ether into every electron in a gravitating system of
+bodies would give rise to forces of attraction between them, varying
+inversely as the square of the distance, according to Newton's law.
+But in order to avoid the conception of the continual destruction
+and creation of ether, it is necessary to assume a steady flow
+through every electron between our universe and the greater universe
+of which it is assumed to form a part Now because the electrons, in
+order to receive this flow, must lie on the boundary of this greater
+universe, the latter must be four-dimensional. Every electron, in
+other words, must be the starting point of a pathway into--and a
+terminal point out of--four-dimensional space. Here we have another
+familiar higher space concept.
+
+
+THE ETHER OF SPACE
+
+The ether of space, because it has at last found entrance, must be
+given a grudging hospitality in these pages, even though the
+mysterious stranger prove but a ghost. The Relativists would have it
+that with the acceptance of their point of view the ether may be
+eliminated; but if they take away the ether, they must give us
+something in its stead. In whatever way the science of the future
+disposes of this problem, it must take into account the fact of
+light transmission. On the theory that the ether is an elastic solid
+of amazing properties, in which the light waves vibrate _transversely_
+to their direction, it assists the mind to think of the ether as
+four-dimensional, because then a light wave would be a superficial
+disturbance of the medium--superficial, but three-dimensional, as
+must needs be the case with the surface of a four-dimensional solid.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This search for evidences of hyper-dimensionality in the universe
+accessible to our senses is like looking, not for a needle in a
+haystack, but for a haystack in a needle--for the greater in the less.
+From the purely physical evidences, all that can with certainty be
+said is that the hypothesis is not inconsistent with the facts of
+science or its laws; that it is being verified and rendered more
+probable by the investigations of science; that it is applicable to
+the description or explanation of all the observed phenomena, and
+assigns a cause fully adequate to have produced them.
+
+Now there is an order of phenomena that we call psychic. Because
+they are phenomenal they cannot occur outside of time and space
+altogether; because they are psychic they defy explanation in terms
+of the space and time of every-day life. Let us next examine these
+in the light of our hypothesis.
+
+
+
+
+IV  TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS
+
+ZÖLLNER
+
+In the year 1877, Johann Friedrich Zöllner, professor of physics and
+astronomy at the University of Leipsic, undertook to prove that
+certain (so-called) psychic phenomena were susceptible of explanation
+on the hypothesis of a four-dimensional space. He used as
+illustrations the phenomena induced by the medium Henry Slade. By
+the irony of events, Slade was afterward arrested and imprisoned for
+fraud, in England. This fact so prejudiced the public mind against
+Zöllner that his name became a word of scorn, and the fourth dimension
+a synonym for what is fatuous and false. Zöllner died of it, but
+since his death public opinion has undergone a change. There is a
+great and growing interest in everything pertaining to the fourth
+dimension, and belief in that order of phenomena upon which Zöllner
+based his deductions is supported by evidence at once voluminous and
+impressive.
+
+It is unnecessary to go into the question of the genuineness of the
+particular phenomena which Zöllner witnessed. His conclusions are
+alone important, since they apply equally to other manifestations,
+whose authenticity has never been successfully impeached. Zöllner's
+reasoning with regard to certain psychic phenomena is somewhat along
+the following lines.
+
+
+APPARITIONS
+
+_The intrusion (as an apparition) of a person or thing into a
+completely enclosed portion of three-space; or contrariwise, the
+exit (as an evanishment) out of such a space_.
+
+Because we lack the sense of four-dimensional space, we must here
+have recourse to analogy, and assume three-dimensional space to be
+the unsensed higher region encompassing a world of two dimensions,
+To a hypothetical flat-man of a two-space, any portion of his plane
+surrounded by an unbroken line would constitute an enclosure. Were
+he confined within it, escape would be impossible by any means known
+to him. Had he the ability to move in the third dimension, however,
+he could rise, pass over the enclosing line without disturbing it,
+and descend on the other side. The moment he forsook the plane he
+would disappear from two-dimensional space. Such a disappearance
+would constitute an occult phenomenon in a world of two dimensions.
+
+Correspondingly, an evanishment from any three-dimensional
+enclosure--such as a room with locked doors and windows--might be
+effected by means of a movement in the fourth dimension. Because a
+body would disappear from our perception the moment it forsook our
+space, such a disappearance would be a mystery; it would constitute
+an occult phenomenon. The thing would be no more mysterious, however,
+to a consciousness embracing four dimensions within its ken, than
+the transfer of an object from the inside to the outside of a plane
+figure without crossing its linear boundary is mysterious to us.
+
+
+POSSESSION
+
+_The temporary possession of a person's body, or some member of
+that body, by an alien will, as exemplified in automatic writing and
+obsession_.
+
+It would doubtless amaze the scientifically orthodox to know how
+many people habitually and successfully practice the dubious art of
+automatic writing--not mediums, so-called, but people of refinement
+and intelligence. Although the messages received in this way may
+emanate from the subconscious mind of the performer, there is
+evidence to indicate that they come sometimes from an intelligence
+discarnate, or from a person remote from the recipient in space.
+
+If such is indeed the case, if the will is extraneous, how does it
+possess itself of the nerves and muscles of the hand of the writer?
+The Higher Space Hypothesis is of assistance here. It is only
+necessary to remember that from the fourth dimension the interior of
+a solid is as much exposed as the interior of a plane figure is
+exposed from the region of the third dimension. A four-dimensional
+being would experience no difficulty, under suitable conditions, in
+possessing itself of any part of the bodily mechanism of another.
+
+The same would hold true in cases of possession and obsession; for
+if the bastion of the hand can thus be captured, so also may the
+citadel of the brain. Certain familiar forms of hypnotism are not
+different from obsession, the hypnotizer using the brain and body of
+his subject as though they were his own. All unconsciously to himself,
+he has called into play four-dimensional mechanics. Many cases of
+so-called dual personality are more easily explicable as possession
+by an alien will than on the less credible hypothesis that the
+character, habits, and language of a person can change utterly in a
+moment of time.
+
+
+CLAIRVOYANCE IN SPACE
+
+_Vision at a distance and the exercise of a superior power of sight_.
+
+Clairvoyance in space is of various kinds and degrees. Sometimes it
+consists in the perception of super-physical phenomena--the
+unfurling of a strange and wonderful land; and again it appears to
+be a higher power of ordinary vision, a kind of seeing to which the
+opacity of solids offers no impediment, or one involving spatial
+distances too great and too impeded for normal physical vision to be
+effective.
+
+That clairvoyance which consists in the ability to perceive not
+alone the superficies of things as ordinary vision perceives them,
+but their interiors as well, is analogous to the power given by the
+X-ray, by means of which, on a fluorescent screen, a man may behold
+the beating of his own heart. But, if the reports of trained
+clairvoyants are to be believed, there is this difference:
+everything appears to them without the distortions due to perspective,
+objects being seen as though they were inside and not outside of the
+perceiving organ, or as though the observer were in the object
+perceived; or in all places at the same time.
+
+Our analogy makes all this intelligible. To the flat-man,
+clairvoyance in space would consist in that power of perception
+which we exercise in reference to his plane. From the third
+dimension the boundaries of plane figures offer no impediment
+to the view of their interiors, and they themselves in no way
+impede our vision of surrounding objects. If we assume that
+clairvoyance in space is the perception of the things of our world
+from the region of the fourth dimension, the phenomena exactly
+conform to the demands of our analogy. It is no more difficult
+for a four-dimensional intelligence to understand the appearance
+or disappearance of a body in a completely closed room, or the
+withdrawal of an orange from its skin, without cutting or breaking
+that skin, than it is for us to see the possibility of taking up a
+pencil point from the center of a circle and putting it down outside.
+We are under no compulsion to draw a line across the circumference
+of the circle in order to enter or leave it. Moreover, the volume of
+our sensible universe embraced in the clairvoyant's field of view
+will increase in the same way that a balloonist's view increases in
+area as he rises above the surface of the earth. To account for
+clairvoyant vision at a distance, it is of course necessary to posit
+some perceptive organ other than the eye, but the fact that in
+trance the eyes are closed, itself demands this assumption.
+
+
+CLAIRVOYANCE IN TIME
+
+_The perception of a past event as in process of occurring, or the
+prevision of something which comes to pass later_.
+
+No mechanistic explanation will serve to account for this order of
+clairvoyance since it is inextricably involved in the mystery of
+consciousness itself. Yet our already overworked analogy can perhaps
+cast a little light even here.
+
+To the flat-man, the third dimension of objects passing through his
+plane translates itself to his experience into _time_. Were he
+capable of rising in the positive direction of the third dimension,
+he would have pre-vision, because he would be cognizant of that
+which had not yet intersected his plane: by sinking in the negative
+direction, he would have post-vision, because he could re-cognize
+that which had already passed.
+
+Now there are excellent reasons, other than those based on analogy,
+that the fourth-dimensional aspect of things may manifest itself to
+our ordinary experience, not as spatial extension, but as temporal
+change. Then, if we conceive of clairvoyance as a transcending by
+consciousness of our three-dimensional space, prevision and
+post-vision would be logically possible as corresponding to the
+positive and negative of the fourth dimension. This may be made
+clearer by the aid of a homely illustration.
+
+
+PISGAH SIGHTS OF LIFE'S PAGEANT
+
+Suppose you are standing on a street corner, watching a procession
+pass. You see the pageant as a sequence of objects and individuals
+appearing into view near by and suddenly, and disappearing in the
+same manner. This would represent our ordinary waking consciousness
+of what goes on in the world round about. Now imagine that you walk
+up the street in a direction opposite to that in which the
+procession is moving. You then rapidly pass in review a portion of
+the procession which had not yet arrived at the point you were a few
+moments before. This would correspond to the seeing of something
+before it "happened," and would represent the positive aspect of
+clairvoyance in time--prevision. Were you to start from your
+original position, and moving in the direction in which the
+procession was passing, overtake it at some lower street corner, you
+could witness the thing you had already seen. This would represent
+post-vision--clairvoyance of the past.
+
+A higher type of clairvoyance would be represented by the sweep of
+vision possible from a balloon. From that place of vantage the
+procession would be seen, not as a sequence, but simultaneously, and
+could be traced from its formation to its dispersal. Past, present
+and future would be merged in one.
+
+It is true that this explanation raises more questions than it
+answers: to account in this way for a marvel, a greater marvel must
+be imagined--that of transport out of one's own "space." The whole
+subject bristles with difficulties, not the least of which is that
+even to conceive of such a thing as prevision all our old ideas
+about time must be recast. This is being done in the Principle of
+Relativity, a subject which may appropriately engage our attention
+next.
+
+
+
+
+V  CURVED TIME
+
+
+TIME FROM THE STANDPOINT OF EXPERIMENT AND OF CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE
+
+In some moment of "sudden light" what one of us has not been able to
+say, with Rossetti,
+
+    "I have been here before,
+    But when or how I cannot tell."
+
+Are such strange hauntings of our House of Life due to the cyclic
+return of time? Perhaps,--but what is time?
+
+Suppose some one should ask you, "What is an hour?" Your answer
+might be, "It is the interval marked off by the clock-hand between 1
+and 2." "But what if your clock is running down or speeding up?" To
+this you would probably reply, "The clock is set and corrected by
+the earth, the sun and the stars, which are constant in their
+movements." _But they are not_. The earth is known to be running slow,
+by reason of tide friction, and this is likely to continue until it
+will revolve on its axis, not once a day, but once a year,
+presenting always the same face to the sun.
+
+We can only measure time by _uniform_ motion. Observe the vicious
+circle. Uniform motion means the covering of equal spaces in equal
+times. But how are we to determine our equal times? Ultimately we
+have no other criterion save the uniform motion of the clock-hand or
+the star dial. The very expressions, "uniform motion," "equal times,"
+beg the whole question of the nature of time.
+
+Let us then, in this predicament, consider time not from the
+standpoint of experiment, but of conscious experience--what Bergson
+calls "real duration."
+
+Every point along the line of memory, of conscious experience, has
+been traced out by that unresting stylus we call "the present moment."
+The question of its rate of motion we will not raise, as it is one
+with which we have found ourselves impotent to deal. We believe on
+the best of evidence that the conscious experience of others is
+conditioned like our own. For better understanding let us have
+recourse to a homely analogy: let us think of these more or less
+parallel lines of individual experience in the semblance of the
+strands of a skein of flax. Now if, _at the present moment_, this
+skein were cut with a straight knife at right angles to its length,
+the cut end would represent the _time plane_--that is, the present
+moment of all--and it would be the same for all providing that the
+time plane were flat _But is it really flat_? Isn't the straightness
+of the knife a mere poverty of human imagination? Existence is always
+richer and more dramatic than any diagram.
+
+  "Line in nature is not found;
+  Unit and universe are round.
+  In vain produced, all rays return;
+  Evil will bless and ice will burn."
+
+Undoubtedly the flat time-plane represents with fair accuracy the
+temporal conditions that obtain in the human aggregate in this world
+under normal conditions of consciousness, but if we consider our
+relation to intelligent beings upon distant worlds of the visible
+universe the conditions might be widely different The time section
+corresponding to what our straight knife made flat in the case of
+the flax may be--nay, probably is--strongly curved.
+
+
+RELATIVITY
+
+This crude analogy haltingly conveys what is meant by curved time.
+It is an idea which is implicit in the Theory of Relativity. This
+theory has profoundly modified many of our basic conceptions about
+the universe in which we are immersed. It is outside the province of
+this book and beyond the power of its author even so much as to
+sketch the main outlines of this theory, but certain of its
+conclusions are indispensable, since they baldly set forth our
+dilemma in regard to the measurement of space and time. We can
+measure neither except relatively, because they must be measured one
+by the other, and no matter how they vary, these variations always
+compensate one another, leaving us in the same state of ignorance
+that we were in before.
+
+Suppose that two intelligent beings, one on Mars, let us say, and
+the other on the earth, should attempt to establish _the same moment
+of time_, by the interchange of light signals, or by any other
+method which the most rigorous science could devise. Assume that
+they have for this purpose two identically similar and mechanically
+perfect chronometers, and that every difficulty of manipulation were
+successfully overcome. Their experiment could end only in failure,
+and the measure of this failure neither one, in his own place, could
+possibly know. If, after the experiment, the Martian, chronometer in
+hand, could be instantly and miraculously transported to the earth,
+and the two settings compared, they would be found to be different:
+how different, we do not know.
+
+The reason for the failure of any such experiment anywhere conducted
+can best be made plain by a crude paraphrase of a classic
+proposition from Relativity. Suppose it is required to determine the
+same moment of time at two different places on the earth's surface,
+as must be attempted in finding their difference in longitude. Take
+the Observatory at Greenwich for one place, and the observatory at
+Washington for the other. At the moment the sun is on the meridian
+of Greenwich, the exact time of crossing is noted and cabled to
+Washington. The chronometer at Washington is set accordingly, and
+the time checked back to Greenwich. This message arrives two seconds,
+say, after the original message was sent. Washington is at once
+notified of this double transmission interval. On the assumption
+that HALF of it represents the time the message took to travel from
+east to west, and the other half the time from west to east again,
+the Washington chronometer is set one second ahead of the signalled
+time, to compensate for its part of the loss. When the sun has
+reached the meridian of Washington, the whole process is repeated,
+and again as before, half of the time the message has taken to cross
+and recross the Atlantic is added to the Greenwich record of noon at
+Washington. The number of hours, minutes, seconds, and fractions of
+a second between these two corrected records represents the
+difference in solar time between the two places, and incidentally
+the same moment of time has been established for both--at least, so
+it would appear.
+
+But is it established? That each message took an equal time to
+travel each way is pure assumption, and happens to be a false one.
+The accuracy of the result is vitiated by a condition of things to
+which the Relativists have called attention. Our determination might
+be defended if Washington and Greenwich could be assumed to remain
+at rest during the experiments, and some argument might even be made
+in its favor if we could secure any cosmic assurance that the
+resultant motion of the earth should be the same when Greenwich
+signalled its noon to Washington and Washington its noon to Greenwich.
+
+Our present discussion is merely illustrative, or diagrammatic; so
+we will neglect the velocity of the earth in its orbit round the sun,
+some forty times greater than that of a cannon ball, and the more
+uncertain and more vertiginous speed of the whole solar system
+towards its unknown goal. Let us consider only the rotation of the
+earth on its axis, the tide-speed of day and night. To fix our idea,
+this may be taken, in our latitudes, at eighteen thousand miles per
+day, or perhaps half the speed of a Mauser rifle bullet.
+
+So fast, then, will Washington have been moving to meet the message
+from Greenwich. So fast will Greenwich have been retreating from
+Washington's message.
+
+Now the ultimate effect of motion on the time-determination cannot
+be calculated along any such simple lines as these. Indeed, it
+cannot be exactly calculated at all, for we have not all the data.
+But there is certainly _some_ effect. Suppose one rows four miles up
+a river against a current of two miles per hour, at a rowing speed
+of four miles per hour. This will take two hours, plainly. The
+return trip with the river's gift of two miles per hour will
+evidently require but forty minutes. _Two hours and forty minutes_
+for the round trip, then, of eight miles.
+
+Now then, to row eight miles in still water, according to our
+supposition, would have required but _two hours_. But, some one
+objects, the current must help the return trip as much as it
+hindered the outgoing! Ah, here is the snare that catches
+rough-and-ready common sense! How long would the double journey have
+taken _if the river current had been faster than our rowing speed_?
+How shall we schedule our trip if we cannot learn the correct speed,
+_or if it varies from minute to minute_?
+
+These explanations are necessarily symbolistic rather than
+demonstrative, but any one who will seriously follow out these lines
+of thought, or, still better, study the attitude of the hard-headed
+modern physicist towards our classical geometry and mechanics,
+cannot fail to realize how conventional, artificial--even
+phantasmal--are the limitations set by the primitive idea of flat
+space and straight time.
+
+The inferences which we may draw from our hypothetical experiment
+are plain. The settings of the two chronometers would be defective,
+they would not show the same time, but each of them would mark the
+_local_ time, proper to its own place. There would be no means of
+detecting the amount of error, since the messages were transmitted
+by a medium involved with them in their transportation. If only
+local time can be established, the possibility of a warped
+time-plane--the curvature of time--is directly opened up. Doubtless
+it is true that on so relatively minute a scale as is offered by the
+earth, any deviation from perfect flatness of the time-plane would
+be so inconsiderable and imperceptible as to make it scientifically
+negligible; but this by no means follows when we consider our
+relation to other worlds and other systems.
+
+A similar condition holds with regard to space-distortion. The
+Theory of Relativity enforces the conclusion that from the
+standpoint of our conventions in regard to these matters, all bodies
+involved in transportation undergo a contraction in the direction of
+that transportation, while their dimensions perpendicular to the
+transportation remain invariable. This contraction is the same for
+all bodies. For bodies of low velocity, like the earth, this
+distortion would be almost immeasurably slight; but great or little,
+no measuring instruments on the body transporting would ever
+disclose it, for a measure would undergo the same contraction as the
+thing measured.
+
+
+THE SPOON-MAN
+
+These concepts that space and time are not as immutable as they
+appear: that our universe may suffer distortion, that time may lag
+or hasten without our being in the least aware, may be made
+interestingly clear by an illustration first suggested by Helmholtz,
+of which the following is in the nature of a paraphrase.
+
+If you look at your own image in the shining surface of a teapot, or
+the back of a silver spoon, all things therein appear grotesquely
+distorted, and all distances strangely altered. But if you choose to
+make the bizarre supposition that this spoon-world is real, and your
+image--the spoon-man--a thinking and speaking being, certain
+interesting facts could be developed by a discussion between
+yourself and him.
+
+You say, "Your world is a distorted transcript of the one in which I
+live."
+
+"Prove it to me," says the spoon-man.
+
+With a foot-rule you proceed to make measurements to show the
+rectangularity of the room in which you are standing. Simultaneously
+he makes measurements giving the same numerical results; for his
+foot-rule shrinks and curves in the exact proportion to give the
+true number of feet when he measures his shrunken and distorted rear
+wall. No measurement you can apply will prove you in the right, nor
+him in the wrong. Indeed he is likely to retort upon you that it is
+your room which is distorted, for he can show that in spite of all
+its nightmare aspects his world is governed by the same orderly
+geometry that governs yours.
+
+The above illustration deals purely with space relations, for such
+relations are easily grasped; but certain distortions in time
+relations are no less absolutely imperceptible and unprovable. So
+far from having any advantage over the spoon-man, our plight is his.
+The Principle of Relativity discovers us in the predicament of the
+Mikado's "prisoner pent," condemned to play with crooked cues and
+elliptical billiard balls, and of the opium victim, for whom
+"space swells" and time moves sometimes swift and sometimes slow.
+
+
+THE ORBITAL MOVEMENT OF TIME
+
+Now if our space is curved in higher space, since such curvature is
+at present undetectable by us, we must assume, as Hinton chose to
+assume, that it curves in the minute, or, as some astronomers assume,
+that its curve is vast. These assumptions are not mutually exclusive:
+they are quite in analogy with the general curvature of the earth's
+surface which is in no wise interfered with by the lesser curvatures
+represented by mountains and valleys. It is easiest to think of our
+space as completely curved in higher space in analogy with the
+surface of a sphere.
+
+Similarly, if time is curved, the idea of the cyclic return of time
+naturally (though not inevitably) follows, and the division of the
+greater cycles into lesser loops; for it is easier to assign this
+elliptical movement to time than any other, by reason of the orbital
+movements of the planets and their satellites. What results from
+conceptions of this order? Amazing things! If our space is curved in
+higher space, you may be looking toward the back of your own head.
+If time flows in cycles, in travelling toward to-morrow you may be
+facing yesterday.
+
+This "eternal return," so far from being a new idea, is so old that
+it has been forgotten. Its reappearance in novel guise, along with
+so many other recrudescences, itself beautifully illustrates time
+curvature in consciousness. _Yugas_, time cycles, are an integral
+and inexpugnable part of Oriental metaphysics. "Since the soul
+perpetually runs," says Zoroaster, "in a certain space of time it
+passes through all things, which circulation being accomplished, it
+is compelled to run back again through all things, and unfold the
+same web of generation in the world." Time curvature is implicit in
+the Greek idea of the iron, bronze, silver, and golden ages,
+succeeding each other in the same order: the winter, seed-time,
+summer and harvest of the larger year. Astrology, seership, prophecy,
+become plausible on the higher-time hypothesis. From this point of
+view history becomes less puzzling and paradoxical. What were the
+Middle Ages but a forgetting of Greek and Roman civilization, and
+what was the Renaissance but a remembering of them--a striving to
+re-create the ruined stage-settings and to re-enact the urbane play
+of Pagan life. The spirit of the Crusades is now again animate
+throughout Europe. Nations are uniting in a Holy War against the
+Infidel _de nos jours_.
+
+But it is in the individual consciousness that time curvature
+receives its most striking confirmation--those lesser returns and
+rhythms to which we give the name of periodicity. Before considering
+these, however, a fundamental fallacy of the modern mind must be
+exposed.
+
+
+MATERIALITY THE MIRROR OF CONSCIOUSNESS
+
+Our vicious habit of seeking the explanation of everything--even
+thought and emotion--in materiality, has betrayed us into the error
+of attributing to organic and environic changes the very power by
+which they are produced. We are wont to think of feeling, the form
+in which Being manifests to consciousness, as an effect instead of
+as a cause. When Sweet Sixteen becomes suddenly and mysteriously
+interesting to the growing boy, it is not because sex has awakened
+in his body, but because the dread time has come for him to
+contemplate the Idea of Woman in his soul. If you are sleepy, it is
+not because the blood has begun to flow away from your brain, but
+because your body has begun to bore you. Night has brought back the
+Idea of Freedom, and consciousness chloroforms the thing that
+clutches it. If you are ill, you grow cold or your temperature rises:
+it is the signal by which you know that your consciousness is
+turning toward the Idea of Pain.
+
+Just as a savage looks for a man behind a mirror, we foolishly seek
+in materiality for that which is not there. The soul determines
+circumstance: the soul contains the event which shall befall. The
+organic and environic rearrangements incident to obscure rotations
+in higher space are like the changes a mirror-image undergoes as an
+object draws near and then recedes from its plane. This is only a
+figure of speech, but it is susceptible of almost literal application.
+Ideas, emerging from the subconscious, appproach, intersect, recede
+from, and re-approach the stream of conscious experience; taking the
+forms of aversions and desires, they register themselves in action,
+and by reason of time curvature, everything that occurs, recurs.
+
+
+PERIODICITY
+
+We recognize and accept this cyclic return of time in such familiar
+manifestations of it as Nature affords in _periodicity_. We recognize
+it also in our mental and emotional life, when the periods can be
+co-ordinated with known physical phenomena, as in the case of the
+wanderlust which comes in the mild melancholy of autumn, the moods that
+go with waning day, and winter night. It is only when these recurrences
+do not submit themselves to our puny powers of analysis and measurement
+that we are incredulous of a larger aspect of the law of time-return.
+Sleep for example, is not less mysterious than death which, too,
+may be but "a sleep and a forgetting." The reason that sleep fails to
+terrify us as death does is because experience has taught that
+_memory leafs the chasm_. Why should death bedreaded any more than
+bedtime? Because we fear that we shall forget. But do we really forget?
+As Pierre Janet so tersely puts it, "Whatever has gone into the mind
+may come out of the mind," and in a subsequent chapter this aphorism
+will be shown to have extension in a direction of which the author of
+it appears not to have been aware. Memory links night to night and
+winter to winter, but such things as "the night-time of the spirit"
+and "the winter of our discontent" are not recognized as having either
+cause or consequence. Now though the well-springs of these states of
+consciousness remain obscure, there is nothing unreasonable in
+believing that they are recrudescences of far-off, forgotten moods
+and moments; neither is it absurd to suppose that they may be related
+to the movements and positions of the planets, as night and winter
+are related to the axial and orbital movements of the earth.
+
+But there are other, and even more interesting, evidences of time
+curvature in consciousness. These lead away into new regions which
+it is our pleasure now to explore.
+
+
+
+
+VI SLEEP AND DREAMS
+
+
+SLEEP
+
+Our space is called three-dimensional because it takes three
+numbers--measurement in three mutually perpendicular directions--to
+determine and mark out any particular point from the totality of
+points. Time, as the individual experiences it, is called
+one-dimensional for an analogous reason: one number is all that is
+required to determine and mark out any particular event of a series
+from all the rest. Now in order to establish a position in a space of
+four dimensions it would be necessary to measure in _four_ mutually
+perpendicular directions. Time curvature opens up the possibility of
+a corresponding higher development in time: one whereby time would
+be more fittingly symbolized by a plane than by a linear figure.
+Indeed, the familiar mystery of memory calls for such a conception.
+Memory is a carrying forward of the past into the present, and the
+fact that we can recall a past event without mentally rehearsing
+all the intermediate happenings in inverse order, shows that in
+the time aspect of memory there is simultaneity as well as
+sequence--time ceases to be linear and becomes _plane_. More
+remarkable illustrations of the sublimation of the time-sense are
+to be found in the phenomena of sleep and dreams.
+
+"Oh, thou that sleepest, what is sleep?" asks the curious Leonardo.
+Modern psychological science has little to offer of a positive
+nature in answer to this world-old question, but it has at least
+effectively disposed of the absurd theories of the materialists who
+would have us believe that sleep is a mere matter of blood
+circulation or of intoxication by accumulation of waste products in
+the system. Sleep states are not abnormal, but part and parcel of
+the life existence of the individual. When a person is asleep he has
+only become unresponsive to the mass of stimuli of the external
+world which constitutes his environment. As Sidis says, "When our
+interest in external existence fags and fades away, we go to sleep.
+When our interests in the external world cease, we draw up the
+bridges, so to say, interrupt all external communication as far as
+possible, and become isolated in our own fortress and repair to our
+own world of organic activity and inner dream life. Sleep is the
+interruption of our intercourse with the external world: it is the
+laying down of our arms in the struggle of life. Sleep is a truce
+with the world."
+
+The twin concepts of higher space and curved time sanction a view of
+sleep even bolder. Sleep is more than a longing of the body to be
+free of the flame which consumes it: the flame itself aspires to be
+free--that is to say, consciousness, tiring of its tool, the brain,
+and of the world, its workshop, takes a turn into the plaisance of
+the fourth dimension, where time and space are less rigid to resist
+the fulfillment of desire.
+
+
+DREAMS
+
+We find a confirmation of this view in dream phenomena. But however
+good the evidence, we shall fail to make out a case unless dream
+experiences are conceded to be as real as any other. The reluctance
+we may have to make this concession comes first from the purely
+subjective character of dreams, and secondly from their triviality
+and irrationality--it is as though the muddy sediment of daytime
+thought and feeling and that alone were there cast forth. In answer
+to the first objection, advanced psychology affirms that the
+subconscious mind, from which dreams arise, approaches more nearly
+to the omniscience of true being than the rational mind of waking
+experience. The triviality and irrationality of dreams are
+sufficiently accounted for if the dream state is thought of as the
+meeting place of two conditions of consciousness: the foam and
+flotsam "of perilous seas in faëry lands forlorn," whose vastitude,
+whose hidden life, and rich argosies of experience, can only be
+inferred from the fret of the tide on their nether shore--the tired
+brain in sleep.
+
+For it is the _remembered_ dream alone that is incoherent--the dream
+that comes clothed in the rags and trappings of this work-a-day world,
+and so leaves some recoverable record on the brain. We all feel that
+the dreams we cannot remember are the most wonderful. Who has not
+wakened with the sense of some incommunicable experience of terror or
+felicity, too strange and poignant to submit itself to concrete
+symbolization, and so is groped for by the memory in vain? We know
+that dreams grow more ordered and significant as they recede from
+the surface of consciousness to its depths. Deep sleep dreams are in
+the true sense clairvoyant, though for the most part irrecoverable--
+"Canst thou draw out Leviathan with an hook?" DuPrel and others have
+shown that the difference between ordinary dreaming, somnambulance,
+trance and ecstasy, is only a matter of redistribution of
+thresholds--that they are all related states and merge into one
+another. We have, therefore, every right to believe that for a
+certain number of hours out of the twenty-four we are all sybils and
+seers, however little most of us are able to profit by it.
+Infrequently, in moments of peculiar susceptibility, the veil is
+lifted, but the art of _dreaming true_ remains for the most part
+unmastered--one of the precious gifts which the future holds in store
+for the sons and daughters of men.
+
+The partial waking state is the soil in which remembered dreams
+develop most luxuriously. Paradoxical as it may sound, they are the
+product, not of our sleep, but of our waking. Such dreams belong to
+both worlds, partly to the three-dimensional and partly to the
+four-dimensional. While dreams are often only a hodge-podge of
+daytime experiences, their incredible rapidity, alien to that
+experience, gives us our first faint practicable intimation of a
+higher development of time.
+
+
+TIME IN DREAMS
+
+The unthinkable velocity of time in dreams may be inferred from
+the fact that between the moment of impact of an impression
+at the sense-periphery and its reception at the center of
+consciousness--moments so closely compacted that we think of them as
+simultaneous--a coherent series of representations may take place,
+involving what seem to be protracted periods for their unfoldment.
+Every reader will easily call to mind dream experiences of this
+character, in which the long-delayed dénouement was suggested and
+prepared for by some extraneous sense-impression, showing that the
+entire dream drama unfolded within the time it took that impression
+to travel from the skin to the brain.
+
+Hasheesh dreams, because they so often occur during some momentary
+lapse from normal consciousness and are therefore measurable by its
+time scale, are particularly rich in the evidence of the looping of
+time. Fitzhugh Ludlow narrates, in _The Hasheesh Eater_, the dreams
+that visited him in the brief interval between two of twenty or more
+awakenings, on his walk homeward after his first experience with the
+drug. He says, "I existed by turns in different places and various
+states of being. Now I swept my gondola through the moonlit lagoons
+of Venice. Now Alp on Alp towered above my view, and the glory of
+the coming sun flashed purple light upon the topmost icy pinnacle.
+Now in the primeval silence of some unexplored tropical forest I
+spread my feathery leaves, a giant fern, and swayed and nodded in
+the spice-gales over a river whose waves at once sent up clouds of
+music and perfume. My soul changes to a vegetable essence, thrilled
+with a strange and unimagined ecstasy."
+
+Earlier in the same evening, when he was forced to keep awake in
+order not to betray his condition, the dream time-scale appears to
+have imposed itself upon his waking consciousness with the following
+curious effect. A lady asked him some question connected with a
+previous conversation. He says, "As mechanically as an automaton I
+began to reply. As I heard once more the alien and unreal tones of
+my own voice, I became convinced that it was some one else who spoke,
+and in another world. I sat and listened: still the voice kept
+speaking. Now for the first time I experienced that vast change which
+hasheesh makes in all measurements of time. The first word of the
+reply occupied a period sufficient for the action of a drama; the
+last left me in complete ignorance of any point far enough back in
+the past to date the commencement of the sentence. Its enunciation
+might have occupied years. I was not in the same life which had held
+me when I heard it begun."
+
+This well-known fact, that we cannot measure dreams by our time scale,
+proves that subjective time does not correspond with objective, and
+that the "dream organ" of consciousness has a time scale of its own.
+If in our waking state we experience one kind of time, and in
+dreams quite another, the solution of the mystery should be sought
+in the _vehicle_ of consciousness, for clearly the limit of
+impressionability or power of response of the vehicle establishes
+the time scale, just as the size of the body with relation to
+objects establishes the space scale. Time must be different for the
+ant and the elephant, for example, as space is different.
+
+Our sense of time is wholly dependent upon the rapidity with which
+impressions succeed one another. Were we capable of receiving only
+one impression an hour, like a bell struck every hour with a hammer,
+the ordinary term of life would seem very short. On the other hand,
+if our time sense were always as acute as it is in dreams, uncounted
+aeons would seem to be lived through in the interval between
+childhood and old age.
+
+Imagine a music machine so cunningly constructed and adjusted as not
+only to sound each note and chord in its proper sequence and relation,
+but to regulate also the duration of the sound vibration. If this
+machine were operated in such a manner as to play, in a single
+second of time, the entire overture of an opera which would normally
+occupy half an hour, we should hear only an unintelligible noise a
+second long. This would be due to no defect in the _sound-producing_
+mechanism, but to the limitations of the _sound-receiving_ mechanism,
+our auditory apparatus. Could this be altered to conform to the
+unusual conditions--could it capture and convey to consciousness
+every note of the overture in a second of time--that second would
+seem to last half an hour, provided that every other criterion for
+the measurement of duration were denied for the time being.
+
+Now dreams _seem_ long: we only discover afterwards and by accident
+their almost incredible brevity. May we not--must we not--infer from
+this that the body is an organ of many stops and more than one
+keyboard, and that in sleep it gives forth this richer music. The
+theory of a higher-dimensional existence during sleep accounts in
+part for the great longing for sleep. "What is it that is much
+desired by man, but which they know not while possessing?" again
+asks Leonardo. "It is sleep," is his answer. This longing for sleep
+is more than a physical longing, and the refreshment it brings is
+less of the flesh than of the spirit. It is possible to withstand
+the deprivation of food and water longer and better than the
+deprivation of sleep. Its recuperative power is correspondingly
+greater.
+
+Experiments have been made with mature University students by which
+they have been kept awake ninety-six hours. When the experiments
+were finished, the young men were allowed to sleep themselves out,
+until they felt they were thoroughly rested. All awoke from a long
+sleep completely refreshed, but the one who took longest to restore
+himself from his protracted vigil slept only one-third more time
+than was regular with him. And this has been the experience over and
+over again of men in active life who have been obliged to keep awake
+for long periods by the absolute necessities of the situation in
+which they have been placed.
+
+In this fact there is surely another hint of the sublimation of the
+time sense during sleep. While it would be an unwarrantable
+assumption to suppose that the period of recuperation by sleep must
+be as long, or nearly as long, as the period of deprivation, the
+ratio between the two presents a discrepancy so great that it would
+seem as though this might be due to an acceleration of the time
+element of consciousness.
+
+
+THE EASTERN TEACHING IN REGARD TO SLEEP AND DREAMS
+
+In this matter of the wonder, the mystery, the enchantment, of sleep
+and dreams, the most modern psychology and the most ancient wisdom
+meet on common ground. Eastern wisdom casts such a light upon the
+problems of subjectivity that it should not be lightly dismissed.
+For uncounted centuries Hindu-Aryan spiritual science has recognized,
+not one plane or condition of consciousness, but three; waking,
+dreaming, and deep sleep--the gross, the subtle and the pure. In the
+waking state--that is, with the vehicle attuned to vibrate to
+materiality--the individual self is as a captive in a citadel of
+flesh, aware of only so much of the universal life as chances to
+enact itself before the windows of his prison. In the dream state,
+when the more violent vibrations of the body are stilled in sleep,
+consciousness becomes active in its subtle (four-dimensional) vehicle,
+and ranges free throughout the ampler spaces of this subtler world.
+In deep sleep, consciousness reverts to its pure condition--the
+individual self becomes the All-Self: the rainbow, no longer
+prismatic by reason of its refraction in materiality, becomes the
+pure white light; the melody of life resolves itself into the
+primordial harmony; sequence becomes simultaneity, and Time, no
+longer "besprent with seven-hued circumstance," is swallowed up in
+duration.
+
+"_There are two paths for him, within and without, and they both
+turn back in a day and a night.... After having subdued by sleep all
+that belongs to the body, he, not asleep himself, looks down upon
+the sleeping. Having assumed light, he goes again to his place, the
+golden person, the lonely bird_"  UPANISHADS.
+
+
+SPACE IN DREAMS
+
+However preposterous may appear to us this notion that the waking
+state, in which we feel ourselves most potent and alive, is really
+one of inhibition--that the world is only a "shoal of time"--it is
+curiously borne out by the baffling phenomena of dreams and is in
+perfect accord with the Higher Space Hypothesis. The possibility of
+shaking off the grip of sleep under appropriate circumstances, the
+fact that we can watch in our sleep, and awake at the right moment,
+that we can sleep and still watch and keep awake in regard to
+special objects and particular persons--these things form
+insuperable difficulties for all those plausible, and apparently
+scientific, theories of sleep current in the West; but they fit
+perfectly with the Eastern idea that "he, not asleep himself, looks
+down upon the sleeping." And to the questions, "How, and from whence?"
+in the light of our hypothesis we may answer, "By the curvature of
+time, consciousness escapes into the fourth dimension."
+
+Myers shows that he was in need of just this clue in order to
+account for some of the dream experiences recorded in _Human
+Personality_, since he asks for "an intermediate conception of
+space--something between space as we know it in the material world
+and space as we imagine it to disappear in the ideal world." He
+suggests that in dreams and trance there may be a clearer and more
+complete perception of space than is at present possible to us. A
+corresponding sublimation of the time sense is no less necessary to
+account for time in dreams. Although we seem to triumph over space
+and time to such a tune as to eliminate them, dream experiences have
+both form and sequence. Now because form presupposes space, and time
+is implicit in sequence, there arises the necessity for that
+"intermediate conception" of both space and time provided by our
+hypothesis.
+
+
+THE PHENOMENON OF PAUSE
+
+Let us conceive of sleep less narrowly than we are accustomed to:
+think of it only as one phase of the phenomenon of pause, of
+arrested physical activity, universal throughout nature. The cell
+itself experiences fatigue and goes to sleep--"perchance to dream,"
+Modern experimental science in the domain of physiology and
+psychology proves that we see and do not see, hear and do not hear,
+feel and do not feel, in successive instants. We are asleep, in
+other words, not merely hour by hour, but moment by moment--and
+perhaps age by age as well.
+
+Where is consciousness during these intervals, long or short, when
+the senses fail to respond to the stimuli of the external world? It
+is somewhere else, awake to some other environment. Though we may
+not be able to verify this from our own experience, there are
+methods whereby it can be verified. Clairvoyance is one of these,
+hypnotism is another--that kind of hypnotism whereby an entranced
+person is made to give a report of his excursions and adventures in
+the mysterious House of Sleep. It is a well-known fact that these
+experiences increase in intensity, coherence and in a certain sort
+of omniscience, directly in proportion to the depth of the trance.
+The revelations obtained in this way are sometimes amazing. The
+inherent defect of this method of obtaining information is the
+possibility of deception, and for that reason science still looks
+askance at all evidence drawn from this source. But in essaying to
+write a book about the fourth dimension from any aspect but the
+mathematical, the author has put himself outside the pale of
+orthodox science, so he is under no compulsion to ignore a field so
+rich merely because it appears to be tainted by a certain amount of
+fallibility and is even under suspicion of fraud. Diseased oysters,
+though not edible, produce pearls, and a pearl of great price is the
+object of this quest. Let us glance, therefore, at the findings of
+hypnotism and kindred phenomena.
+
+
+
+
+VII  THE NIGHT SIDE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
+
+
+THE FIELD OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH
+
+It is difficult to divest the words hypnotism and clairvoyance of
+certain sordid and sinister associations. We are apt to think of
+them only as urban flora of the dust and dark, cultivated for profit
+by itinerant professors and untidy sibyls. Larger knowledge of the
+night side of human nature, however, profoundly modifies this view.
+The invoked image is then of some hushed and studious chamber where
+a little group of people sit attentive to the voice of one
+entranced--listeners at the keyhole of the door to another world.
+This "news from nowhere," garnered under so-called test conditions
+and faithfully recorded, has grown by now to a considerable
+literature, accessible to all--one with which every well-informed
+person is assumed to have at least a passing acquaintance.
+
+A marked and constant characteristic of trance phenomena consists of
+an apparent confusion between past, present and future. As in the
+game of three-card monte, it appears impossible to tell in what order
+the three will turn up--_was, is_ and _will be_, lose their special
+significance. Clairvoyance, in its time aspect, whether spontaneous,
+hypnotically induced, or self-induced, is susceptible of
+classification as post-vision, present vision, and prevision.
+Post-vision is that in which past events are not recollected merely,
+but seen or experienced. It is the past become present. Present
+vision is clairvoyance of things transpiring elsewhere; the present,
+remote in space, but not in time. Prevision is the future in the
+present. These various orders of _clear-seeing_ transcend the limits
+of the actual knowledge and experience of the seer. This
+classification and these definitions are important only to us, to
+whom past, present, and future stand sharply differentiated in
+thought and in experience; not to the clairvoyant, who, though bound
+in body to our space and time, is consciously free in a world where
+these discriminations vanish. Why do they vanish? This question can
+best be answered by means of a homely analogy.
+
+For a symbol of the flow of time in waking consciousness, imagine
+yourself in a railway carriage which jogs along a main-travelled
+line at a rate predetermined by the time-table. You approach, reach
+and pass such stations as are intersected by that particular railway,
+and you get a view of the landscape which every other traveler shares.
+Having once left a station, you cannot go back to it, nor can you
+arrive at places further along the line before the train itself
+takes you there. Compare this with the freedom to do either of these
+things, and any number of others, if you suddenly change from the
+train to an automobile. Then, in effect, you have the freedom of a
+new dimension. In the one case, you must travel along a single line
+at a uniform rate; in the other, you are able to strike out in any
+direction and regulate your speed at will. You can go back to a
+place after the train has left it; you can go forward to some place
+ahead, before the train arrives, or you can strike out into, and
+traverse, new country. In short, your freedom, temporal and spatial,
+will be related to that of the train-bound traveler, somewhat as is
+trance consciousness to everyday waking life.
+
+
+MODIFYING THE PAST
+
+Modern psychology has demonstrated the existence of a great
+undercurrent of mental and emotional life, transcending the
+individual's conscious experience, in which the most complex
+processes are carried on without the individual's conscious
+participation. The clearest symbol by which this fact may be figured
+to the imagination is the one already presented: the comparison of
+the subjective field to a plane, in which the conscious experience
+of the individual is represented by a single line. In sleep and
+trance we have an augmented freedom of movement and so are able to
+travel here and there, backward and forward, not only among our own
+"disassociated memories" but in that greater and more mysterious
+demesne which comprehends what we call the future, as well as the
+present and the past.
+
+The profound significance of the disassociation and sublimation of
+memory by hypnotism, or by whatever other means the train of
+personal experience and recollection can be thrown off the track,
+appears to have been ignored on its theoretical side--that is, as
+establishing the return of time. It has cleverly been turned to
+practical account, however, in the treatment of disease. By a series
+of painstaking and brilliant experiments, the demonstration of the
+role played by "disassociated memories" in causing certain
+functional nervous and mental troubles has been achieved. It has
+been shown that severe emotional shocks, frights, griefs, worries,
+may be--and frequently are--completely effaced from conscious
+recollection, while continuing to be vividly remembered in the
+depths of the subconscious. It has been shown that thence they may,
+and frequently do, exercise a baleful effect upon the whole organism,
+giving rise to disease symptoms, the particular type of which were
+determined by the victim's self-suggestion. As a preliminary to
+effecting a permanent cure to such disorders, it is necessary to get
+at these disassociated memories and drag them back into the full
+light of conscious recollection. To get at them, medical
+psychologists make use of hypnotism, automatic writing,
+crystal-gazing--in short, of any method which will force an entrance
+into that higher time-world, whereby the forgotten past may become
+the present. This accomplished, and the crucial moment recovered and
+transfixed, the victim of the aborted opportunity is led to deal
+with it as one may deal with the fluid, and may not deal with the
+fixed. Again his past is plastic to the operation of his
+intelligence and his will. Here is glad news for mortals: the past
+recoverable and in a manner revocable!
+
+Buddha taught that all sin is ignorance, and this teaching has
+escaped oblivion because its truth has echoed in so many human hearts.
+We find that it is possible to deal with our old ignorances in the
+light of later knowledge. What is this but the self-forgiveness of
+sins? Subconsciously we may be always at work, mending the past.
+Repentance is the conscious recognition of some culmination of this
+obscure process, when the heart is suffused with the inner gladness
+of liberation from the payment of old karmic debts. Christ's words,
+"Thy sins are forgiven," spoken to the woman who washed his feet
+with her tears, sanctions this idea--that the past is remediable by
+knowledge and by love.
+
+Conceding this much, we must equally admit the possibility of
+moulding the future, of adjusting the will to the event which shall
+befall. If the present moment can again intersect the stream of past
+conscious experience, it may equally do so with regard to the future.
+This brings up the tremendous questions of free-will and
+fore-ordination. Upon these the Oriental doctrines of karma and
+reincarnation cast the only light by which the reason consents to be
+guided. As these doctrines are intimately related both to higher
+time and to trance revelations, some consideration of karma and
+reincarnation may appropriately find place here.
+
+
+KARMA AND REINCARNATION
+
+Karma is that self-adjusting force in human affairs which restores
+harmony disturbed by action. It is the moral law of compensation,
+and by its operation produces all conditions of life, misery and
+happiness, birth, death, and re-birth; itself being both the cause
+and the effect of action. Its operation is indicated in the phrase,
+"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
+
+The essential idea of reincarnation is indicated in the following
+quotation from the Upanishads: "And as a goldsmith, taking a piece
+of gold, turns it into another, newer, and more beautiful shape, so
+does this Self, having thrown off this body and dispelled all
+ignorance, make unto himself another and more beautiful shape."
+
+Reincarnation is the periodic "dip" of an immortal individual into
+materiality for the working out of karma, after an interval, long or
+short, spent under other conditions of existence. These alternations
+constitute the broader and deeper diapason of human life, of which
+the change from waking to sleeping represents the lesser, and the
+momentary awareness and unawareness of the sense mechanism to
+stimulation, the least.
+
+Thus a physical incarnation, in the broadest sense of the term, is
+the interval, long or short, of the immersion of consciousness in
+materiality. Under fatigue, the cell life withdraws; that is, it
+ceases to respond to physical stimuli, and so passes out of
+incarnation. When this occurs _en masse_ there transpires that
+hiatus of the personal consciousness called sleep, and while sleep
+lasts the personality is out of incarnation. After death--in the
+interval between one life and the next--the specific memories of the
+personality fade out as in sleep, or rather, become latent, leaving
+the soul, the permanent life-center, clear and colorless, a
+mysterious focus of spiritual forces and affinities (the seeds of
+karma) ready for another sowing in the world of men. This center
+of consciousness is thereupon drawn to the newly forming body,
+the life environment of which will rightly and justly--perhaps
+retributively--bring the tendencies and characteristics of the
+conscious center into objectivity again. Character is destiny, and
+character is self-created. "All that we are is the result of what we
+have thought." But in the vast complexity and volume of human life
+there is a constant production of forms, with all the varieties of
+characteristics and capacities requisite to meet the needs of every
+soul, thirsty for the destiny that awaits it; and here heredity
+plays its part. Beyond the individual soul is the world-soul, which
+periodically incarnates in the humanity of a planet, and beyond the
+worlds of a single system, suns and congeries of suns.
+
+The profound and pregnant doctrines of karma and reincarnation, here
+so sketchily outlined, are but expansions of one of the fundamental
+propositions of all Eastern philosophical systems, that the effect is
+the unfolding of the cause in time.
+
+To omit a consideration of karma and reincarnation in connection
+with higher time would be to force a passage and then not follow
+where it leads. The idea of time curvature is implicit in the ideas
+of karma and reincarnation. For what is karma but the return of time,
+the flowering in the present of some seed sown elsewhere and long ago?
+And what is reincarnation but the major cycle of that sweep into
+objective existence and out again, of which the alternation between
+waking and sleeping is the lesser counterpart?
+
+
+COLONEL DE ROCHAS' EXPERIMENTS
+
+During the past few years evidence has been accumulating that we
+never really forget anything. We have rediscovered the memory of the
+subconscious mind. It is generally known that in the mesmeric or
+somnambulistic sleep things hopelessly beyond recall for the
+habitual mind come to the surface, in fragments, or in whole series,
+as the case may be. It is perhaps news to some readers, however,
+that the memory of past lives has been recovered in this way. This
+but confirms the Eastern secret teaching that could we remember our
+dream experiences we should recover the knowledge of our past
+incarnations.
+
+Among the achievements of Eastern hypnotism is the recovery of the
+memory of past births. Colonel de Rochas appears to have paralleled
+this achievement in the West. Certain of his experiments have been
+admirably reported by Maurice Maeterlinck in the eighth chapter of
+_Our Eternity_. Maeterlinck's account, somewhat condensed, is
+given here, because it so well illustrates the liberation of
+consciousness from the tyranny of time as we conceive it. He says:
+
+"First of all, it is only right to say that Colonel de Rochas is a
+savant who seeks nothing but objective truth and does so with a
+scientific strictness and integrity that have never been questioned.
+He puts certain exceptional subjects into a hypnotic sleep and, by
+means of downward passes, makes them trace back the whole course of
+their existence. He thus takes them successively to their youth,
+their adolescence and down to the extreme limits of their childhood.
+At each of these hypnotic stages, the subject reassumes the
+consciousness, the character and the state of mind which he
+possessed at the corresponding stage in his life. He goes over the
+same events, with their joys and their sorrows. If he has been ill,
+he once more passes through his illness, his convalescence and his
+recovery.
+
+"Let us, to come to details, take one of the simplest cases. The
+subject is a girl of eighteen, called Joséphine. She lives at Voiron,
+in the department of Isére. By means of downward passes she is
+brought back to the condition of a baby at its mother's breast The
+passes continue and the wonder-tale runs its course. Joséphine can
+no longer speak; and we have the great silence of infancy, which
+seems to be followed by a silence more mysterious still. Joséphine
+no longer answers except by signs: _she is not yet born_. 'She is
+floating in darkness.' They persist; the sleep becomes heavier; and
+suddenly, from the depths of that sleep, rises the voice of another
+being, a voice unexpected and unknown, the voice of a churlish,
+distrustful and discontented old man. They question him. At first he
+refuses to answer, saying that 'of course he's there, and he's
+speaking;' that 'he sees nothing;' and 'he's in the dark.' They
+increase the number of passes and gradually gain his confidence. His
+name is Jean Claude Bourdon; he is an old man; he has long been
+ailing and bedridden. He tells the story of his life. He was born at
+Champvent, in the parish of Polliat, in 1812. He went to school
+until he was eighteen and served his time in the army with the
+Seventh Artillery at Besançon; and he describes his gay time there,
+while the sleeping girl makes gestures of twirling an imaginary
+moustache. When he goes back to his native place, he does not marry,
+but he has a mistress. He leads a solitary life (I omit all but the
+essential facts), and dies at the age of seventy, after a long
+illness.
+
+"We now hear the dead man speak; and his posthumous revelations are
+not sensational, which, however, is not an adequate reason for
+doubting their genuineness. He feels himself growing out of his body;
+but he remains attached to it for a fairly long time. His fluidic
+body, which is at first diffused, takes a more concentrated form. He
+lives in darkness, which he finds disagreeable; but he does not
+suffer. At last, the night in which he is plunged is streaked with a
+few flashes of light. The idea comes to reincarnate himself and he
+draws near to her who is to be his mother (that is, the mother of
+Joséphine). He encircles her until the child is born, whereupon he
+gradually enters the child's body. Until about the seventh year, his
+body is surrounded by a sort of floating mist, in which he used to
+see many things which he has not seen since.
+
+"The next thing to be done is to go back beyond Jean Claude. A
+mesmerization lasting nearly three-quarters of an hour, without
+lingering at any intermediate stage, brings the old man back to
+babyhood. A fresh silence, a new limbo; and then, suddenly, another
+voice and an unexpected individual. This time it is an old woman who
+has been very wicked; and so she is in great torment (she is dead,
+at the actual instant; for, in this inverted world, lives go
+backward and of course begin at the end). She is in deep darkness,
+surrounded by evil spirits. She speaks at first in a faint voice,
+but always gives definite replies to the questions put to her,
+instead of cavilling at every moment, as Jean Claude did. Her name
+is Philoméne Carteron.
+
+"'By intensifying the sleep,' adds Colonel de Rochas, whom I will
+now quote, 'I induce the manifestations of a living Philoméne. She
+no longer suffers, seems very calm and always answers coldly and
+distinctly. She knows that she is unpopular in the neighborhood, but
+no one is a penny the worse and she will be even with them yet. She
+was born in 1702; her maiden name was Philoméne Cherpigny; her
+grandfather on the mother's side was called Pierre Machon and lived
+in Ozan. In 1732 she married, at Chevroux, a man named Carterton, by
+whom she had two children, both of whom she lost.'"
+
+Before her incarnation, Philoméne had been a little girl who died in
+infancy. Previous to that, she was a man who committed murder, and
+it was to expiate this crime that she endured such suffering in the
+darkness, and after her life as a little girl, when she had no time
+to do wrong. Colonel de Rochas did not think it wise to carry the
+hypnosis further, because the subject appeared exhausted and her
+paroxysms were painful to watch. He obtained analogous and even more
+surprising results with other subjects.
+
+Maeterlinck's comments upon all this are of negligible value. He
+pays a fine tribute to the theory of reincarnation. "There was never
+a more beautiful, a juster, a purer, a more moral, fruitful and
+probable creed," he says: yet for all that, it is clear that he has
+not been at pains fully to inform himself of the Eastern teaching.
+
+Colonel de Rochas' success, and that of all other experimenters
+along these lines, is due to their unconscious following of the
+Eastern method. He himself says that he "avoided everything that
+should put the subject on a definite tack,"--that is, he refrained
+from voluntary suggestion.
+
+Having referred so frequently and so familiarly to the Eastern
+belief in reincarnation, and hinted at a more solid foundation for
+that belief than the single series of experiments above referred to,
+it would be unfair to the reader not to gratify his curiosity more
+fully in regard to these matters. In the light of our hypothesis
+they take on an importance which justifies their further
+consideration here.
+
+
+
+
+VIII THE EASTERN TEACHING
+
+
+ORIENTAL PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS
+
+Western physical science, pursued with ardor and devotion for the
+past hundred years, has attained to a control over physical phenomena
+little short of magical, but in our understanding and mastery of
+subjective phenomena we are far behind those Eastern peoples who
+have made these matters the subject of study and experiment for
+thousands of years. The informed Hindu, rightly or wrongly, regards
+the Western practice of hypnotism, both in its methods and in its
+results, with mingled horror and contempt. To him it is not
+different from Black Magic, pernicious to operator and subject alike,
+since it involves an unwarrantable tyranny of the will on the part
+of the operator, and a dangerous submission to the obsession of an
+invading will on the part of the subject. Eastern hypnotism--at its
+highest and best--is profoundly different from Western, in that the
+sanctity of the individual is respected. Its aim is not to enslave
+the will, but temporarily to emancipate consciousness, under
+favorable circumstances, from its physical limitation.
+
+Eastern practical psychology and metaphysics can be understood only
+through a knowledge of Eastern physics. These we would call
+transcendental, since they recognize not one theatre of consciousness,
+but three: the gross, the subtle, and the pure. These correspond to
+the material, the etherial, and the empyreal worlds of Greek
+philosophy, and to the physical, astral, and mental planes of modern
+Theosophy. They may be thought of as universal substance in three
+different octaves of vibration. Upon this, the trained will of man
+is able to act directly, for the reason that--as claimed by
+Balzac--it is a _living_ force.
+
+In Eastern hypnotism the gross vibrations of the physical vehicle
+are inhibited by the will of the operator, putting the body of the
+subject to sleep, whereat the consciousness, free in its subtle body,
+awakens to a dimensionally higher world. The operator, by means of
+questions, reaps such profit as he may by following the "true dreams"
+of the entranced subject, scrupulously refraining from imposing his
+own will further than is necessary to obtain the information which he
+seeks. The higher power of Eastern hypnotism, totally unknown in the
+West, consists of inhibiting the subtle vibrations of the astral
+vehicle also, permitting the consciousness to revert to its
+"pure" condition. In these deep states of trance the subject is able
+to communicate knowledges shut away from the generality of
+men--among them the knowledge of past births.
+
+
+THE SELF-RECOVERED MEMORY OF PAST BIRTHS
+
+The strength of will necessary to accomplish this higher power of
+hypnotism is achieved by arduous and long-continued exercises in
+concentration, by the practice of a strict morality, and by
+submission to a physical regimen which few Occidentals would care to
+undergo. Severe as is this training, it is less so than that which
+the true Yogi imposes upon himself, and its fruits are less. The
+achievement to which he addresses himself is far beyond that of the
+most accomplished hypnotist. The Yogi scorns all supernormal powers,
+even while possessing them. The Yogi, as the word implies--it means
+literally union--seeks to unite himself with his own higher self, the
+eternal and immortal part of his own nature, and the achievement of
+this brings with it the freedom of the three worlds at all times,
+and in full consciousness. As this involves an inward turning of the
+mind and will, and the withdrawal from the ordinary active life of
+average humanity, he alone is witness of his own success. "The rest
+is silence."
+
+The knowledge of past births which may be obtained by the
+questionable and cumbersome method of hypnotism is one of the
+wayside flowers which the Yogi may pluck, if he will, on his path
+towards perfection. There are definite rules for the attainment of
+this knowledge, and they conform so closely to Colonel de Rochas'
+method--save for the fact that operator and subject are one and not
+twain--that it will be interesting to give them here. The ensuing
+passage is from the _Vishuddhi Marga_, or _Path of Purity_, a work
+written some sixteen hundred years ago by the famous sage,
+Buddhaghosha, whose name signifies the Voice of Buddha, the revealer
+of Buddha's teachings. It is quoted in Charles Johnston's _The
+Memory of Past Births_.
+
+"The devotee, then, who tries for the first time to call to mind
+former states of existence, should choose a time after breakfast,
+when he has returned from collecting alms, and is alone and plunged
+in meditation, and has been absorbed in the four trances in
+succession. On rising from the fourth trance, which leads to the
+higher powers, he should consider the event which last took place,
+namely, his sitting down; next, the spreading of the mat; the
+entering of the room; the putting away of bowl and robe; his eating;
+his leaving the village; his going the rounds of the village for alms;
+his entering the village for alms; his departure from the monastery;
+his offering adoration in the courts of the shrine and of the Bodhi
+tree; his washing the bowl; what he did between taking the bowl and
+rinsing his mouth; what he did at dawn; what he did in the middle
+watch of the night; what he did in the first watch of the night.
+Thus he must consider what he did for a whole day and night, going
+backwards over it in reverse order.
+
+"In the same reverse order he must consider what he did the day
+before, the day before that, up to the fifth day, the tenth day, a
+fortnight ago, a month ago, a year ago; and having in the same
+manner considered the previous ten and twenty years, and so on up to
+the time of his conception in this birth, he must then consider the
+name and form which he had at the moment of death in his last birth.
+But since the name and form of the last birth came quite to an end,
+and were replaced by others, this point of time is like thick
+darkness, and difficult to be made out by the mind of any person
+still deluded. But even such a one should not despair nor say: 'I
+shall never be able to penetrate beyond conception, or take as the
+object of my thought the name and form which I had in my last birth,
+at the moment of death,' but he should again and again enter the
+trance which leads to the higher powers, and each time he rises from
+the trance, he should again intend his mind upon that point of time.
+
+"Just as a strong man in cutting down a mighty tree to be used as
+the peaked roof of a pagoda, if the edge of his axe be turned in
+lopping off the branches and twigs, will not despair of cutting down
+the tree, but will go to an iron-worker's shop, have his axe
+sharpened, return, and go on with his cutting; and if the edge of
+his axe be turned a second time, he will a second time have it
+sharpened, and return, and go on with his cutting; and since nothing
+that he chopped once needs to be chopped again, he will in no long
+time, when there is nothing left to chop, fell that mighty tree. In
+the same way the devotee rising from the trance which leads to the
+higher powers, without considering what he has considered once, and
+considering only the moment of conception, in no long time will
+penetrate beyond the moment of conception, and take as his object
+the name and form which he had at the moment of death, in his last
+birth.
+
+"His alert attention having become possessed of this knowledge, he
+can call to mind many former states of existence, as, one birth, two
+births, three births, four births, five births, and so on, in the
+words of the text."
+
+This quotation casts an interesting light upon Eastern monasticism.
+The Buddhist monasteries are here revealed as schools of practical
+psychology, the life of the monk a life of arduous and unceasing
+labor, but labor of a sort which seems but idleness. The successive
+"initiations" which are the milestones on the "Path of Perfection"
+upon which the devotee has set his feet represent successive
+emancipations of consciousness gained through work and knowledge.
+Their nature may best be understood by means of a fanciful analogy.
+
+
+RELEASE
+
+If we assume that all life is conscious life, as much aware of its
+environment as the freedom of movement of its life vehicle in that
+environment permits, a corpuscle vibrating in a solid would have a
+certain sense of space and of movement in space gained from its own
+experience. Now imagine the solid, which is its world, to be
+subjected to the influence of heat. When the temperature reached a
+certain point the solid would transform itself into a liquid. To the
+corpuscle all the old barriers would seem to be broken down; space
+would be different, time would be different, and its world a
+different place. Again, at another increase of temperature, when the
+liquid became a gas, the corpuscle would experience a further
+emancipation: it would possess a further freedom, with all the facts
+of its universe to learn anew.
+
+Each of these successive crises would constitute for it an initiation,
+and since the heat has acted upon it from within, causing an
+expansion of its life vehicle, it would seem to itself to have
+attained to these new freedoms through self-development.
+
+The parallel is now plain to the reader: the corpuscle is the Yogi,
+bent on liberation: the heat which warms him is the Divine Love,
+centered in his heart, his initiations are the successive
+emancipations into higher and higher spaces, till he attains
+Nirvana--inherits the kingdom prepared for him from the foundation
+of the world. As latent heat resides in the corpuscle, so is _Release_
+hidden in the heart--release from time and space. The perception of
+this prompted the exultant apostrophe of Buddha, "Looking for the
+maker of this tabernacle, I have run through a course of many births,
+not finding him; and painful is birth again and again. But now,
+maker of the tabernacle, thou hast been seen; thou shalt not make up
+this tabernacle again. All thy rafters are broken, thy ridge-pole is
+sundered; the mind, approaching the Eternal, has attained the
+extinction of all desires."
+
+Upon the mystery of Nirvana the Higher Space Hypothesis casts not a
+little light. To "approach the Eternal" can only be to approach a
+condition where time is not. Because there is an escape from time in
+proportion as space dimensions are added to, and assimilated by,
+consciousness, any development involving this element of space
+conquest (and evolution is itself such a development) involves time
+annihilation also. To be in a state of desire is to be conditioned
+by a limitation, because one can desire only that which one has not
+or is not. The extinction of a desire is only another name for the
+transcending of a limitation--of all desires, of all limitations. If
+these limitations are of space they are of time also; therefore is
+the "approach to the Eternal" through the "extinction of all desire."
+Christ said, "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar of the temple
+of my God, and he shall go no more out"--go out, that is, into
+incarnation--into "time, besprent with seven-hued circumstance."
+
+Such are the testimonies of the world-saviors regarding the means
+and end of liberation. Below them on the evolutionary ladder stand
+the mystics, earth-bound, but soul-free; below them, in turn, yet
+far above common humanity, stand the men of genius, caught still in
+the net of passion, but able, in their work, to reflect something of
+the glory of the supernal world. Let us consider, in the next two
+chapters, each of these in turn.
+
+
+
+
+IX  THE MYSTICS
+
+
+HERMES TRISMEGISTUS
+
+The mystic, however far removed he may be from Nietzsche's ideal of
+the Superman, nevertheless represents superhumanity in the domain of
+consciousness. By means of quotations, taken almost at random from
+the rich literature of mysticism, the author will attempt to show
+that the consciousness of the mystic involves the awareness of
+dimensionally higher worlds. The first group of quotations is culled
+from certain of the Sacred Books of Hermes Trismegistus.
+
+"_Comprehend clearly_" (says Hermes to Asclepios) "_that this
+sensible world is enfolded, as in a garment, by the supernal world_."
+
+We think of our three dimensional space, "the sensible world," as
+_immersed_ in higher space; "enfolded as in a garment," therefore.
+And we think of the objects of our world as having extension in a
+dimensionally higher region, that "supernal world" in which the
+phenomena of this sensible world arise. For:
+
+"_Celestial order reigns over terrestrial order: all that is done
+and said upon earth has its origin in the heights, from which all
+essences are dispensed with measure and equilibrium: nor is there
+anything which does not emanate from one above and return thither_"
+
+
+THE PAGE AND THE PRESS
+
+The idea of an all-embracing unity within and behind the seeming
+manifoldness of life forms the ground rhythm of all inspired
+literature, sacred and profane alike. For clarity and conciseness it
+would be difficult to improve upon the formulation of this idea
+contained in the following fragment:
+
+"_In the manifold unity of universal life the innumerable
+individualities distinguished by their variations are, nevertheless,
+united in such a manner that the whole is one, and that everything
+proceeds from unity_.
+
+"_For all things depend upon unity, or develop from it, and because
+they appear distant from one another it is believed that they are
+many, whereas in their collectivity they form but one_."
+
+Now nothing so successfully resolves this paradox of the one and the
+many as the concept that the things of this world are embraced and
+united in a dimensionally higher world in a manner analogous to that
+in which all conic sections are embraced and united within the cone.
+A more elaborate and fanciful figure may serve to make this clearer
+to the mind.
+
+Conceive of this printed page as a plane world in which every letter
+is a person; every word a family; phrases and sentences, larger
+communities and groups. These "innumerable individualities,
+distinguished by their variations" must needs seem to themselves as
+"distant from one another," their very differences of form and
+arrangement a barrier to any superior unity. Yet all the while,
+solely by reason of this diversity, they are co-operating towards an
+end of which they cannot be aware. The mind of the reader unites and
+interprets the letters into continuous thought, though they be
+voiceless as stones to one another. Even so may our sad and stony
+identities spell out a world's word which we know not of, by reason
+of our singularity and isolation. Moreover, in the electrotype block,
+the solid of which the printed page constitutes a plane presentment,
+all the letters are actually "united in such a manner that the whole
+is one." The metal that has moulded each into its significant form
+amalgamates them into a higher unity. So also the power that makes
+us separate is the same power that makes us one.
+
+
+THE SHIP AND ITS CAPTAIN
+
+Here follows the lament of the souls awaiting incarnation:
+
+  "_Behold the sad future in store for us--to minister to the wants of
+  a fluctuating and dissoluble body! No more may our eyes distinguish
+  the souls divine! Hardly through these watery spheres shall we
+  perceive, with sighs, our ancestral heaven: at intervals even we
+  shall cease altogether to behold it. By this disastrous sentence
+  direct vision is denied to us; we can see only by the aid of the
+  outer light; these are but windows that we possess--not eyes. Nor
+  will our pain be less when we hear in the fraternal breathing of the
+  winds with which no longer can we mingle our own, since ours will
+  have for its dwelling, instead of the sublime and open world, the
+  narrow prison of the breast_!"
+
+That the soul--the so-called subliminal self--draws from a broader,
+deeper experience than the purely rational consciousness is a
+commonplace of modern psychology. Hinton conceives of the soul as
+_higher-dimensional_ with relation to the body, but so concerned
+with the management and direction of its lower-dimensional vehicle
+as to have lost, for the time being, its orientation, thinking and
+moving only in those ways of which the body is capable. The analogy
+he uses, of a ship and its captain, is so happy, and the whole
+passage has so direct a bearing upon the Hermetic fragment quoted,
+that it is given here entire.
+
+"I adopt the hypothesis that that which thinks in us has an ample
+experience, of which the intuitions we use in dealing with the world
+of real objects are a part; of which experience, the intuition of
+four-dimensional forms and motions is also a part. The process we
+are engaged in intellectually is the reading of the obscure signals
+of our nerves into a world of reality, by means of intuitions
+derived from the inner experience.
+
+"The image I form is as follows: Imagine the captain of a modern
+battleship directing its course. He has his charts before him; he is
+in communication with his associates and subordinates; can convey his
+messages and commands to every part of the ship, and receive
+information from the conning tower and the engine room. Now suppose
+the captain, immersed in the problem of the navigation of his ship
+over the ocean, to have so absorbed himself in the problem of the
+direction of the craft over the plane surface of the sea that he
+forgets himself. All that occupies his attention is the kind of
+movement that his ship makes. The operations by which that movement
+is produced have sunk below the threshold of his consciousness; his
+own actions, by which he pushes the buttons, gives the orders, are
+so familiar as to be automatic; his mind is on the motion of the
+ship as a whole. In such a case we can imagine that he identifies
+himself with the ship; all that enters his conscious thought is the
+direction of its movement over the plane surface of the ocean.
+
+"Such is the relation, as I imagine it, of the soul to the body. A
+relation which we can imagine as existing momentarily in the case of
+the captain is the normal one in the case of the soul with its craft.
+As the captain is capable of a kind of movement, an amplitude of
+motion, which does not enter into his thoughts with regard to the
+directing of the ship over the plane surface of the ocean, so the
+soul is capable of a kind of movement, has an amplitude of motion,
+which is not used in its task of directing the body in the
+three-dimensional region in which the body's activity lies. If for
+any reason it becomes necessary for the captain to consider
+three-dimensional motions with regard to his ship, it would not be
+difficult for him to gain the materials for thinking about such
+motions; all he has to do is to call experience into play. As far as
+the navigation of the ship is concerned, however, he is not obliged
+to call on such experience. The ship as a whole simply moves on a
+surface. The problem of three-dimensional movement does not
+ordinarily concern its steering. And thus with regard to ourselves
+all those movements and activities which characterize our bodily
+organs are three-dimensional; we never need to consider the ampler
+movements. But we do more than use these movements of our body to
+effect our aims by direct means; we have now come to the pass when
+we act indirectly on nature, when we call processes into play which
+lie beyond the reach of any explanation we can give by the kind of
+thought which has been sufficient for the steering of our craft as a
+whole.
+
+"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 passages from _The Virgin of the World_ show a
+remarkable resemblance between the Hermetic philosophy and modern
+higher-space 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 space." 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 passing 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 passers-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 passers-by opened his lips, to what, let
+me ask you, could they refer the voice, if not to the shadow which
+was passing?"
+
+"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-space
+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 Space 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: space is different: distance is different He says,
+"_Space in heaven is not like space in the world, for space 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 analysis, 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 space. 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 space.
+
+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 space. Swedenborg's angels
+are men freed from these limitations. We suffer because the free
+thing in us is hampered by the restrictions of a space to which it
+is not native. Reason sufficient for such restriction is apparent in
+the success that crowns every effort at the annihilation of space,
+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 SPACE-EATER
+
+Man has been called the thinking animal. _Space-eater_ would be a
+more appropriate title, since he so dauntlessly and persistently
+addresses himself to overcoming the limitations of his space. 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
+space-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 pawns 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 space annihilation, that which, discarnate, it
+could compass 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 space 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
+participates 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
+
+There is the utmost unanimity in the testimony of the mystics that
+the world without and the world within are but different aspects of
+the same reality--"_The eye with which I see God is the same eye with
+which He sees me_." They never weary of the telling of the
+solidarity and invisible continuity of life, the inclusion not only
+of the minute in the vast, but of the vast in the minute. We may
+accept this form of perception as characteristic of consciousness in
+its free state. Its instrument is the _intuition_, which divines
+relations between diverse things through a perception of unity. The
+instrument of the purely mundane consciousness, on the other hand,
+is the _reason_, which dissevers and dissects phenomena, divining
+unity through correlation. Now if physical phenomena, in all their
+manifoldness, are lower-dimensional projections, upon a
+lower-dimensional space, of a higher unity, then reason and
+intuition are seen to be two modes of one intelligence, engaged in
+apprehending life from below (by means of the reason) through its
+diversity, and from above (by means of intuition) through its unity.
+
+Those who recognize in the intuition a valid organ of knowledge, are
+disposed to exalt it above the reason, but at our present state of
+evolution, and given our environment, it would seem that the reason
+is the more generally useful faculty of the two. In that unfolding,
+that manifesting of the higher in the lower--which is the idea the
+four-dimensionalist has of the world--the painstaking, minute,
+methodical action of the reasoning mind applied to phenomena
+achieves results impossible to Pisgah-sighted intuition. The power,
+peculiar to the reason, of isolating part after part from the whole
+to which it belongs, and considering them thus isolated, makes
+possible in the end a synthesis in which the whole is not merely
+glimpsed, but known to the last detail.
+
+The method of the reason is symbolized in so trifling a thing as the
+dealing out one by one of a pack of cards and their reassembling.
+The pack has been made to show forth its content by a process of
+disruption--of slicing. Similarly, if a scientist wants to gain a
+thorough comprehension of a complicated organism, he dissects it, or
+submits it to a process of slicing, studying each slice separately
+under the microscope while keeping constantly in mind the relation
+of one slice to another. This amounts to nothing less than reducing
+a thing from three dimensions to two, in order to know it thoroughly.
+Now the flux of things corresponds to the four-dimensional aspect of
+the world, and with this the reason finds it impossible to deal. As
+Bergson has so well shown, the reason cuts life into countless
+cross-sections: a thing must be dead before it can be dissected.
+This is why the higher-dimensional aspect of life, divined by the
+intuition, escapes rational analysis.
+
+
+THE COIL OF LIFE
+
+Swedenborg's description of "the ascent and descent of forms" and
+the "forces and powers" which flow therefrom, suggests, by reason of
+the increasing amplitude and variety of form and motion, a
+progression from space to space. This description is too long and
+involved to find place here, but its conclusion is as follows:
+
+"_Such now is the ascent and descent of forms or substances in the
+greatest, and in our least universe: similar also is the descent of
+all forces and powers which flow from them. But all their perfection
+consists in the possibility and virtue of varying themselves, or of
+changing states, which possibility increases with their elevations,
+so that in number it exceeds all the series of calculations unfolded
+by human minds, and still inwardly involved by them: which
+infinities finally become what is finite in the Supreme. Our ideas
+are merely progressions by variations of form, and thus by actual
+changes of state_."
+
+His sense of the beauty and orderliness of the whole process, and
+his despair of communicating it, find characteristic utterance in
+the following passage:
+
+"_If thou could'st discern, my beloved, how distinctly and
+ordinately these forms are arranged and connected with each other,
+from the mere aspect and infinity of so many wonderful things
+connected with each other, from the mere aspect and infinity of so
+many wonderful things conspiring into one, thou would'st fall down,
+from an inmost impulse, with sacred astonishment, and at the same
+time pious joy, to perform an act of worship and of love before such
+an architect_."
+
+In his description of the manner in which these forms cohere and
+successively unfold, he introduces one of the basic concepts of
+higher space thought; namely, that in the "descent of forms" from
+space to space, that which in the higher exists all together--that
+is, _simultaneously_--can only manifest itself in the lower
+piecemeal--that is, _successively_. He says:
+
+"_Nothing is together in any texture or effect which was not
+successively introduced; and everything is therein, according as
+order itself introduces it: wherefore simultaneous order derives its
+birth, nature and perfection from successive orders, and the former
+is only rendered perspicuous and plain by the latter.... What is
+supreme in things successive takes the inmost place in things
+simultaneous: thus things superior in order super-involve things
+inferior and wrap them together, that these latter may become
+exterior in the same order: by this method first principles, which
+are also called simple, unfold themselves, and involve themselves in
+things posterior or compound: wherefore every perfection of what is
+outermost flows forth from inmost principles by their series: hence
+thy beauty, my daughter, the only parent of which is order itself_."
+
+This passage, like a proffered dish full of rare fruit, tempts the
+metaphysical appetite by the wealth and variety of its appeal; but
+not to weary the reader, the author will content himself by the
+abstraction of a single plum. The plum in question is simply this
+(and the reader is asked to read the quotation carefully again): may
+not every act, incident, circumstance in a human life be the
+"uncoiling" of a karmic aggregate? This coil of life may be thought
+of most conveniently in this connection as the _character_ of the
+person, a character built up, or "successively introduced" in
+antecedent lives. The sequence of events resultant on its "unwinding"
+would be the destiny of the person--a destiny determined, necessarily,
+by past action. This concept gives a new and more eloquent meaning
+to the phrase "Character is destiny." If we carry our thought no
+further, we are plunged into the slough of determinism--sheer
+fatality. But in each reincarnation, however predetermined every act
+and event, their reaction upon consciousness remains a matter of
+determination--is therefore _self_-determined. We may not control
+the event, but our acceptance of it we may control. Moreover, each
+"unwinding" of the karmic coil takes place in a new environment, in a
+world more highly organized by reason of the play upon it of the
+collective consciousness of mankind. Though the same individual
+again and again intersects the stream of mundane experience, it is an
+evolving ego and an augmenting stream. Therefore each life of a
+given series forms a different, a more intricate, and a more amazing
+pattern: in each the thread is drawn from nearer the central energy,
+which is divine, and so shows forth more of the coiled power within
+the soul.
+
+
+
+
+X  GENIUS
+
+
+IMMANENCE
+
+The greatest largess to the mind which higher thought brings is the
+conviction of a transcendent existence. Though we do not know the
+nature of this existence, except obscurely, we are assured of its
+reality and of its immanence, through a growing sense that all that
+happens to us is simply our relation to it.
+
+In our ant-like efforts to attain to some idea of the nature of this
+transcendent reality, let us next avail ourselves of the help
+afforded by the artist and the man of genius, too troubled by the
+flesh for perfect clarity of vision, too troubled by the spirit not
+to attempt to render or record the Pisgah-glimpses of the
+world-order now and then vouchsafed. For the genius stands midway
+between man and Beyond-man: in Nietzsche's phrase, "Man is a bridge
+and not a goal."
+
+Of all the writers on the subject of genius, Schopenhauer is the
+most illuminating, perhaps because he suffered from it so. According
+to him, the essence of genius lies in the perfection and energy of
+its _perceptions_. Schopenhauer says, "He who is endowed with talent
+thinks more quickly and more correctly than others; but the genius
+beholds another world from them all, although only because he has a
+more profound perception of the world which lies before them also,
+in that it presents itself in his mind more objectively, and
+consequently in greater purity and distinctness." This profounder
+perception arises from his detachment: his intellect has to a
+certain extent freed itself from the service of his will, and leads
+an independent life. So long as the intellect is in the service of
+the will, that which has no relation to the will does not exist for
+the intellect; but along with this partial severance of the two
+there comes a new power of perception, synthetic in its nature, a
+complex of relationships not reproducible in _linear_ thought, for
+the mind is oriented simultaneously in _many_ different directions.
+Of this order of perception the well-known case of Mozart is a
+classic example. He is reported to have said of his manner of
+composing, "I can see the whole of it in my mind at a single glance ...
+in which way I do not hear it in my imagination at all as
+succession--the way it comes later--but all at once, as it were. It
+is a rare feast! all the inventing and making goes on in me as in a
+beautiful strong dream."
+
+
+TIMELESSNESS
+
+The inspirations of genius come from a failure of attention to life,
+which, all paradoxically, brings vision--the power to see life
+clearly and "see it whole." Consciousness, unconditioned by time,
+"in a beautiful strong dream," awakens to the perception of a world
+that is timeless. It brings thence some immortelle whose power of
+survival establishes the authenticity of the inspiration. However
+local and personal any masterpiece may be, it escapes by some potent
+magic all geographical and temporal categories, and appears always
+new-born from a sphere in which such categories do not exist.
+
+No writer was more of his period than Shakespeare, yet how
+contemporary he seems to each succeeding generation. Leonardo, in a
+perfect portrait, showed forth the face of a subtle, sensuous, and
+mocking spirit, against a background of wild rocks. It represents
+not alone the soul-phase of the later Renaissance, but of every
+individual and of every civilization which on life's dangerous and
+orgiastic substratum has reared a mere garden of delight. Living
+hearts throb to the music penned by the dead hand of Mozart and of
+Beethoven; the clownings of Aristophanes arouse laughter in our
+music halls; Euripides is as subtle and world-weary as any modern;
+the philosophies of Parminides and Heraclitus are recrudescent in that
+of Bergson; and Plato discusses higher space under a different name.
+
+
+BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL: BEAUTY
+
+The second characteristic of works of genius is their indifference
+to all man-made moral standards. They are beyond all that goes by
+the name of good and evil, in that the two are used indifferently
+for the furtherance of a purely aesthetic end. The Beyond-man
+discovers beauty in the abyss, and ugliness in mere worldly rectitude.
+Leonardo painted the Medusa head, with its charnel pallor and its
+crown of writhing snakes, no less lovingly than the sweet-tender
+face of the Christ of the Cenacolo, and the beauty is not less,
+though of an opposite sort. Shakespeare's most profound sayings and
+most magical poetry are as often as not put in the mouths of his
+villains and his clowns. To genius, pain is purgation; ugliness,
+beauty in disturbance. It injects the acid of irony into success,
+and distils the attar of felicity from failure. It teaches that the
+blows of fate are aimed, not at us, but at our fetters; that death
+is swallowed up in victory, that the Hound of Heaven is none other
+than the Love of God.
+
+Though genius rebels at our moralities, it always submits itself to
+beauty. Emerson says, "Goethe and Carlyle, and perhaps Novalis, have
+an undisguised dislike or contempt for common virtue standing on
+common principles. Meantime they are dear lovers, steadfast
+maintainers of the pure, ideal morality. But they worship it as the
+highest beauty, their love is artistic." And so it is throughout the
+whole hierarchy of men of genius. "Beauty is Truth: Truth, Beauty,"
+is the motto which guides their far-faring feet, as they lead us
+wheresoever they will. With Victor Hugo, we follow, undisgusted,
+through the sewers of old Paris: his sense of beauty disinfects them
+for us. With Balzac and Tolstoy we gaze unrevolted upon the
+nethermost depths of human depravity, discerning moral beauty even
+there; while with Virgil, Dante and Milton, we walk unscathed in
+Hell itself. The _terribilita_ of Michaelangelo, the chaos and
+anarchy of Shakespeare at his greatest, as in Lear--these find
+expression in perfect rhythms, so potent that we recognize them as
+proceeding from a supernal beauty, the beauty of that soul "from
+which also cometh the life of man and of beast, and of the birds of
+the air and of the fishes of the sea."
+
+
+THE DAEMONIC
+
+  "Unknown,--albeit lying near,--
+  To men the path to the Daemon sphere."
+
+But to men of genius--"Minions of the Morning Star"--the path is not
+unknown, and for this reason the daemonic element constantly shows
+itself in their works and in their lives. Dante, Cellini, Goethe,
+three men as unlike in the nature of their several gifts and in
+their temperaments as could easily be named together, are drawn to a
+common likeness through the daemonic gleam which plays and hovers
+over them at times. With William Blake it was a flame that wrapped
+him round. Today no one knows how Brunelleschi was able to construct
+his great dome without centering, nor how Michaelangelo could limn
+his terrible figures on the wet plaster of the Sistine vault with
+such extraordinary swiftness and skill; but we have their testimony
+that they invoked and received divine aid. Shakespeare, the
+master-magician, is silent on this point of supernatural
+assistance--as on all points--except as his plays speak for him;
+but how eloquently they speak! "The Tempest" is made up of the
+daemonic; the murky tragedy of "Macbeth" unfolds under the guidance
+of incarnate forces of evil which drive the hero to his doom and
+final deliverance in death: Hamlet sees and communes with the ghost
+of his father; in short, the supernatural is as much a part of these
+plays as salt is part of the ocean. If from any masterpiece we could
+abstract everything not strictly rational--every element of wonder,
+mystery, and enchantment--it would be like taking all of the unknown
+quantities out of an equation: there would be nothing left to solve.
+The mind of genius is a wireless station attuned to the vibrations
+from the daemonic sphere; the works of genius fascinate and delight
+us largely for this reason: we, too, respond to these vibrations and
+are demonologists in our secret hearts.
+
+For the interest which we take in genius has its root in the
+interest which we take in ourselves. Genius but utters experiences
+common to us all, records perceptions of a world-order which we too
+have glimpsed. Love, hope, pain, sorrow, disappointment, often
+effect that momentary purgation which enables consciousness to
+function independently of the tyrant will. These hours have for us a
+noetic value--"some veil did fall"--revealing visions remembered
+even unto the hour of death.
+
+
+"DEATH"
+
+That "failure of attention to life" which begets inspiration in the
+man of genius comes, indeed, daily to every one, but without his
+being able to profit by it. For what is sleep but a failure of
+attention to life--so complete a failure that memory brings back
+nothing save that little caught in the net of dreams--yet even this
+little is so charged with creative energy as to give rise to the
+saying that every man is a genius in his dreams.
+
+Death also is a failure of attention to life, the greatest that we
+know, and poorest therefore in plunder from supernatural realms.
+Nevertheless reports of persons who have narrowly escaped death give
+evidence at least that to those emancipated by death, life, viewed
+from some higher region of space, is perceived as a unity. When a
+man is brought face to face with death, the events of life pass
+before the mind's eye in an instant, and he comes from such an
+experience not only with deeper insight into himself, but into the
+meaning and purpose of life also. The faces of the dead, those
+parchments where are written the last testament of the departed
+spirit, bear an expression of solemn peace, sometimes of joy,
+sometimes of wonder: terror and agony are seldom written there, save
+when the fatal change comes in some painful or unnatural way.
+
+
+THE PLAY OF BRAHM
+
+Inspiration, dreams, visions at the moment of death--these things we
+say are _irrational_, and so in a sense they are. Bergson has
+compared the play of reason upon phenomena to the action of a
+cinematograph machine which reproduces the effect of motion by
+flashing upon the screen a correlated series of _fixed_ images. In
+like manner the reason dissects the flux of life and presents it to
+consciousness part by part, but never as a whole. In supernormal
+states however we may assume that with the breakdown of some barrier
+life flows in like a tidal wave, paralyzing the reason, and
+therefore presenting itself in an irrational manner to consciousness.
+Were reason equal to the strain put upon it under these circumstances,
+in what light might the phantasmagoria of human life appear? Might
+it not be perceived as a representation, merely, of a supernal world,
+higher-dimensional in relation to our own? Just as a moving picture
+shows us the round and living bodies of men and women as flat
+images on a plane, enacting there some mimic drama, so on the
+three-dimensional screen of the world men and women engaged in
+unfolding the drama of personal life may be but the images of souls
+enacting, on higher planes of being, the drama of their own salvation.
+The reluctance of the American aborigine to be photographed is said
+to have been due to his belief that something of his personality,
+his human potency, went into the image, leaving him by so much the
+poorer from that time forth. Suppose such indeed to be the case:
+that the flat-man on the moving picture screen leads his little life
+of thought and emotion, related to the mental and emotional life of
+the living original as the body is related to its photographic
+counterpart. In similar manner the potencies of the higher self, the
+dweller in higher spaces, may flow into and express themselves in and
+through us. We may be images in a world of images; our thoughts
+shadows of archetypal ideas, our acts a shadow-play upon the
+luminous screen of material existence, revealing there, however
+imperfectly, the moods and movements of a higher self in a higher
+space.
+
+The saying, "All the world's a stage," may be true in a sense
+Shakespeare never intended. It formulates, in effect, the oldest of
+all philosophical doctrines, that contained in the Upanishads of
+Brahma, the Enjoyer, who takes the form of a mechanically perfect
+universe in order to read his own law with eyes of his own creation.
+"He thought: 'Shall I send forth worlds?' He sent forth these worlds."
+To the question, "What worlds?" the Higher Space Hypothesis makes
+answer, "Dimensional systems, from lowest to highest, each one a
+_representation_ of the one next above, where it stands _dramatized_,
+as it were. This is the play of Brahm; endlessly to dissever, in
+time and space, and to unite in consciousness, like the geometrician
+who discovers every ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola, in the cone
+where all inhere."
+
+The particular act of the drama of unfolding consciousness upon
+which the curtain is now upfurled is that wherein we discover the
+world to be indeed a stage, a playground for forces masquerading as
+forms: "they have their exits and their entrances," or, as expressed
+in the Upanishads, "All that goes hence (dies on earth) heaven
+consumes it all; and all that goes thence (returns from heaven to a
+new life) the earth consumes it all."
+
+
+
+
+XI THE GIFT OF FREEDOM
+
+
+CONCEPT AND CONDUCT
+
+A surgeon once remarked to the author that among his professional
+associates he had noticed an increasing awareness of the invisible.
+This he claimed was manifest in the fact that the young men educated
+since the rise of bacteriological science were more punctilious in
+the matter of extreme personal cleanliness and the sterilization of
+their instruments than the older and often more accomplished
+surgeons whose habits in these matters had been formed before the
+general sense of an _invisible_ menace had become acute.
+
+This anecdote well illustrates the unconscious reaction of new
+concepts upon conduct. Preoccupation with the problems of space
+hyper-dimensionality cannot fail to produce profound changes in our
+ethical outlook upon life and in our attitude towards our fellow
+beings. The nature of these changes it is not difficult to forecast.
+
+Although higher-space thought makes painfully clear our limitations,
+it nevertheless leads to the perception that these very limitations
+are inhibited powers. In this way it supplies us with a workable
+method whereby we may enter that transcendental world of which we
+glimpse so many vistas. This method consists in first becoming aware
+of a limitation, and then in forcing ourselves to dramatize the
+experience that would be ours if the limitation did not affect us.
+We then discover in ourselves a power for transcending the limitation,
+and presently we come to live in the new mode as easily as in the old.
+Thought, conscious of its own limitations, leads to the New Freedom.
+"Become what thou art!" is the maxim engraved upon the lintel of
+this new Temple of Initiation.
+
+
+SELFLESSNESS
+
+Higher-space speculation is an education in _selflessness_, for it
+demands the elimination of what Hinton calls _self-elements_ of
+observation. The diurnal motion of the sun is an example of a
+self-element: it has nothing to do with the sun but everything to do
+with the observer. The Ptolemaic system founded on this illusion
+tyrannized over the human mind for centuries, but who knows of how
+many other illusions we continue to be victims--for the worst of a
+self-element is that its presence is never dreamed of until it is
+done away with. The Theory of Relativity presents us with an effort
+to get rid of the self-element in regard to space and time. A
+self-centered man cannot do full justice to this theory: it requires
+of the mind a certain detachment, and the idea becomes clear in
+proportion as this detachment, this selflessness, is attained.
+
+So while it would be too much to claim that higher thought makes men
+unselfish, it at least cracks the hard shell in which their
+selfishness abides. If a man disciplines himself to abdicate his
+personal point of view in thinking about the world he lives in, it
+makes easier a similar attitude in relation to his fellow men.
+
+
+HUMILITY
+
+One of the earliest effects of selfless thought is the exorcism of
+all arrogance. The effort to dramatize the relation of an earthworm
+to its environment makes us recognize that its predicament is our own,
+different only in degree. We are exercising ourselves in humility
+and meekness, but of a sort leading to a mastery that may well make
+the meek the inheritors of the earth. Hinton was himself so meek a
+man that his desire did not rise to the height of expecting or
+looking for the beautiful or the good: he simply asked for something
+to know. He despaired of knowing anything definitely and certainly
+except arrangements in space. We have his testimony as to how
+abundantly this hunger and thirst after that right knowledge which
+is righteousness was gratified. "All I want to do," he says,
+"is to make this humble beginning of knowledge and show how
+inevitably, by devotion to it, it leads to marvellous and
+far-distant truths, and how, by strange paths, it leads directly
+into the presence of some of the highest conceptions which great
+minds have given us."
+
+Here speaks the blessed man referred to by the psalmist, "Whose
+delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate
+day and night." Abandoning a vain search after abstractions, and
+applying his simple formula to life, Hinton found that it enabled
+him to express the faith in his heart in terms conformable to reason;
+that it led back to, and illumined the teachings of every spiritual
+instructor and inspirer of mankind.
+
+
+SOLIDARITY
+
+That we are all members of one body, branches of one vine, is a
+matter of faith and of feeling; but with the first use of the weapon
+of higher thought the paradox of the one and the many is capable of
+so clear and simple a resolution that the sublime idea of human
+solidarity is brought down from the nebulous heaven of the mystic to
+the earth of every day life. To our ordinary space-thought, men are
+isolated, distinct, each "an infinitely repellent particle," but we
+conceive of space too narrowly. The broader view admits the idea
+that men are related by reason of a superior union, that their
+isolation is but an affair of limited consciousness. Applying this
+concept to conduct, we come to discern a literal truth in the words
+of the Master, "He who hath done it unto the least of these my
+children, hath done it unto me," and "Where two or three are
+gathered together in my name." If we conceive of each individual as a
+"slice" or cross-section of a higher being, each fragment isolated
+by an inhibition of consciousness which it is moment by moment
+engaged in transcending, the sacrifice of the Logos takes on a new
+meaning. This disseverance into millions of human beings is that
+each may realize God in himself. Conceiving of humanity as God's
+broken body, we are driven to make peace among its members, and by
+realization we become the Children of God.
+
+
+LIVE OPENLY
+
+"_Blessed are the meek," "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst
+after righteousness." "Blessed are the peacemakers_." It would not
+be impossible to trace a relation between higher space thought and
+the other beatitudes also, but it will suffice simply to note the
+fact that the central and essential teaching of the Sermon on the
+Mount, "Let your light shine before men" is implicit in the
+conviction of every one who thinks on higher space: he must _live
+openly_. By continual dwelling upon the predicament of the flat-man,
+naked, as it were, to observation from an eye which looks down upon
+his plane, we come to realize our own exposure. In that large world
+all that we think, or do, or imagine, lies open, palpable; there is
+no such thing as secrecy. Imbued with this idea, we begin to live
+openly because we must; but soon we come to do so because we desire
+it. In making toward one another our limited lives open and manifest,
+we treat each other in the service of truth as though we were all
+members of that higher world. We imitate, in our world, our true
+existence in a higher world, and so help to establish heavenly
+conditions upon earth.
+
+
+NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL
+
+The problem of ugliness and evil would seem at first thought to be
+totally unrelated to the subject of space hyperdimensionality, but
+there is at least a symbolical relation. This was suggested to the
+author by the endeavor of two friends whose interests were
+pre-eminently mathematical to discover what certain four-dimensional
+figures would look like in three-dimensional space. They found
+that in a great number of cases these cross-sections, when
+thus isolated, revealed little of the symmetry and beauty of their
+higher-dimensional archetypes. It is clear that a beautiful form of
+our world, traversing a plane, would show nothing of its beauty to
+the planeman, who lacked the power of perceiving it entire; for the
+sense of beauty is largely a matter of co-ordination. We give the
+names of evil, chance, fate, ugliness, to those aspects of life and
+of the world that we fail to perceive in their true relations, in
+regard to which our power of correlation breaks down. Yet we often
+find that in the light of fuller knowledge or subsequent experience,
+the fortune which seemed evil was really good fortune in the making,
+that the chance act or encounter was too momentous in its
+consequences to be regarded as other than ordained.
+
+The self-element plays a large part in our idea of good and evil,
+ugliness and beauty. "All things are as they seem to all." Desire of
+her will make any woman beautiful, and fear will exercise an absolute
+inhibition upon the aesthetic sense. As we recede in time from events,
+they more and more emancipate themselves from the tyranny of our
+personal prejudices and predilections, and we are able to perceive
+them with greater clarity, more as they appear from the standpoint
+of higher time and higher space. "Old, unhappy, far-off things, and
+battles long ago" lose their poignancy of pain and take on the
+poignancy of beauty. The memory of suffering endured is often the
+last thing from which we would be parted, while humdrum happiness we
+are quite willing to forget. Because we realize completely only in
+retrospect, it may well be that the present exists chiefly for the
+sake of the future. Then let the days come with veiled faces, accept
+their gifts whose value we are so little able to appraise! There is
+a profound and practical truth in Christ's saying, "Resist not evil."
+Honor this truth by use, and welcome destiny in however sinister a
+guise.
+
+
+THE IMMANENT DIVINE
+
+In the fact of the limited nature of our space perceptions is found
+a connecting link between materialism and idealism. For, passing
+deeper and deeper in our observation of the material world, that
+which we at first felt as real passes away to become but the outward
+sign of a reality infinitely greater, of which our realities are
+appearances only, and we become convinced of the existence of
+_an immanent divine._ "In Him we live and move and have our being."
+Our space is but a limitation of infinite "room to move about":
+"_In my Father's house are many mansions_." Our time is but a
+limitation of infinite duration: "_Before Abraham was, I am_." Our
+sense of space is the consciousness that we abide in Him; our sense
+of time is the consciousness that He abides in us. Both are modes of
+apprehension of divinity--growing, expanding modes. In conceiving of
+a space of more than three dimensions we prove that our relation to
+God is not static, but dynamic. Christ said to the man who was sick
+of the palsy, "Rise, take up thy bed and walk." The narrow concept
+of three-dimensional space is a bed in which the human mind has lain
+so long as to become at last inanimate. The divine voice calls to us
+again to demonstrate that we are alive. Thinking in terms of the
+higher we issue from the tomb of materialism into the sunlight of
+that sane and life-giving idealism which is Christ's.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Four-Dimensional Vistas, by Claude Fayette Bragdon
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11906 ***
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41b8da7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #11906 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11906)
diff --git a/old/11906-8.txt b/old/11906-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..116c9e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/11906-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3887 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Four-Dimensional Vistas, by Claude Fayette Bragdon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Four-Dimensional Vistas
+
+Author: Claude Fayette Bragdon
+
+Release Date: April 4, 2004 [EBook #11906]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR-DIMENSIONAL VISTAS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FOUR-DIMENSIONAL
+VISTAS
+
+by
+
+Claude Bragdon
+
+[Illustration]
+
+New York
+
+
+
+   "_Perception has a destiny_."
+                        _Emerson_.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+There are two notable emancipations of the mind from the tyranny of
+mere appearances that have received scant attention save from
+mathematicians and theoretical physicists.
+
+In 1823 Bolyai declared with regard to Euclid's so-called axiom of
+parallels, "I will draw two lines through a given point, both of
+which will be parallel to a given line." The drawing of these lines
+led to the concept of the curvature of space, and this to the idea
+of _higher_ space.
+
+The recently developed Theory of Relativity has compelled the
+revision of the time concept as used in classical physics. One
+result of this has been to introduce the notion of _curved_ time.
+
+These two ideas, of curved time and higher space, by their very
+nature are bound to profoundly modify human thought. They loosen the
+bonds within which advancing knowledge has increasingly labored,
+they lighten the dark abysses of consciousness, they reconcile the
+discoveries of Western workers with the inspirations of Eastern
+dreamers; but best of all, they open vistas, they offer "glimpses
+that may make us less forlorn."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I. THE QUEST OF FREEDOM
+
+The Undiscovered Country--Miracles--The Failure of Common Sense--The
+Function of Science--Mathematics--Intuition--Our Sense of Space--The
+Subjectivity of Space--The Need of an Enlarged Space-Concept.
+
+II. THE DIMENSIONAL LADDER
+
+Learning to Think in Terms of Spaces--From the Cosmos to the
+Corpuscle--And Beyond--Evolution as Space-Conquest--Dimensional
+Sequences--Man the Geometer--Higher, and Highest, Space.
+
+III.  PHYSICAL PHENOMENA
+
+Looking for the Greater in the Less--Symmetry--Other Allied
+Phenomena--Isomerism--The Orbital Motion of Spheres: Cell-Subdivision--
+The Electric Current--The Greater Universe--A Hint from Astronomy--
+Gravitation--The Ether of Space.
+
+IV.  TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS
+
+Zöllner--Apparitions--Possession--Clairvoyance in Space--Clairvoyance
+in Time--Pisgah Sights of Life's Pageant.
+
+V. CURVED TIME
+
+Time from the Standpoint of Experiment and of Conscious Experience--
+Relativity--The Spoon-Man--The Orbital Movement of Time--Materiality
+the Mirror of Consciousness--Periodicity.
+
+VI. SLEEP AND DREAMS
+
+Sleep--Dreams--Time in Dreams--The Eastern Teaching in regard to Sleep
+and Dreams--Space in Dreams--The Phenomenon of Pause.
+
+
+VII. THE NIGHT SIDE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
+
+The Field of Psychic Research--Modifying the Past--Karma and
+Reincarnation--Colonel De Rochas' Experiments.
+
+VIII. THE EASTERN TEACHING
+
+Oriental Physics and Metaphysics--The Self-Recovered Memory of past
+Births--Release.
+
+IX. THE MYSTICS
+
+Hermes Trismegistus--The Page and the Press--The Ship and its
+Captain--Direct Vision--Plato's Shadow-Watchers--Swedenborg--Man,
+the Space-Eater--The Within and Without--Intuition and Reason--The
+Coil of Life.
+
+X. GENIUS
+
+Immanence--Timelessness--Beyond Good and Evil: Beauty--The Daemonic--
+"A Dream and a Forgetting"--The Play of Brahm.
+
+XI. THE GIFT OF FREEDOM
+
+Concept and Conduct--Selflessness--Humility--Solidarity--Live Openly--
+Non-Resistance to Evil--The Immanent Divine.
+
+
+
+
+
+FOUR-DIMENSIONAL VISTAS
+
+
+
+I THE QUEST OF FREEDOM
+
+
+THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
+
+Expectancy of freedom is the dominant note of to-day. Amid the crash
+of armies and the clash of systems we await some liberating stroke
+which shall release us from the old dreary thralldoms. As Nietzsche
+says, "It would seem as though we had before us, as a reward for all
+our toils, a country still undiscovered, the horizons of which no
+one has yet seen, a beyond to every country and every refuge of the
+ideal that man has ever known, a world so overflowing with beauty,
+strangeness, doubt, terror and divinity, that both our curiosity and
+our lust of possession are frantic with eagerness."
+
+Should a name be demanded for this home of freedom, there are those
+who would unhesitatingly call it _The Fourth Dimension of Space_.
+For such readers as may be ignorant of the amazing content of this
+seemingly meaningless phrase, any summary attempt at enlightenment
+will lead only to deeper mystification. To the question, where and
+what is the fourth dimension, the answer must be, it is here--in us,
+and all about us--in a direction toward which we can never point
+because at right angles to all the directions that we know. Our
+space cannot contain it, because it contains our space. No walls
+separate us from this demesne, not even the walls of our fleshly
+prison; yet we may not enter, even though we are already "there." It
+is the place of dreams, of living dead men: it is _At the Back of
+the North Wind_ and _Behind the Looking Glass_.
+
+So might one go on, piling figure upon figure and paradox upon
+paradox, to little profit. The effective method is the ordered and
+deliberate one; therefore the author asks of his reader the
+endurance of his curiosity pending certain necessary preparations of
+the mind.
+
+
+MIRACLES
+
+Could one of our aviators have landed in ancient Athens, doubtless
+he would have been given a place in the Greek Pantheon, for the old
+idea of a demigod was a man with wings. Why, then, does a flying man
+so little amaze us? Because we know about engines, and the smell of
+gasoline has dulled our sense of the sublime. The living voice of a
+dead man leaves us unterrified if only we can be sure that it comes
+from a phonograph; but let that voice speak to us out of vacancy and
+we fall a prey to the same order of alarm that is felt by a savage
+at the report of a gun that he has never seen.
+
+This illustration very well defines the nature of a miracle: it is a
+manifestation of power new to experience, and counter to the current
+thought of the time, Miracles are therefore always in order, they
+always happen. It is nothing that the sober facts of to-day are more
+marvellous than the fictions of Baron Munchausen, so long as we
+understand them: it is everything that phenomena are multiplying,
+that we are unable to understand. This increasing pressure upon
+consciousness _from a new direction_ has created a need to found
+belief on something firmer than a bottomless gullibility of mind.
+This book is aimed to meet that need by giving the mind the freedom
+of new spaces; but before it can even begin to do so, the reader
+must be brought to see the fallacy of attempting to measure the
+limits of the possible by that faculty known as common sense. And by
+common sense is meant, not the appeal to abstract reason, but to
+concrete experience.
+
+
+THE FAILURE OF COMMON SENSE
+
+Common sense had scarce had its laugh at Bell, and its shout of
+"I told you so!" at poor Langley, when lo! the telephone became the
+world's nervous system, and aeroplanes began to multiply like summer
+flies. To common sense the alchemist's dream of transmuting lead
+into gold seems preposterous, yet in a hundred laboratories radium
+is breaking down into helium, and the new chemistry bids fair to
+turn the time-honored jeer at the alchemists completely upside down.
+A wife whose mind was oriented in the new direction effectually
+silenced her husband's ridicule of what he called her credulity by
+reminding him that when wireless telegraphy was first suggested he
+had exclaimed, "Ah, that, you know, is one of the things that is not
+possible!" He was betrayed by his common sense.
+
+The lessons such things teach us are summed up in the reply of Arago,
+the great savant, to the wife of Daguerre. She asked him if he
+thought her husband was losing his mind because he was trying to
+make permanent the image in a mirror. Arago is said to have answered,
+"He who, outside of pure mathematics, says a thing is impossible,
+speaks without reason."
+
+Common sense neither leads nor lags, but is ever limited to the
+passing moment: the common knowledge of to-day was the mystery and
+enchantment of the day before yesterday, and will be the mere
+commonplace of the day after to-morrow. If common sense can so
+little anticipate the ordinary and orderly advancement of human
+knowledge, it is still less able to take that leap into the dark
+which is demanded of it now. The course of wisdom is therefore to
+place reliance upon reason and intuition, leaving to common sense
+the task of guiding the routine affairs of life, and guiding these
+alone.
+
+
+THE FUNCTION OF SCIENCE
+
+In enlisting the aid of reason in our quest for freedom, we shall be
+following in the footsteps of mathematicians and theoretical
+physicists. In their arduous and unflinching search after truth they
+have attained to a conception of the background of phenomena of far
+greater breadth and grandeur than that of the average religionist of
+to-day. As a mathematician once remarked to a neo-theosophist,
+"Your idea of the ether is a more material one than the materialist's
+own." Science has, however, imposed upon itself its own limitations,
+and in this connection these should be clearly understood.
+
+Science is that knowledge which can be gained by exact observation
+and correct thinking. If science makes use of any methods but these
+it ceases to be itself. Science has therefore nothing to do with
+morals: it gives the suicide his pistol, the surgeon his life-saving
+lance, but neither admonishes nor judges them. It has nothing to do
+with emotion: it exposes the chemistry of a tear, the mechanism of
+laughter; but of sorrow and happiness it has naught to say. It has
+nothing to do with beauty: it traces the movements of the stars, and
+tells of their constitution; but the fact of their singing together,
+and that "such harmony is in immortal souls," it leaves to poet and
+philosopher. The timbre, loudness, pitch, of musical tones, is a
+concern of science; but for this a Beethoven symphony is no better
+than the latest ragtime air from the music halls. In brief, science
+deals only with _phenomena_, and its gift to man is power over his
+material environment.
+
+
+MATHEMATICS
+
+The gift of pure mathematics, on the other hand, is primarily to the
+mind and spirit: the fact that man uses it to get himself out of his
+physical predicaments is more or less by the way. Consider for a
+moment this paradox. Mathematics, the very thing common sense swears
+by and dotes on, contradicts common sense at every turn. Common
+sense balks at the idea of _less than nothing_; yet the _minus_
+quantity, which in one sense is less than nothing in that something
+must be added to it to make it equal to nothing, is a concept
+without which algebra would have to come to a full stop. Again, the
+science of quaternions, or more generally, a vector analysis in
+which the progress of electrical science is essentially involved,
+embraces (explicitly or implicitly) the extensive use of _imaginary_
+or _impossible_ quantities of the earlier algebraists. The very
+words "imaginary" and "impossible" are eloquent of the defeat of
+common sense in dealing with concepts with which it cannot
+practically dispense, for even the negative or imaginary solutions
+of imaginary quantities almost invariably have some physical
+significance. A similar statement might also be made with regard to
+_transcendental_ functions.
+
+Mathematics, then, opens up ever new horizons, and its achievements
+during the past one hundred years give to thought the very freedom
+it seeks. But if science is dispassionate, mathematics is even more
+austere and impersonal. It cares not for teeming worlds and hearts
+insurgent, so long as in the pure clarity of space, relationships
+exist. Indeed, it requires neither time nor space, number nor
+quantity. As the mathematician approaches the limits already
+achieved by study, the colder and thinner becomes the air and the
+fewer the contacts with the affairs of every day. The Promethean
+fire of pure mathematics is perhaps the greatest of all in man's
+catalogue of gifts; but it is not most itself, but least so, when,
+immersed in the manifoldness of phenomenal life, it is made to serve
+purely utilitarian ends.
+
+
+INTUITION
+
+Common sense, immersed in the mere business of living, knows no more
+about life than a fish knows about water. The play of reason upon
+phenomena dissects life, and translates it in terms of inertia. The
+pure logic of mathematics ignores life and disdains its limitations,
+leading away into cold, free regions of its own. Now our desire for
+freedom is not to vibrate in a vacuum, but to live more abundantly.
+_Intuition_ deals with life directly, and introduces us into
+life's own domain: it is related to reason as flame is related to
+heat. All of the great discoveries in science, all of the great
+solutions in mathematics, have been the result of a _flash_ of
+intuition, after long brooding in the mind. _Intuition illumines_.
+Intuition is therefore the light which must guide us into that
+undiscovered country conceded by mathematics, questioned by science,
+denied by common sense--_The Fourth Dimension of Space_.
+
+
+OUR SENSE OF SPACE
+
+Space has been defined as "room to move about." Let us accord to
+this definition the utmost liberty of interpretation. Let us
+conceive of space not alone as room to move ponderable bodies in,
+but as room to think, to feel, to strike out in unimaginable
+directions, to overtake felicities and knowledges unguessed by
+experience and preposterous to common sense. Space is not measurable:
+we attribute dimensionality to space because such is the method of
+the mind; and that dimensionality we attribute to space is
+progressive because progression is a law of the mind. The so-called
+dimensions of space are to space itself as the steps that a climber
+cuts in the face of a cliff are to the cliff itself. They are not
+necessary to the cliff: they are necessary only to the climber.
+Dimensionality is the mind's method of mounting to the idea of the
+infinity of space. When we speak of the fourth dimension, what we
+mean is the fourth stage in the apprehension of that infinity. We
+might as legitimately speak of a fifth dimension, but the
+profitlessness of any discussion of a fifth and higher stages lies
+in the fact that they can be intelligently approached only through
+the fourth, which is still largely unintelligible. The case is like
+that of a man promised an increase of wages after he had worked a
+month, who asks for his second month's pay before he is entitled to
+the first.
+
+
+THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE
+
+Without going deep into the doctrine of the ideality--that is, the
+purely subjective reality--of space, it is easy to show that we have
+arrived at our conception of a space of three dimensions by an
+intellectual process. The sphere of the senses is two-dimensional:
+except for the slight aid afforded by binocular vision, sight gives
+us moving pictures _on a plane_, and touch contacts _surfaces_ only.
+What circumstances, we may ask, have compelled our intellect to
+conceive of _solid_ space? This question has been answered as follows:
+
+"If a child contemplates his hand, he is conscious of its existence
+in a double manner--in the first place by its tangibility, the
+second by its image on the retina of his eye. By repeated groping
+about and touching, the child knows by experience that his hand
+retains the same form and extension through all the variations of
+distance and position under which it is observed, notwithstanding
+that the form and extension of the image on the retina constantly
+change with the different position and distance of his hand in
+respect to his eye. The problem is thus set to the child's
+understanding: how to reconcile to his comprehension the apparently
+contradictory facts of the _invariableness_ of the object together
+with the _variableness_ of its appearance. This is only possible
+within a space of three dimensions, in which, owing to perspective
+distortions and changes, these variations of projection can be
+reconciled with the constancy of the form of a body."
+
+Thus we have come to the idea of a three-dimensional space in order
+to overcome the apparent contradictoriness of facts of sensible
+experience. Should we observe in three-dimensional space
+contradictory facts our reason would be forced to reconcile these
+contradictions, also, and if they could be reconciled by the idea of
+a four-dimensional space our reason would accept this idea without
+cavil. Furthermore, if from our childhood, phenomena had been of
+daily occurrence requiring a space of four or more dimensions for an
+explanation conformable to reason, we should feel ourselves native
+to a space of four or more dimensions.
+
+Poincaré, the great French mathematician and physicist, arrived at
+these same conclusions by another route. By a process of
+mathematical reasoning of a sort too technical to be appropriately
+given here, he discovers an order in which our categories range
+themselves naturally, and which corresponds with the points of space;
+and that this order presents itself in the form of what he calls a
+"three circuit distribution board." "Thus the characteristic property
+of space," he says, "that of having three dimensions, is only a
+property of our distribution board, _a property residing, so to speak,
+in human intelligence_." He concludes that a different association
+of ideas would result in a different distribution board, and that
+might be sufficient to endow space with a fourth dimension. He
+concedes that there may be thinking beings, living in our world,
+whose distribution board has four dimensions, and who do
+consequently think in hyperspace.
+
+
+THE NEED OF AN ENLARGED SPACE-CONCEPT
+
+It is the contrariety in phenomena already referred to, that is
+forcing advanced minds to entertain the idea of higher space.
+Mathematical physicists have found that experimental contradictions
+disappear if, instead of referring phenomena to a set of three space
+axes and one time axis of reference, they be referred to a set of
+four interchangeable axes involving four homogeneous co-ordinates.
+In other words, _time_ is made the fourth dimension. Psychic
+phenomena indicate that occasionally, in some individuals,
+the will is capable of producing physical movements for whose
+geometrico-mathematical definition a four-dimensional system of
+co-ordinates is necessary. This is only another step along the road
+which the human mind has always travelled: our conception of the
+cosmos grows more complete and more just at the same time that it
+recedes more and more beneath the surface of appearances.
+
+Far from the Higher Space Hypothesis complicating thought, it
+simplifies by synthesis and co-ordination in a manner analogous to
+that by which plane geometry is simplified when solid geometry
+becomes a subject of study. By immersing the mind in the idea of
+many dimensions, we emancipate it from the idea of dimensionality.
+But the mind moves most readily, as has been said, in ordered
+sequence. Frankly submitting ourselves to this limitation, even
+while recognizing it as such, let us learn such lessons from it as
+we can, serving the illusions that master us until we have made them
+our slaves.
+
+
+
+
+II THE DIMENSIONAL LADDER
+
+
+LEARNING TO THINK IN TERMS OF SPACES
+
+The Reader who is willing to consider the Higher Space Hypothesis
+seriously, who would discover, by its aid, new and profound truths
+closely related to life and conduct, should first of all endeavor to
+arouse in himself a new power of perception. This he will best
+accomplish by learning to discern dimensional sequences, not alone
+in geometry, but in the cosmos and in the natural world. By so doing
+he may erect for himself a veritable Jacob's ladder,
+
+  "Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross."
+
+He should accustom himself to ascend it, step by step, dimension by
+dimension. Then he will learn to trust Emerson's dictum, "Nature
+geometrizes," even in regions where the senses fail him, and the mind
+alone leads on. Much profitable amusement is to be gained by such
+exercises as follow. They are in the nature of a running up and down
+the scales in order to give strength and flexibility to a new set of
+mental fingers. Learning to think in terms of spaces contributes to
+our emancipation from the tyranny of space.
+
+
+FROM THE COSMOS TO THE CORPUSCLE
+
+By way of a beginning, proceed, by successive stages, from the
+contemplation of the greatest thing conceivable to the contemplation
+of the most minute, and note the space sequences revealed by this
+shifting of the point of view.
+
+The greatest thing we can form any conception of is the starry
+firmament made familiar to the mind through the study of astronomy.
+No limit to this vastitude has ever been assigned. Since the
+beginning of recorded time, the earth, together with the other
+planets and the sun, has been speeding through interstellar space at
+the rate of 300,000,000 miles a year, without meeting or passing a
+single star. A ray of light, travelling with a velocity so great as
+to be scarcely measurable within the diameter of the earth's orbit,
+takes years to reach even the nearest star, centuries to reach those
+more distant. Viewed in relation to this universe of suns, our
+particular sun and all its satellites--of which the earth is
+one--shrinks to a point (a _physical_ point, so to speak--not
+geometrical one).
+
+The mind recoils from these immensities: let us forsake them, then,
+for more familiar spaces, and consider the earth in its relation to
+the sun. Our planet appears as a _moving_ point, tracing out a
+_line_--a _one-space_--its path around the sun. Now let us remove
+ourselves in imagination only far enough from the earth for human
+beings thereon to appear as minute moving things, in the semblance,
+let us say, of insects infesting an apple. It is clear that from
+this point of view these beings have a freedom of movement in their
+"space" (the surface of the earth), of which the larger unit is not
+possessed; for while the earth itself can follow only a _line_, its
+inhabitants are free to move in the two dimensions of the surface of
+the earth.
+
+Abandoning our last coign of vantage, let us descend in imagination
+and mingle familiarly among men. We now perceive that these
+creatures which from a distance appeared as though flat upon the
+earth's surface, are in reality erect at right angles to its plane,
+and that they are endowed with the power to move their members in
+_three dimensions_. Indeed, man's ability to traverse the surface
+of the earth is wholly dependent upon his power of three-dimensional
+movement. Observe that with each transfer of our attention from
+greater units to smaller, we appear to be dealing with a power of
+movement in an additional dimension.
+
+Looking now in thought not _at_ the body of man, but _within_ it, we
+apprehend an ordered universe immensely vast in proportion to that
+physical ultimate we name the electron, as is the firmament immensely
+vast in proportion to a single star. It has been suggested that in
+the infinitely minute of organic bodies there is a power of movement
+in a _fourth_ dimension. If so, such four-dimensional movement may
+be the proximate cause of the phenomenon of _growth_--of those
+chemical changes and renewals whereby an organism is enabled to
+expand in three-dimensional space, just as by a three-dimensional
+power of movement (the act of walking) man is able to traverse his
+two-dimensional space--the surface of the earth.
+
+
+--AND BEYOND
+
+Proceed still further. Behind such organic change--assumed to be
+four-dimensional--there is the determination of some _will-to-live_,
+which manifests itself to consciousness as thought and as desire.
+Into these the idea of space does not enter: we think of them as in
+_time_. But if there are developments of other dimensions of space,
+thought and emotion may themselves be discovered to have space
+relations; that is, they may find expression in the forms of _higher_
+spaces. Thus is opened up one of those rich vistas in which the
+subject of the fourth dimension abounds, but into which we
+can only glance in passing. If there are such higher-dimensional
+_thought-forms_, our normal consciousness, limited to a world of
+three dimensions, can apprehend only their three-dimensional aspects,
+and these not simultaneously, but successively--that is, in _time_.
+According to this view, any unified series of _actions_--for example,
+the life of an individual, or of a group--would represent the
+straining, so to speak, of a thought-form through our _time_, as the
+bodies subject to these actions would represent its straining
+through our space.
+
+
+EVOLUTION AS SPACE-CONQUEST
+
+Evolution is a struggle for, and a conquest of, space; for evolution,
+as the word implies, is a _drawing out_ of what is inherent from
+latency into objective reality, or in other words into spatial--and
+temporal--extension.
+
+This struggle for space, by means of which the birth and growth of
+organisms is achieved, is the very texture of life, the plot of
+every drama. Cells subdivide; micro-organisms war on one another;
+plants contend for soil, light, moisture; flowers cunningly suborn
+the bee to bring about their nuptials; animals wage deadly warfare
+in their rivalry to bring more hungry animals into a space-hungry
+world. Man is not exempt from this law of the jungle. Nations
+intrigue and fight for land--of which wealth is only the symbol--and
+a nation's puissance is measured by its power to push forward into
+the territory of its neighbor. The self-same impulse drives the
+individual. One measure of the difference between men in the matter
+of efficiency is the amount of space each can command: one has a
+house and grounds in some locality where every square inch has an
+appreciable value; another some fractional part of a lodging house
+in the slums. When this bloodless, but none the less deadly, contest
+for space becomes acute, as in the congested quarters of great cities,
+man's ingenuity is taxed to devise effective ways of augmenting his
+_space-potency_, and he expands in a vertical direction. This
+third-dimensional extension, typified in the tunnel and in the
+skyscraper, is but the latest phase of a conquest of space which
+began with the line of the pioneer's trail through an untracked
+wilderness.
+
+
+DIMENSIONAL SEQUENCES
+
+Not only does nature everywhere geometrize, but she does so in a
+particular way, in which we discover dimensional sequences. Consider
+the transformation of solid, liquid, gas, from one to another, under
+the influence of heat. A solid, set in free motion, can follow only
+a _line_--as is the case of a thrown ball. A liquid has the added
+power of lateral extension. Its tendency, when intercepted, is to
+spread out in the two dimensions of a _plane_--as in the case of a
+griddle cake; while a gas expands universally in all directions, as
+shown by a soap-bubble. It is a reasonable inference that the fourth
+state of matter, the corpuscular, is affiliated to some
+four-dimensional manner of extension, and that there may be states
+beyond this, involving even higher development of space.
+
+Next glance at the vegetable kingdom. The seed, a _point_, generates
+a _line_ system, in stem, branches, twigs, from which depend _planes_
+in the form of leaves and flowers, and from these come fruit,
+_solids_.
+
+  "The point, the line, the surface and the sphere,
+  In seed, stem, leaf and fruit appear."
+
+A similar sequence may be noted within the body: the _line_-network
+of the nerves conveys the message of sensation from the _surface_ of
+the body to some center in the _solid_, of the brain--and thence to
+the Silent Thinker, "he who is without and within," or in terms of
+our hypothesis, "he who dwells in higher space."
+
+
+MAN THE GEOMETER
+
+When man essays the rôle of creator he cannot do otherwise than
+follow similar sequences: it is easy to discern dimensional
+progression in the products of man's ingenuity and skill. Consider,
+for example, the evolution of a building from its inception to its
+completion. It exists first of all in the mind of the architect, and
+there it is indubitably higher-spatial, for he can interpenetrate
+and examine every part, and he can consider it all at once, viewing
+it simultaneously from without and from within, just as one would be
+able to do in a space of four dimensions. He begins to give his idea
+physical embodiment by making with a pencil-_point, lines_ on a
+_plane_ (a piece of paper), the third dimension being represented
+by means of the other two. Next (if he is careful and wise) he makes
+a three-dimensional model. From the architect's drawings the engineer
+establishes his points, lays out his angles, and runs his lines upon
+the site itself. The mason follows, and with his footing courses
+makes ponderable and permanent the lines of the engineer. These
+lines become in due course walls--vertical planes. Floors and
+roofs--horizontal planes--follow, until some portion of
+three-dimensional space has been enclosed.
+
+Substantially the same sequence holds, whatever the kind of building
+or the character of the construction--whether a steel-framed
+skyscraper or a wooden shanty. A line system, represented by columns
+and girders in the one case, and by studs and rafters in the other,
+becomes, by overlay or interposition, a system of planes, so
+assembled and correlated as to define a solid.
+
+With nearly everything of man's creating--be it a bureau or a
+battleship--the process is as above described. First, a pattern to
+scale; next, an actual linear framework; then planes defining a solid.
+Consider almost any of the industries practiced throughout the ages:
+they may be conceived of thus in terms of dimensions; for example,
+those ancient ones of weaving and basket making. _Lines_ (threads in
+the one case, rushes in the other) are wrought into _planes_ to
+clothe a body or to contain a burden. Or think, if you choose, of
+the modern industry of book-making, wherein types are assembled,
+impressed upon sheets of paper, and these bound into volumes--
+_points, lines, planes, solids_. The book in turn becomes the unit
+of another dimensional order, in the library whose serried shelves
+form lines, which, combined into planes, define the lateral limits
+of the room.
+
+
+HIGHER--AND HIGHEST--SPACE
+
+These are truisms. What have they to do, it may be asked, with the
+idea of _higher_ spaces? They have everything to do with it, for in
+achieving the enclosure of any portion of solid space the limit of
+known dimensions has been reached without having come to any end.
+More dimensions--higher spaces--are required to account for higher
+things. All of the products of man's ingenuity are inanimate except
+as he himself animates them. They remain as they were made, machines,
+not organisms. They have no inherent life of their own, no power of
+growth and renewal. In this they differ from animate creation
+because the highest achievement of the creative faculty in man in a
+mechanical way lacks the life principle possessed by the plant. And
+as the most perfect machine is inferior in this respect to the
+humblest flower that grows, so is the highest product of the
+vegetable kingdom inferior to man himself, the maker of the machine;
+for he can reflect upon his own and the world's becoming, while the
+plant can only become.
+
+What is the reason for these differences of power and function?
+According to the Higher Space Hypothesis they are due to varying
+potencies of movement in the secret causeways and corridors of space.
+The higher functions of consciousness--volition, emotion,
+intellection--may be in some way correlated with the higher powers
+of numbers, and with the corresponding higher developments of space.
+Thus would the difference between physics and metaphysics become a
+difference of degree and not of kind. Evolution is to be conceived
+of as a continuous pushing back of the boundary between
+representation and reality, or as a conquest of space. We may
+conceive of space as of an infinite number of dimensions, and of
+consciousness as a moving--or rather as an expanding--point,
+embracing this infinity, involving worlds, powers, knowledges,
+felicities, within itself in everlasting progression.
+
+
+
+
+III PHYSICAL PHENOMENA
+
+
+LOOKING FOR THE GREATER IN THE LESS
+
+After the assured way in which the author has conducted the reader
+repeatedly up and down the dimensional ladder, it may be a surprise
+to learn that physical phenomena offer no irrefragable evidences of
+hyper-dimensionality. We could not think in higher space if
+consciousness were limited to three dimensions. The mathematical
+reality of higher space is never in question: the higher dimensions
+are as valid as the lower, but the hyper-dimensionality of matter is
+still unproven. Man's ant-like efforts to establish this as a truth
+have thus far been vain.
+
+Lest this statement discourage the reader at the very outset, he
+should understand the reason for such failure. We are _embedded_ in
+our own space, and if that space be embedded in higher space, how are
+we going to discover it? If space is curved, how are we going to
+measure its curvature? Our efforts to do so may be compared to
+measuring the distance between the tips of a bent bow by measuring
+along the bow instead of along the string.
+
+Imagine a scientifically-minded threadworm to inhabit a page of
+Euclid's solid geometry: the evidences of three-dimensionality are
+there, in the very diagrams underneath his eyes; but you could not
+_show_ him a solid--the flat page could not contain it, any more
+than our space can contain a form of four dimensions. You could only
+say to him, "These lines _represent_ a solid." He would have to
+depend on his _faith_ for belief and not on that "knowledge gained
+by exact observation and correct thinking" in which alone the
+scientist finds a sure ground for understanding.
+
+It is an axiom of science never to look outside three-space horizons
+for an understanding of phenomena when these can logically be
+accounted for within those horizons. Now because, on the Higher
+Space Hypothesis, each space is the container of all phenomena of
+its own order, the futility, for practical purposes, of going
+outside is at once apparent. The highly intelligent threadworm
+neither knows nor cares that the point of intersection of two lines
+in his diagram _represents_ a point in a space to which he is a
+stranger. The point is there, on his page: it is what he calls a
+_fact_. "Why raise" (he says) "these puzzling and merely academic
+questions? Why attempt to turn the universe completely upside down?"
+
+But though no _proofs_ of hyper-dimensionality have been found in
+nature, there are equally no contradictions of it, and by using a
+method not inductive, but deductive, the Higher Space Hypothesis
+is plausibly confirmed. Nature affords a sufficient number of
+_representations_ of four-dimensional forms and movements to justify
+their consideration.
+
+
+SYMMETRY
+
+Let us first flash the light of our hypothesis upon an all but
+universal characteristic of living forms, yet one of the most
+inexplicable--_symmetry_.
+
+Animal life exhibits the phenomenon of the right-and left-handed
+symmetry of solids. This is exemplified in the human body, wherein
+the parts are symmetrical with relation to the axial _plane_.
+Another more elementary type of symmetry is characteristic of the
+vegetable kingdom. A leaf in its general contour is symmetrical:
+here the symmetry is about a _line_--the midrib. This type of
+symmetry is readily comprehensible, for it involves simply a
+revolution through 180 degrees. Write a word on a piece of paper and
+quickly fold it along the line of writing so that the wet ink
+repeats the pattern, and you have achieved the kind of symmetry
+represented in a leaf.
+
+With the symmetry of solids, or symmetry with relation to an axial
+_plane_, no such simple movement as the foregoing suffices to
+produce or explain it, because symmetry about a plane implies
+_four-dimensional_ movement. It is easy to see why this must be so.
+In order to achieve symmetry in any space--that is, in any given
+number of dimensions--there must be revolution in the next higher
+space: one more dimension is necessary. To make the (two-dimensional)
+ink figure symmetrical, it had to be folded over _in the third
+dimension_. The revolution took place about the figure's _line_ of
+symmetry, and in a _higher_ dimension. In _three_-dimensional
+symmetry (the symmetry of solids) revolution must occur about the
+figure's _plane_ of symmetry, and in a higher--i.e., the _fourth_
+dimension. Such a movement we can reason about with mathematical
+definiteness: we see the result in the right- and left-handed
+symmetry of solids, but we cannot picture the movement ourselves
+because it involves a space of which our senses fail to give any
+account.
+
+Now could it be shown that the two-dimensional symmetry observed in
+nature is the result of a three-dimensional movement, the right-and
+left-handed symmetry of solids would by analogy be the result of a
+_four_-dimensional movement. Such revolution (about a plane) would
+be easily achieved, natural and characteristic, in four space, just
+as the analogous movement (about a line) is easy, natural, and
+characteristic, in our space of three dimensions.
+
+
+OTHER ALLIED PHENOMENA
+
+In the mirror image of a solid we have a representation of what
+would result from a four-dimensional revolution, the surface of the
+mirror being the plane about which the movement takes place. If such
+a change of position were effected in the constituent parts of a
+body as a mirror image of it _represents_, the body would have
+undergone a revolution in the fourth dimension. Now two varieties of
+tartaric acid crystallize in forms bearing the relation to one
+another of object to mirror image. It would seem more reasonable to
+explain the existence of these two identical, but reversed,
+varieties of crystal, by assuming the revolution of a single variety
+in the fourth dimension, than by any other method.
+
+There are two forms of sugar found in honey, dextrose and levulose.
+They are similar in chemical constitution, but the one is the
+reverse of the other when examined by polarized light--that is, they
+rotate the plane of polarization of a ray of light in opposite ways.
+If their atoms are conceived to have the power of motion in the
+fourth dimension, it would be easy to understand why they differ.
+Certain snails present the same characteristics as these two forms
+of sugar. Some are coiled to the right and others to the left; and
+it is remarkable that, like dextrose and levulose, their juices are
+optically the reverse of each other when studied by polarized light.
+
+Revolution in the fourth dimension would also explain the change in
+a body from producing a right-handed, to producing a left-handed,
+polarization of light.
+
+
+ISOMERISM
+
+In chemistry the molecules of a compound are assumed to consist of
+the atoms of the elements contained in the compound. These atoms are
+supposed to be at certain distances from one another. It sometimes
+happens that two compound substances differ in their chemical or
+physical properties, or both, even though they have like chemical
+elements in the same proportion. This phenomenon is called isomerism,
+and the generally accepted explanation is that the atoms in isomeric
+molecules are differently arranged, or grouped, in space. It is
+difficult to imagine how atoms, alike in number, nature, and
+relative proportion, can be so grouped as somehow to produce
+compounds with different properties, particularly as in
+three-dimensional space four is the greatest number of points whose
+mutual distances, six in number, are all independent of each other.
+In four-dimensional space, however, the _ten_ equal distances
+between any two of _five_ points are geometrically independent, thus
+greatly augmenting the number and variety of possible arrangements
+of atoms.
+
+This just escapes being the kind of proof demanded by science. If
+the independence of all the possible distances between the atoms of
+a molecule is absolutely required by theoretical chemical research,
+then science is really compelled, in dealing with molecules of more
+than four atoms, to make use of the idea of a space of more than
+three dimensions.
+
+
+THE ORBITAL MOTION OF SPHERES: CELL SUB-DIVISION
+
+There is in nature another representation of hyper-dimensionality
+which, though difficult to demonstrate, is too interesting and
+significant to be omitted here.
+
+Imagine a helix, intersected, in its vertical dimension, by a moving
+plane. If necessary to assist the mind, suspend a spiral spring
+above a pail of water, then raise the pail until the coils, one
+after another, become immersed. The spring would represent the helix,
+and the surface of the water the moving plane. Concentrating
+attention upon this surface, you would see a point--the elliptical
+cross-section of the wire where it intersected the plane--moving
+round and round in a circle. Next conceive of the wire itself as a
+lesser helix of many convolutions, and repeat the experiment. The
+point of intersection would then continually return upon its own
+track in a series of minute loops forming those lesser loops, which,
+moving circle-wise, registered the involvement of the helix in the
+plane.
+
+It is easy to go on imagining complicated structures of the nature
+of the spiral, and to suppose also that these structures are
+distinguishable from each other at every section. If we think of the
+intersection of these with the rising surface, as the atoms, or
+physical units, of a plane universe, we shall have a world of
+apparent motion, with bodies moving harmoniously amongst one another,
+each a cross-section of some part of an unchanging and unmoving
+three-dimensional entity.
+
+Now augment the whole by an additional dimension--raise everything
+one space. The helix of many helices would become four-dimensional,
+and superficial space would change to solid space: each tiny circle
+of intersection would become a sphere of the same diameter,
+describing, instead of loops, helices. Here we would be among
+familiar forms, describing familiar motions: the forms, for example,
+of the earth and the moon and of their motion about the sun; of the
+atom, as we imagine it, the molecule and the cell. For is not the
+sphere, or ovoid, the unit form of nature; and is not the spiral
+vortex its characteristic motion, from that of the nebula in the sky
+to the electron in the atom? Thus, on the hypothesis that our space
+is traversing four-dimensional space, and that the forms of our
+space are cross-sections of four-dimensional forms, the unity and
+harmony of nature would be accounted for in a remarkably simple
+manner.
+
+The above exercise of the imagination is a good preparation for the
+next demand upon it. Conceive a dichotomous tree--one that always
+divides into two branches--to pass through a plane. We should have,
+as a plane section, a circle of changing size, which would elongate
+and divide into two circles, each of which would do the same. This
+reminds us of the segmentation of cell life observed under the
+microscope, as though a four-dimensional figure were registering its
+passage through our space.
+
+
+THE ELECTRIC CURRENT
+
+Hinton conceived of an electric current as a four-dimensional vortex.
+He declared that on the Higher Space Hypothesis the revolution of
+the ether would yield the phenomenon of the electric current. The
+reader is referred to Hinton's book, _The Fourth Dimension_, for an
+extended development of this idea. What follows is a brief summary
+of his argument. First, he examines the characteristics of a vortex
+in a three-dimensional fluid. Then he conceives of what such a
+vortex would be in a four-dimensional medium of analogous properties.
+The whirl would be about a _plane_, and the contour of this plane
+would correspond to the ends of the axis line in the former vortex;
+and as before, the vortex would extend to the boundary. Every
+electric current forms a closed circuit: this is equivalent to the
+hyper-vortex having its ends in the boundary of the hyper-fluid. The
+vortex with a _surface_ as its axis, therefore, affords a geometric
+image of a closed circuit.
+
+Hinton supposes a conductor to be a body which has the property
+of serving as a terminal abutment to such a hyper-vortex as has
+been described. The conception that he forms of a closed current,
+therefore, is of a vortex sheet having its _edge_ along the
+circuit of the conducting wire. The whole wire would then be like
+the centers on which a spindle turns in three-dimensional space,
+and any interruption of the continuity of the wire would produce
+a _tension_ in place of a continuous revolution. The phenomena
+of electricity--polarity, induction, and the like--are of the nature
+of the stress and strain of a medium, but one possessing properties
+unlike those of ordinary matter. The phenomena can be explained in
+terms of higher space. If Hinton's hypothesis be the true explanation,
+the universality of electro-magnetic action would again point to the
+conclusion that our three-dimensional world is _superficial_--the
+surface, that is, of a four-dimensional universe.
+
+
+THE GREATER UNIVERSE
+
+This practically exhausts the list of accepted and accredited
+indications of hyper-dimensionality in our physical environment. But
+if the collective human consciousness is moving into the fourth
+dimension, such indications are bound to multiply out of all measure.
+It should be remembered that in Franklin's day electricity was
+manifest only in the friction of surfaces and in the thunderbolt.
+To-day all physical phenomena, in their last analysis, are considered
+to be electrical. The world is not different, but perception has
+evolved, and is evolving.
+
+There is another field, in which some of our ablest minds are
+searching for evidences of the curvature of space, the field of
+astronomy and astro-physics. But into this the layman hesitates to
+enter because the experts themselves have found no common ground of
+understanding. The ether of space is a battlefield strewn with dead
+and dying hypotheses; gravitation, like multiplication, is vexation;
+the very nature of time, form and movement is under vivid discussion,
+in connection with what is known as the Theory of Relativity.
+
+Notwithstanding these counter-currents of speculation, which should
+make the wise man speak smilingly of his wisdom, this summary
+remains incomplete without a reference to the pressure of higher
+space upon those adventurous minds that essay to deal with the
+profound problems of the greater universe, and a statement of the
+reasons for their feeling this pressure. These reasons are well
+suggested by Professor B.G. Harrison, in his _Popular Astronomy_. He
+says: "With the idea of a universe of finite dimensions there is the
+obvious difficulty of the beyond. The truth is that a universe of
+finite proportions is equally difficult to realize as one of
+infinite extent. Perhaps the nearest analogy to infinity that we can
+understand lies in our conception of a closed curve. It seems easier
+to imagine the endless movement of a sphere in a circular path than
+the case of one travelling in a straight line. Possibly this analogy
+may apply in some way to fourth-dimensional space, but the manner of
+its application is certainly not easy to understand. If we would
+imagine that all co-ordinates of time and space were curved, and
+eventually return to the same point, it might bring the ultimate
+comprehension one degree nearer."
+
+
+A HINT FROM ASTRONOMY
+
+The physical evidence that our space is thus curved in higher space,
+some have considered astronomy to furnish in what is called the
+"negative parallax" of certain distant stars. This cannot be passed
+by, though it is too deeply involved with the probable error of the
+observers themselves to be considered more than an interesting fact
+in this connection. Every one knows that the difference of angle
+under which an object is seen from two standpoints is called its
+parallax. The parallax of the stars--and the consequent knowledge of
+their distance--is obtained by observing them from opposite points
+of the earth's orbit around the sun. When a star is within measurable
+distance, these angles are acute, and the lines from the star to the
+earth at opposite sides of its orbit converge, therefore. But when
+these lines, as sometimes happens, appear to be _divergent_, the
+result is called a _negative_ parallax, and is explainable by higher
+space relationships. Obviously, the divergence of the lines would
+indicate that the object lies _behind_ the observer instead of in
+front of him. This anomaly can be explained by the curvature of space
+in the fourth dimension. If space is so curved, the path of light
+itself is curved also, and a man--were his vision immeasurably keen,
+not to say telescopic--could see the back of his own head! It is not
+worth while to give this question of negative parallax too much
+importance, by reason of the probability of error, but in this
+connection it should be stated that there appears to be an undue
+number of negative parallaxes recorded.
+
+
+GRAVITATION
+
+Gravitation remains a puzzle to science. The tendency of modern
+physics is to explain all material phenomena in terms of electrons
+and the ether, but the attempt to account for gravitation in this
+way is attended with difficulties. In order to cope with these, it
+seems necessary to assume that our universe is only a portion of a
+greater universe. This assumption readily lends itself to the
+conception of our universe as a three-dimensional meeting place of
+two portions of a universe of four dimensions--that is, its
+conception as a "higher" surface. This is a fundamental postulate of
+higher space speculation.
+
+One hypothesis advanced to explain gravitation assumes the existence
+of a constant hydrostatic pressure transmitted through the ether. A
+steady flow of ether into every electron in a gravitating system of
+bodies would give rise to forces of attraction between them, varying
+inversely as the square of the distance, according to Newton's law.
+But in order to avoid the conception of the continual destruction
+and creation of ether, it is necessary to assume a steady flow
+through every electron between our universe and the greater universe
+of which it is assumed to form a part Now because the electrons, in
+order to receive this flow, must lie on the boundary of this greater
+universe, the latter must be four-dimensional. Every electron, in
+other words, must be the starting point of a pathway into--and a
+terminal point out of--four-dimensional space. Here we have another
+familiar higher space concept.
+
+
+THE ETHER OF SPACE
+
+The ether of space, because it has at last found entrance, must be
+given a grudging hospitality in these pages, even though the
+mysterious stranger prove but a ghost. The Relativists would have it
+that with the acceptance of their point of view the ether may be
+eliminated; but if they take away the ether, they must give us
+something in its stead. In whatever way the science of the future
+disposes of this problem, it must take into account the fact of
+light transmission. On the theory that the ether is an elastic solid
+of amazing properties, in which the light waves vibrate _transversely_
+to their direction, it assists the mind to think of the ether as
+four-dimensional, because then a light wave would be a superficial
+disturbance of the medium--superficial, but three-dimensional, as
+must needs be the case with the surface of a four-dimensional solid.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This search for evidences of hyper-dimensionality in the universe
+accessible to our senses is like looking, not for a needle in a
+haystack, but for a haystack in a needle--for the greater in the less.
+From the purely physical evidences, all that can with certainty be
+said is that the hypothesis is not inconsistent with the facts of
+science or its laws; that it is being verified and rendered more
+probable by the investigations of science; that it is applicable to
+the description or explanation of all the observed phenomena, and
+assigns a cause fully adequate to have produced them.
+
+Now there is an order of phenomena that we call psychic. Because
+they are phenomenal they cannot occur outside of time and space
+altogether; because they are psychic they defy explanation in terms
+of the space and time of every-day life. Let us next examine these
+in the light of our hypothesis.
+
+
+
+
+IV  TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS
+
+ZÖLLNER
+
+In the year 1877, Johann Friedrich Zöllner, professor of physics and
+astronomy at the University of Leipsic, undertook to prove that
+certain (so-called) psychic phenomena were susceptible of explanation
+on the hypothesis of a four-dimensional space. He used as
+illustrations the phenomena induced by the medium Henry Slade. By
+the irony of events, Slade was afterward arrested and imprisoned for
+fraud, in England. This fact so prejudiced the public mind against
+Zöllner that his name became a word of scorn, and the fourth dimension
+a synonym for what is fatuous and false. Zöllner died of it, but
+since his death public opinion has undergone a change. There is a
+great and growing interest in everything pertaining to the fourth
+dimension, and belief in that order of phenomena upon which Zöllner
+based his deductions is supported by evidence at once voluminous and
+impressive.
+
+It is unnecessary to go into the question of the genuineness of the
+particular phenomena which Zöllner witnessed. His conclusions are
+alone important, since they apply equally to other manifestations,
+whose authenticity has never been successfully impeached. Zöllner's
+reasoning with regard to certain psychic phenomena is somewhat along
+the following lines.
+
+
+APPARITIONS
+
+_The intrusion (as an apparition) of a person or thing into a
+completely enclosed portion of three-space; or contrariwise, the
+exit (as an evanishment) out of such a space_.
+
+Because we lack the sense of four-dimensional space, we must here
+have recourse to analogy, and assume three-dimensional space to be
+the unsensed higher region encompassing a world of two dimensions,
+To a hypothetical flat-man of a two-space, any portion of his plane
+surrounded by an unbroken line would constitute an enclosure. Were
+he confined within it, escape would be impossible by any means known
+to him. Had he the ability to move in the third dimension, however,
+he could rise, pass over the enclosing line without disturbing it,
+and descend on the other side. The moment he forsook the plane he
+would disappear from two-dimensional space. Such a disappearance
+would constitute an occult phenomenon in a world of two dimensions.
+
+Correspondingly, an evanishment from any three-dimensional
+enclosure--such as a room with locked doors and windows--might be
+effected by means of a movement in the fourth dimension. Because a
+body would disappear from our perception the moment it forsook our
+space, such a disappearance would be a mystery; it would constitute
+an occult phenomenon. The thing would be no more mysterious, however,
+to a consciousness embracing four dimensions within its ken, than
+the transfer of an object from the inside to the outside of a plane
+figure without crossing its linear boundary is mysterious to us.
+
+
+POSSESSION
+
+_The temporary possession of a person's body, or some member of
+that body, by an alien will, as exemplified in automatic writing and
+obsession_.
+
+It would doubtless amaze the scientifically orthodox to know how
+many people habitually and successfully practice the dubious art of
+automatic writing--not mediums, so-called, but people of refinement
+and intelligence. Although the messages received in this way may
+emanate from the subconscious mind of the performer, there is
+evidence to indicate that they come sometimes from an intelligence
+discarnate, or from a person remote from the recipient in space.
+
+If such is indeed the case, if the will is extraneous, how does it
+possess itself of the nerves and muscles of the hand of the writer?
+The Higher Space Hypothesis is of assistance here. It is only
+necessary to remember that from the fourth dimension the interior of
+a solid is as much exposed as the interior of a plane figure is
+exposed from the region of the third dimension. A four-dimensional
+being would experience no difficulty, under suitable conditions, in
+possessing itself of any part of the bodily mechanism of another.
+
+The same would hold true in cases of possession and obsession; for
+if the bastion of the hand can thus be captured, so also may the
+citadel of the brain. Certain familiar forms of hypnotism are not
+different from obsession, the hypnotizer using the brain and body of
+his subject as though they were his own. All unconsciously to himself,
+he has called into play four-dimensional mechanics. Many cases of
+so-called dual personality are more easily explicable as possession
+by an alien will than on the less credible hypothesis that the
+character, habits, and language of a person can change utterly in a
+moment of time.
+
+
+CLAIRVOYANCE IN SPACE
+
+_Vision at a distance and the exercise of a superior power of sight_.
+
+Clairvoyance in space is of various kinds and degrees. Sometimes it
+consists in the perception of super-physical phenomena--the
+unfurling of a strange and wonderful land; and again it appears to
+be a higher power of ordinary vision, a kind of seeing to which the
+opacity of solids offers no impediment, or one involving spatial
+distances too great and too impeded for normal physical vision to be
+effective.
+
+That clairvoyance which consists in the ability to perceive not
+alone the superficies of things as ordinary vision perceives them,
+but their interiors as well, is analogous to the power given by the
+X-ray, by means of which, on a fluorescent screen, a man may behold
+the beating of his own heart. But, if the reports of trained
+clairvoyants are to be believed, there is this difference:
+everything appears to them without the distortions due to perspective,
+objects being seen as though they were inside and not outside of the
+perceiving organ, or as though the observer were in the object
+perceived; or in all places at the same time.
+
+Our analogy makes all this intelligible. To the flat-man,
+clairvoyance in space would consist in that power of perception
+which we exercise in reference to his plane. From the third
+dimension the boundaries of plane figures offer no impediment
+to the view of their interiors, and they themselves in no way
+impede our vision of surrounding objects. If we assume that
+clairvoyance in space is the perception of the things of our world
+from the region of the fourth dimension, the phenomena exactly
+conform to the demands of our analogy. It is no more difficult
+for a four-dimensional intelligence to understand the appearance
+or disappearance of a body in a completely closed room, or the
+withdrawal of an orange from its skin, without cutting or breaking
+that skin, than it is for us to see the possibility of taking up a
+pencil point from the center of a circle and putting it down outside.
+We are under no compulsion to draw a line across the circumference
+of the circle in order to enter or leave it. Moreover, the volume of
+our sensible universe embraced in the clairvoyant's field of view
+will increase in the same way that a balloonist's view increases in
+area as he rises above the surface of the earth. To account for
+clairvoyant vision at a distance, it is of course necessary to posit
+some perceptive organ other than the eye, but the fact that in
+trance the eyes are closed, itself demands this assumption.
+
+
+CLAIRVOYANCE IN TIME
+
+_The perception of a past event as in process of occurring, or the
+prevision of something which comes to pass later_.
+
+No mechanistic explanation will serve to account for this order of
+clairvoyance since it is inextricably involved in the mystery of
+consciousness itself. Yet our already overworked analogy can perhaps
+cast a little light even here.
+
+To the flat-man, the third dimension of objects passing through his
+plane translates itself to his experience into _time_. Were he
+capable of rising in the positive direction of the third dimension,
+he would have pre-vision, because he would be cognizant of that
+which had not yet intersected his plane: by sinking in the negative
+direction, he would have post-vision, because he could re-cognize
+that which had already passed.
+
+Now there are excellent reasons, other than those based on analogy,
+that the fourth-dimensional aspect of things may manifest itself to
+our ordinary experience, not as spatial extension, but as temporal
+change. Then, if we conceive of clairvoyance as a transcending by
+consciousness of our three-dimensional space, prevision and
+post-vision would be logically possible as corresponding to the
+positive and negative of the fourth dimension. This may be made
+clearer by the aid of a homely illustration.
+
+
+PISGAH SIGHTS OF LIFE'S PAGEANT
+
+Suppose you are standing on a street corner, watching a procession
+pass. You see the pageant as a sequence of objects and individuals
+appearing into view near by and suddenly, and disappearing in the
+same manner. This would represent our ordinary waking consciousness
+of what goes on in the world round about. Now imagine that you walk
+up the street in a direction opposite to that in which the
+procession is moving. You then rapidly pass in review a portion of
+the procession which had not yet arrived at the point you were a few
+moments before. This would correspond to the seeing of something
+before it "happened," and would represent the positive aspect of
+clairvoyance in time--prevision. Were you to start from your
+original position, and moving in the direction in which the
+procession was passing, overtake it at some lower street corner, you
+could witness the thing you had already seen. This would represent
+post-vision--clairvoyance of the past.
+
+A higher type of clairvoyance would be represented by the sweep of
+vision possible from a balloon. From that place of vantage the
+procession would be seen, not as a sequence, but simultaneously, and
+could be traced from its formation to its dispersal. Past, present
+and future would be merged in one.
+
+It is true that this explanation raises more questions than it
+answers: to account in this way for a marvel, a greater marvel must
+be imagined--that of transport out of one's own "space." The whole
+subject bristles with difficulties, not the least of which is that
+even to conceive of such a thing as prevision all our old ideas
+about time must be recast. This is being done in the Principle of
+Relativity, a subject which may appropriately engage our attention
+next.
+
+
+
+
+V  CURVED TIME
+
+
+TIME FROM THE STANDPOINT OF EXPERIMENT AND OF CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE
+
+In some moment of "sudden light" what one of us has not been able to
+say, with Rossetti,
+
+    "I have been here before,
+    But when or how I cannot tell."
+
+Are such strange hauntings of our House of Life due to the cyclic
+return of time? Perhaps,--but what is time?
+
+Suppose some one should ask you, "What is an hour?" Your answer
+might be, "It is the interval marked off by the clock-hand between 1
+and 2." "But what if your clock is running down or speeding up?" To
+this you would probably reply, "The clock is set and corrected by
+the earth, the sun and the stars, which are constant in their
+movements." _But they are not_. The earth is known to be running slow,
+by reason of tide friction, and this is likely to continue until it
+will revolve on its axis, not once a day, but once a year,
+presenting always the same face to the sun.
+
+We can only measure time by _uniform_ motion. Observe the vicious
+circle. Uniform motion means the covering of equal spaces in equal
+times. But how are we to determine our equal times? Ultimately we
+have no other criterion save the uniform motion of the clock-hand or
+the star dial. The very expressions, "uniform motion," "equal times,"
+beg the whole question of the nature of time.
+
+Let us then, in this predicament, consider time not from the
+standpoint of experiment, but of conscious experience--what Bergson
+calls "real duration."
+
+Every point along the line of memory, of conscious experience, has
+been traced out by that unresting stylus we call "the present moment."
+The question of its rate of motion we will not raise, as it is one
+with which we have found ourselves impotent to deal. We believe on
+the best of evidence that the conscious experience of others is
+conditioned like our own. For better understanding let us have
+recourse to a homely analogy: let us think of these more or less
+parallel lines of individual experience in the semblance of the
+strands of a skein of flax. Now if, _at the present moment_, this
+skein were cut with a straight knife at right angles to its length,
+the cut end would represent the _time plane_--that is, the present
+moment of all--and it would be the same for all providing that the
+time plane were flat _But is it really flat_? Isn't the straightness
+of the knife a mere poverty of human imagination? Existence is always
+richer and more dramatic than any diagram.
+
+  "Line in nature is not found;
+  Unit and universe are round.
+  In vain produced, all rays return;
+  Evil will bless and ice will burn."
+
+Undoubtedly the flat time-plane represents with fair accuracy the
+temporal conditions that obtain in the human aggregate in this world
+under normal conditions of consciousness, but if we consider our
+relation to intelligent beings upon distant worlds of the visible
+universe the conditions might be widely different The time section
+corresponding to what our straight knife made flat in the case of
+the flax may be--nay, probably is--strongly curved.
+
+
+RELATIVITY
+
+This crude analogy haltingly conveys what is meant by curved time.
+It is an idea which is implicit in the Theory of Relativity. This
+theory has profoundly modified many of our basic conceptions about
+the universe in which we are immersed. It is outside the province of
+this book and beyond the power of its author even so much as to
+sketch the main outlines of this theory, but certain of its
+conclusions are indispensable, since they baldly set forth our
+dilemma in regard to the measurement of space and time. We can
+measure neither except relatively, because they must be measured one
+by the other, and no matter how they vary, these variations always
+compensate one another, leaving us in the same state of ignorance
+that we were in before.
+
+Suppose that two intelligent beings, one on Mars, let us say, and
+the other on the earth, should attempt to establish _the same moment
+of time_, by the interchange of light signals, or by any other
+method which the most rigorous science could devise. Assume that
+they have for this purpose two identically similar and mechanically
+perfect chronometers, and that every difficulty of manipulation were
+successfully overcome. Their experiment could end only in failure,
+and the measure of this failure neither one, in his own place, could
+possibly know. If, after the experiment, the Martian, chronometer in
+hand, could be instantly and miraculously transported to the earth,
+and the two settings compared, they would be found to be different:
+how different, we do not know.
+
+The reason for the failure of any such experiment anywhere conducted
+can best be made plain by a crude paraphrase of a classic
+proposition from Relativity. Suppose it is required to determine the
+same moment of time at two different places on the earth's surface,
+as must be attempted in finding their difference in longitude. Take
+the Observatory at Greenwich for one place, and the observatory at
+Washington for the other. At the moment the sun is on the meridian
+of Greenwich, the exact time of crossing is noted and cabled to
+Washington. The chronometer at Washington is set accordingly, and
+the time checked back to Greenwich. This message arrives two seconds,
+say, after the original message was sent. Washington is at once
+notified of this double transmission interval. On the assumption
+that HALF of it represents the time the message took to travel from
+east to west, and the other half the time from west to east again,
+the Washington chronometer is set one second ahead of the signalled
+time, to compensate for its part of the loss. When the sun has
+reached the meridian of Washington, the whole process is repeated,
+and again as before, half of the time the message has taken to cross
+and recross the Atlantic is added to the Greenwich record of noon at
+Washington. The number of hours, minutes, seconds, and fractions of
+a second between these two corrected records represents the
+difference in solar time between the two places, and incidentally
+the same moment of time has been established for both--at least, so
+it would appear.
+
+But is it established? That each message took an equal time to
+travel each way is pure assumption, and happens to be a false one.
+The accuracy of the result is vitiated by a condition of things to
+which the Relativists have called attention. Our determination might
+be defended if Washington and Greenwich could be assumed to remain
+at rest during the experiments, and some argument might even be made
+in its favor if we could secure any cosmic assurance that the
+resultant motion of the earth should be the same when Greenwich
+signalled its noon to Washington and Washington its noon to Greenwich.
+
+Our present discussion is merely illustrative, or diagrammatic; so
+we will neglect the velocity of the earth in its orbit round the sun,
+some forty times greater than that of a cannon ball, and the more
+uncertain and more vertiginous speed of the whole solar system
+towards its unknown goal. Let us consider only the rotation of the
+earth on its axis, the tide-speed of day and night. To fix our idea,
+this may be taken, in our latitudes, at eighteen thousand miles per
+day, or perhaps half the speed of a Mauser rifle bullet.
+
+So fast, then, will Washington have been moving to meet the message
+from Greenwich. So fast will Greenwich have been retreating from
+Washington's message.
+
+Now the ultimate effect of motion on the time-determination cannot
+be calculated along any such simple lines as these. Indeed, it
+cannot be exactly calculated at all, for we have not all the data.
+But there is certainly _some_ effect. Suppose one rows four miles up
+a river against a current of two miles per hour, at a rowing speed
+of four miles per hour. This will take two hours, plainly. The
+return trip with the river's gift of two miles per hour will
+evidently require but forty minutes. _Two hours and forty minutes_
+for the round trip, then, of eight miles.
+
+Now then, to row eight miles in still water, according to our
+supposition, would have required but _two hours_. But, some one
+objects, the current must help the return trip as much as it
+hindered the outgoing! Ah, here is the snare that catches
+rough-and-ready common sense! How long would the double journey have
+taken _if the river current had been faster than our rowing speed_?
+How shall we schedule our trip if we cannot learn the correct speed,
+_or if it varies from minute to minute_?
+
+These explanations are necessarily symbolistic rather than
+demonstrative, but any one who will seriously follow out these lines
+of thought, or, still better, study the attitude of the hard-headed
+modern physicist towards our classical geometry and mechanics,
+cannot fail to realize how conventional, artificial--even
+phantasmal--are the limitations set by the primitive idea of flat
+space and straight time.
+
+The inferences which we may draw from our hypothetical experiment
+are plain. The settings of the two chronometers would be defective,
+they would not show the same time, but each of them would mark the
+_local_ time, proper to its own place. There would be no means of
+detecting the amount of error, since the messages were transmitted
+by a medium involved with them in their transportation. If only
+local time can be established, the possibility of a warped
+time-plane--the curvature of time--is directly opened up. Doubtless
+it is true that on so relatively minute a scale as is offered by the
+earth, any deviation from perfect flatness of the time-plane would
+be so inconsiderable and imperceptible as to make it scientifically
+negligible; but this by no means follows when we consider our
+relation to other worlds and other systems.
+
+A similar condition holds with regard to space-distortion. The
+Theory of Relativity enforces the conclusion that from the
+standpoint of our conventions in regard to these matters, all bodies
+involved in transportation undergo a contraction in the direction of
+that transportation, while their dimensions perpendicular to the
+transportation remain invariable. This contraction is the same for
+all bodies. For bodies of low velocity, like the earth, this
+distortion would be almost immeasurably slight; but great or little,
+no measuring instruments on the body transporting would ever
+disclose it, for a measure would undergo the same contraction as the
+thing measured.
+
+
+THE SPOON-MAN
+
+These concepts that space and time are not as immutable as they
+appear: that our universe may suffer distortion, that time may lag
+or hasten without our being in the least aware, may be made
+interestingly clear by an illustration first suggested by Helmholtz,
+of which the following is in the nature of a paraphrase.
+
+If you look at your own image in the shining surface of a teapot, or
+the back of a silver spoon, all things therein appear grotesquely
+distorted, and all distances strangely altered. But if you choose to
+make the bizarre supposition that this spoon-world is real, and your
+image--the spoon-man--a thinking and speaking being, certain
+interesting facts could be developed by a discussion between
+yourself and him.
+
+You say, "Your world is a distorted transcript of the one in which I
+live."
+
+"Prove it to me," says the spoon-man.
+
+With a foot-rule you proceed to make measurements to show the
+rectangularity of the room in which you are standing. Simultaneously
+he makes measurements giving the same numerical results; for his
+foot-rule shrinks and curves in the exact proportion to give the
+true number of feet when he measures his shrunken and distorted rear
+wall. No measurement you can apply will prove you in the right, nor
+him in the wrong. Indeed he is likely to retort upon you that it is
+your room which is distorted, for he can show that in spite of all
+its nightmare aspects his world is governed by the same orderly
+geometry that governs yours.
+
+The above illustration deals purely with space relations, for such
+relations are easily grasped; but certain distortions in time
+relations are no less absolutely imperceptible and unprovable. So
+far from having any advantage over the spoon-man, our plight is his.
+The Principle of Relativity discovers us in the predicament of the
+Mikado's "prisoner pent," condemned to play with crooked cues and
+elliptical billiard balls, and of the opium victim, for whom
+"space swells" and time moves sometimes swift and sometimes slow.
+
+
+THE ORBITAL MOVEMENT OF TIME
+
+Now if our space is curved in higher space, since such curvature is
+at present undetectable by us, we must assume, as Hinton chose to
+assume, that it curves in the minute, or, as some astronomers assume,
+that its curve is vast. These assumptions are not mutually exclusive:
+they are quite in analogy with the general curvature of the earth's
+surface which is in no wise interfered with by the lesser curvatures
+represented by mountains and valleys. It is easiest to think of our
+space as completely curved in higher space in analogy with the
+surface of a sphere.
+
+Similarly, if time is curved, the idea of the cyclic return of time
+naturally (though not inevitably) follows, and the division of the
+greater cycles into lesser loops; for it is easier to assign this
+elliptical movement to time than any other, by reason of the orbital
+movements of the planets and their satellites. What results from
+conceptions of this order? Amazing things! If our space is curved in
+higher space, you may be looking toward the back of your own head.
+If time flows in cycles, in travelling toward to-morrow you may be
+facing yesterday.
+
+This "eternal return," so far from being a new idea, is so old that
+it has been forgotten. Its reappearance in novel guise, along with
+so many other recrudescences, itself beautifully illustrates time
+curvature in consciousness. _Yugas_, time cycles, are an integral
+and inexpugnable part of Oriental metaphysics. "Since the soul
+perpetually runs," says Zoroaster, "in a certain space of time it
+passes through all things, which circulation being accomplished, it
+is compelled to run back again through all things, and unfold the
+same web of generation in the world." Time curvature is implicit in
+the Greek idea of the iron, bronze, silver, and golden ages,
+succeeding each other in the same order: the winter, seed-time,
+summer and harvest of the larger year. Astrology, seership, prophecy,
+become plausible on the higher-time hypothesis. From this point of
+view history becomes less puzzling and paradoxical. What were the
+Middle Ages but a forgetting of Greek and Roman civilization, and
+what was the Renaissance but a remembering of them--a striving to
+re-create the ruined stage-settings and to re-enact the urbane play
+of Pagan life. The spirit of the Crusades is now again animate
+throughout Europe. Nations are uniting in a Holy War against the
+Infidel _de nos jours_.
+
+But it is in the individual consciousness that time curvature
+receives its most striking confirmation--those lesser returns and
+rhythms to which we give the name of periodicity. Before considering
+these, however, a fundamental fallacy of the modern mind must be
+exposed.
+
+
+MATERIALITY THE MIRROR OF CONSCIOUSNESS
+
+Our vicious habit of seeking the explanation of everything--even
+thought and emotion--in materiality, has betrayed us into the error
+of attributing to organic and environic changes the very power by
+which they are produced. We are wont to think of feeling, the form
+in which Being manifests to consciousness, as an effect instead of
+as a cause. When Sweet Sixteen becomes suddenly and mysteriously
+interesting to the growing boy, it is not because sex has awakened
+in his body, but because the dread time has come for him to
+contemplate the Idea of Woman in his soul. If you are sleepy, it is
+not because the blood has begun to flow away from your brain, but
+because your body has begun to bore you. Night has brought back the
+Idea of Freedom, and consciousness chloroforms the thing that
+clutches it. If you are ill, you grow cold or your temperature rises:
+it is the signal by which you know that your consciousness is
+turning toward the Idea of Pain.
+
+Just as a savage looks for a man behind a mirror, we foolishly seek
+in materiality for that which is not there. The soul determines
+circumstance: the soul contains the event which shall befall. The
+organic and environic rearrangements incident to obscure rotations
+in higher space are like the changes a mirror-image undergoes as an
+object draws near and then recedes from its plane. This is only a
+figure of speech, but it is susceptible of almost literal application.
+Ideas, emerging from the subconscious, appproach, intersect, recede
+from, and re-approach the stream of conscious experience; taking the
+forms of aversions and desires, they register themselves in action,
+and by reason of time curvature, everything that occurs, recurs.
+
+
+PERIODICITY
+
+We recognize and accept this cyclic return of time in such familiar
+manifestations of it as Nature affords in _periodicity_. We recognize
+it also in our mental and emotional life, when the periods can be
+co-ordinated with known physical phenomena, as in the case of the
+wanderlust which comes in the mild melancholy of autumn, the moods that
+go with waning day, and winter night. It is only when these recurrences
+do not submit themselves to our puny powers of analysis and measurement
+that we are incredulous of a larger aspect of the law of time-return.
+Sleep for example, is not less mysterious than death which, too,
+may be but "a sleep and a forgetting." The reason that sleep fails to
+terrify us as death does is because experience has taught that
+_memory leafs the chasm_. Why should death bedreaded any more than
+bedtime? Because we fear that we shall forget. But do we really forget?
+As Pierre Janet so tersely puts it, "Whatever has gone into the mind
+may come out of the mind," and in a subsequent chapter this aphorism
+will be shown to have extension in a direction of which the author of
+it appears not to have been aware. Memory links night to night and
+winter to winter, but such things as "the night-time of the spirit"
+and "the winter of our discontent" are not recognized as having either
+cause or consequence. Now though the well-springs of these states of
+consciousness remain obscure, there is nothing unreasonable in
+believing that they are recrudescences of far-off, forgotten moods
+and moments; neither is it absurd to suppose that they may be related
+to the movements and positions of the planets, as night and winter
+are related to the axial and orbital movements of the earth.
+
+But there are other, and even more interesting, evidences of time
+curvature in consciousness. These lead away into new regions which
+it is our pleasure now to explore.
+
+
+
+
+VI SLEEP AND DREAMS
+
+
+SLEEP
+
+Our space is called three-dimensional because it takes three
+numbers--measurement in three mutually perpendicular directions--to
+determine and mark out any particular point from the totality of
+points. Time, as the individual experiences it, is called
+one-dimensional for an analogous reason: one number is all that is
+required to determine and mark out any particular event of a series
+from all the rest. Now in order to establish a position in a space of
+four dimensions it would be necessary to measure in _four_ mutually
+perpendicular directions. Time curvature opens up the possibility of
+a corresponding higher development in time: one whereby time would
+be more fittingly symbolized by a plane than by a linear figure.
+Indeed, the familiar mystery of memory calls for such a conception.
+Memory is a carrying forward of the past into the present, and the
+fact that we can recall a past event without mentally rehearsing
+all the intermediate happenings in inverse order, shows that in
+the time aspect of memory there is simultaneity as well as
+sequence--time ceases to be linear and becomes _plane_. More
+remarkable illustrations of the sublimation of the time-sense are
+to be found in the phenomena of sleep and dreams.
+
+"Oh, thou that sleepest, what is sleep?" asks the curious Leonardo.
+Modern psychological science has little to offer of a positive
+nature in answer to this world-old question, but it has at least
+effectively disposed of the absurd theories of the materialists who
+would have us believe that sleep is a mere matter of blood
+circulation or of intoxication by accumulation of waste products in
+the system. Sleep states are not abnormal, but part and parcel of
+the life existence of the individual. When a person is asleep he has
+only become unresponsive to the mass of stimuli of the external
+world which constitutes his environment. As Sidis says, "When our
+interest in external existence fags and fades away, we go to sleep.
+When our interests in the external world cease, we draw up the
+bridges, so to say, interrupt all external communication as far as
+possible, and become isolated in our own fortress and repair to our
+own world of organic activity and inner dream life. Sleep is the
+interruption of our intercourse with the external world: it is the
+laying down of our arms in the struggle of life. Sleep is a truce
+with the world."
+
+The twin concepts of higher space and curved time sanction a view of
+sleep even bolder. Sleep is more than a longing of the body to be
+free of the flame which consumes it: the flame itself aspires to be
+free--that is to say, consciousness, tiring of its tool, the brain,
+and of the world, its workshop, takes a turn into the plaisance of
+the fourth dimension, where time and space are less rigid to resist
+the fulfillment of desire.
+
+
+DREAMS
+
+We find a confirmation of this view in dream phenomena. But however
+good the evidence, we shall fail to make out a case unless dream
+experiences are conceded to be as real as any other. The reluctance
+we may have to make this concession comes first from the purely
+subjective character of dreams, and secondly from their triviality
+and irrationality--it is as though the muddy sediment of daytime
+thought and feeling and that alone were there cast forth. In answer
+to the first objection, advanced psychology affirms that the
+subconscious mind, from which dreams arise, approaches more nearly
+to the omniscience of true being than the rational mind of waking
+experience. The triviality and irrationality of dreams are
+sufficiently accounted for if the dream state is thought of as the
+meeting place of two conditions of consciousness: the foam and
+flotsam "of perilous seas in faëry lands forlorn," whose vastitude,
+whose hidden life, and rich argosies of experience, can only be
+inferred from the fret of the tide on their nether shore--the tired
+brain in sleep.
+
+For it is the _remembered_ dream alone that is incoherent--the dream
+that comes clothed in the rags and trappings of this work-a-day world,
+and so leaves some recoverable record on the brain. We all feel that
+the dreams we cannot remember are the most wonderful. Who has not
+wakened with the sense of some incommunicable experience of terror or
+felicity, too strange and poignant to submit itself to concrete
+symbolization, and so is groped for by the memory in vain? We know
+that dreams grow more ordered and significant as they recede from
+the surface of consciousness to its depths. Deep sleep dreams are in
+the true sense clairvoyant, though for the most part irrecoverable--
+"Canst thou draw out Leviathan with an hook?" DuPrel and others have
+shown that the difference between ordinary dreaming, somnambulance,
+trance and ecstasy, is only a matter of redistribution of
+thresholds--that they are all related states and merge into one
+another. We have, therefore, every right to believe that for a
+certain number of hours out of the twenty-four we are all sybils and
+seers, however little most of us are able to profit by it.
+Infrequently, in moments of peculiar susceptibility, the veil is
+lifted, but the art of _dreaming true_ remains for the most part
+unmastered--one of the precious gifts which the future holds in store
+for the sons and daughters of men.
+
+The partial waking state is the soil in which remembered dreams
+develop most luxuriously. Paradoxical as it may sound, they are the
+product, not of our sleep, but of our waking. Such dreams belong to
+both worlds, partly to the three-dimensional and partly to the
+four-dimensional. While dreams are often only a hodge-podge of
+daytime experiences, their incredible rapidity, alien to that
+experience, gives us our first faint practicable intimation of a
+higher development of time.
+
+
+TIME IN DREAMS
+
+The unthinkable velocity of time in dreams may be inferred from
+the fact that between the moment of impact of an impression
+at the sense-periphery and its reception at the center of
+consciousness--moments so closely compacted that we think of them as
+simultaneous--a coherent series of representations may take place,
+involving what seem to be protracted periods for their unfoldment.
+Every reader will easily call to mind dream experiences of this
+character, in which the long-delayed dénouement was suggested and
+prepared for by some extraneous sense-impression, showing that the
+entire dream drama unfolded within the time it took that impression
+to travel from the skin to the brain.
+
+Hasheesh dreams, because they so often occur during some momentary
+lapse from normal consciousness and are therefore measurable by its
+time scale, are particularly rich in the evidence of the looping of
+time. Fitzhugh Ludlow narrates, in _The Hasheesh Eater_, the dreams
+that visited him in the brief interval between two of twenty or more
+awakenings, on his walk homeward after his first experience with the
+drug. He says, "I existed by turns in different places and various
+states of being. Now I swept my gondola through the moonlit lagoons
+of Venice. Now Alp on Alp towered above my view, and the glory of
+the coming sun flashed purple light upon the topmost icy pinnacle.
+Now in the primeval silence of some unexplored tropical forest I
+spread my feathery leaves, a giant fern, and swayed and nodded in
+the spice-gales over a river whose waves at once sent up clouds of
+music and perfume. My soul changes to a vegetable essence, thrilled
+with a strange and unimagined ecstasy."
+
+Earlier in the same evening, when he was forced to keep awake in
+order not to betray his condition, the dream time-scale appears to
+have imposed itself upon his waking consciousness with the following
+curious effect. A lady asked him some question connected with a
+previous conversation. He says, "As mechanically as an automaton I
+began to reply. As I heard once more the alien and unreal tones of
+my own voice, I became convinced that it was some one else who spoke,
+and in another world. I sat and listened: still the voice kept
+speaking. Now for the first time I experienced that vast change which
+hasheesh makes in all measurements of time. The first word of the
+reply occupied a period sufficient for the action of a drama; the
+last left me in complete ignorance of any point far enough back in
+the past to date the commencement of the sentence. Its enunciation
+might have occupied years. I was not in the same life which had held
+me when I heard it begun."
+
+This well-known fact, that we cannot measure dreams by our time scale,
+proves that subjective time does not correspond with objective, and
+that the "dream organ" of consciousness has a time scale of its own.
+If in our waking state we experience one kind of time, and in
+dreams quite another, the solution of the mystery should be sought
+in the _vehicle_ of consciousness, for clearly the limit of
+impressionability or power of response of the vehicle establishes
+the time scale, just as the size of the body with relation to
+objects establishes the space scale. Time must be different for the
+ant and the elephant, for example, as space is different.
+
+Our sense of time is wholly dependent upon the rapidity with which
+impressions succeed one another. Were we capable of receiving only
+one impression an hour, like a bell struck every hour with a hammer,
+the ordinary term of life would seem very short. On the other hand,
+if our time sense were always as acute as it is in dreams, uncounted
+aeons would seem to be lived through in the interval between
+childhood and old age.
+
+Imagine a music machine so cunningly constructed and adjusted as not
+only to sound each note and chord in its proper sequence and relation,
+but to regulate also the duration of the sound vibration. If this
+machine were operated in such a manner as to play, in a single
+second of time, the entire overture of an opera which would normally
+occupy half an hour, we should hear only an unintelligible noise a
+second long. This would be due to no defect in the _sound-producing_
+mechanism, but to the limitations of the _sound-receiving_ mechanism,
+our auditory apparatus. Could this be altered to conform to the
+unusual conditions--could it capture and convey to consciousness
+every note of the overture in a second of time--that second would
+seem to last half an hour, provided that every other criterion for
+the measurement of duration were denied for the time being.
+
+Now dreams _seem_ long: we only discover afterwards and by accident
+their almost incredible brevity. May we not--must we not--infer from
+this that the body is an organ of many stops and more than one
+keyboard, and that in sleep it gives forth this richer music. The
+theory of a higher-dimensional existence during sleep accounts in
+part for the great longing for sleep. "What is it that is much
+desired by man, but which they know not while possessing?" again
+asks Leonardo. "It is sleep," is his answer. This longing for sleep
+is more than a physical longing, and the refreshment it brings is
+less of the flesh than of the spirit. It is possible to withstand
+the deprivation of food and water longer and better than the
+deprivation of sleep. Its recuperative power is correspondingly
+greater.
+
+Experiments have been made with mature University students by which
+they have been kept awake ninety-six hours. When the experiments
+were finished, the young men were allowed to sleep themselves out,
+until they felt they were thoroughly rested. All awoke from a long
+sleep completely refreshed, but the one who took longest to restore
+himself from his protracted vigil slept only one-third more time
+than was regular with him. And this has been the experience over and
+over again of men in active life who have been obliged to keep awake
+for long periods by the absolute necessities of the situation in
+which they have been placed.
+
+In this fact there is surely another hint of the sublimation of the
+time sense during sleep. While it would be an unwarrantable
+assumption to suppose that the period of recuperation by sleep must
+be as long, or nearly as long, as the period of deprivation, the
+ratio between the two presents a discrepancy so great that it would
+seem as though this might be due to an acceleration of the time
+element of consciousness.
+
+
+THE EASTERN TEACHING IN REGARD TO SLEEP AND DREAMS
+
+In this matter of the wonder, the mystery, the enchantment, of sleep
+and dreams, the most modern psychology and the most ancient wisdom
+meet on common ground. Eastern wisdom casts such a light upon the
+problems of subjectivity that it should not be lightly dismissed.
+For uncounted centuries Hindu-Aryan spiritual science has recognized,
+not one plane or condition of consciousness, but three; waking,
+dreaming, and deep sleep--the gross, the subtle and the pure. In the
+waking state--that is, with the vehicle attuned to vibrate to
+materiality--the individual self is as a captive in a citadel of
+flesh, aware of only so much of the universal life as chances to
+enact itself before the windows of his prison. In the dream state,
+when the more violent vibrations of the body are stilled in sleep,
+consciousness becomes active in its subtle (four-dimensional) vehicle,
+and ranges free throughout the ampler spaces of this subtler world.
+In deep sleep, consciousness reverts to its pure condition--the
+individual self becomes the All-Self: the rainbow, no longer
+prismatic by reason of its refraction in materiality, becomes the
+pure white light; the melody of life resolves itself into the
+primordial harmony; sequence becomes simultaneity, and Time, no
+longer "besprent with seven-hued circumstance," is swallowed up in
+duration.
+
+"_There are two paths for him, within and without, and they both
+turn back in a day and a night.... After having subdued by sleep all
+that belongs to the body, he, not asleep himself, looks down upon
+the sleeping. Having assumed light, he goes again to his place, the
+golden person, the lonely bird_"  UPANISHADS.
+
+
+SPACE IN DREAMS
+
+However preposterous may appear to us this notion that the waking
+state, in which we feel ourselves most potent and alive, is really
+one of inhibition--that the world is only a "shoal of time"--it is
+curiously borne out by the baffling phenomena of dreams and is in
+perfect accord with the Higher Space Hypothesis. The possibility of
+shaking off the grip of sleep under appropriate circumstances, the
+fact that we can watch in our sleep, and awake at the right moment,
+that we can sleep and still watch and keep awake in regard to
+special objects and particular persons--these things form
+insuperable difficulties for all those plausible, and apparently
+scientific, theories of sleep current in the West; but they fit
+perfectly with the Eastern idea that "he, not asleep himself, looks
+down upon the sleeping." And to the questions, "How, and from whence?"
+in the light of our hypothesis we may answer, "By the curvature of
+time, consciousness escapes into the fourth dimension."
+
+Myers shows that he was in need of just this clue in order to
+account for some of the dream experiences recorded in _Human
+Personality_, since he asks for "an intermediate conception of
+space--something between space as we know it in the material world
+and space as we imagine it to disappear in the ideal world." He
+suggests that in dreams and trance there may be a clearer and more
+complete perception of space than is at present possible to us. A
+corresponding sublimation of the time sense is no less necessary to
+account for time in dreams. Although we seem to triumph over space
+and time to such a tune as to eliminate them, dream experiences have
+both form and sequence. Now because form presupposes space, and time
+is implicit in sequence, there arises the necessity for that
+"intermediate conception" of both space and time provided by our
+hypothesis.
+
+
+THE PHENOMENON OF PAUSE
+
+Let us conceive of sleep less narrowly than we are accustomed to:
+think of it only as one phase of the phenomenon of pause, of
+arrested physical activity, universal throughout nature. The cell
+itself experiences fatigue and goes to sleep--"perchance to dream,"
+Modern experimental science in the domain of physiology and
+psychology proves that we see and do not see, hear and do not hear,
+feel and do not feel, in successive instants. We are asleep, in
+other words, not merely hour by hour, but moment by moment--and
+perhaps age by age as well.
+
+Where is consciousness during these intervals, long or short, when
+the senses fail to respond to the stimuli of the external world? It
+is somewhere else, awake to some other environment. Though we may
+not be able to verify this from our own experience, there are
+methods whereby it can be verified. Clairvoyance is one of these,
+hypnotism is another--that kind of hypnotism whereby an entranced
+person is made to give a report of his excursions and adventures in
+the mysterious House of Sleep. It is a well-known fact that these
+experiences increase in intensity, coherence and in a certain sort
+of omniscience, directly in proportion to the depth of the trance.
+The revelations obtained in this way are sometimes amazing. The
+inherent defect of this method of obtaining information is the
+possibility of deception, and for that reason science still looks
+askance at all evidence drawn from this source. But in essaying to
+write a book about the fourth dimension from any aspect but the
+mathematical, the author has put himself outside the pale of
+orthodox science, so he is under no compulsion to ignore a field so
+rich merely because it appears to be tainted by a certain amount of
+fallibility and is even under suspicion of fraud. Diseased oysters,
+though not edible, produce pearls, and a pearl of great price is the
+object of this quest. Let us glance, therefore, at the findings of
+hypnotism and kindred phenomena.
+
+
+
+
+VII  THE NIGHT SIDE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
+
+
+THE FIELD OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH
+
+It is difficult to divest the words hypnotism and clairvoyance of
+certain sordid and sinister associations. We are apt to think of
+them only as urban flora of the dust and dark, cultivated for profit
+by itinerant professors and untidy sibyls. Larger knowledge of the
+night side of human nature, however, profoundly modifies this view.
+The invoked image is then of some hushed and studious chamber where
+a little group of people sit attentive to the voice of one
+entranced--listeners at the keyhole of the door to another world.
+This "news from nowhere," garnered under so-called test conditions
+and faithfully recorded, has grown by now to a considerable
+literature, accessible to all--one with which every well-informed
+person is assumed to have at least a passing acquaintance.
+
+A marked and constant characteristic of trance phenomena consists of
+an apparent confusion between past, present and future. As in the
+game of three-card monte, it appears impossible to tell in what order
+the three will turn up--_was, is_ and _will be_, lose their special
+significance. Clairvoyance, in its time aspect, whether spontaneous,
+hypnotically induced, or self-induced, is susceptible of
+classification as post-vision, present vision, and prevision.
+Post-vision is that in which past events are not recollected merely,
+but seen or experienced. It is the past become present. Present
+vision is clairvoyance of things transpiring elsewhere; the present,
+remote in space, but not in time. Prevision is the future in the
+present. These various orders of _clear-seeing_ transcend the limits
+of the actual knowledge and experience of the seer. This
+classification and these definitions are important only to us, to
+whom past, present, and future stand sharply differentiated in
+thought and in experience; not to the clairvoyant, who, though bound
+in body to our space and time, is consciously free in a world where
+these discriminations vanish. Why do they vanish? This question can
+best be answered by means of a homely analogy.
+
+For a symbol of the flow of time in waking consciousness, imagine
+yourself in a railway carriage which jogs along a main-travelled
+line at a rate predetermined by the time-table. You approach, reach
+and pass such stations as are intersected by that particular railway,
+and you get a view of the landscape which every other traveler shares.
+Having once left a station, you cannot go back to it, nor can you
+arrive at places further along the line before the train itself
+takes you there. Compare this with the freedom to do either of these
+things, and any number of others, if you suddenly change from the
+train to an automobile. Then, in effect, you have the freedom of a
+new dimension. In the one case, you must travel along a single line
+at a uniform rate; in the other, you are able to strike out in any
+direction and regulate your speed at will. You can go back to a
+place after the train has left it; you can go forward to some place
+ahead, before the train arrives, or you can strike out into, and
+traverse, new country. In short, your freedom, temporal and spatial,
+will be related to that of the train-bound traveler, somewhat as is
+trance consciousness to everyday waking life.
+
+
+MODIFYING THE PAST
+
+Modern psychology has demonstrated the existence of a great
+undercurrent of mental and emotional life, transcending the
+individual's conscious experience, in which the most complex
+processes are carried on without the individual's conscious
+participation. The clearest symbol by which this fact may be figured
+to the imagination is the one already presented: the comparison of
+the subjective field to a plane, in which the conscious experience
+of the individual is represented by a single line. In sleep and
+trance we have an augmented freedom of movement and so are able to
+travel here and there, backward and forward, not only among our own
+"disassociated memories" but in that greater and more mysterious
+demesne which comprehends what we call the future, as well as the
+present and the past.
+
+The profound significance of the disassociation and sublimation of
+memory by hypnotism, or by whatever other means the train of
+personal experience and recollection can be thrown off the track,
+appears to have been ignored on its theoretical side--that is, as
+establishing the return of time. It has cleverly been turned to
+practical account, however, in the treatment of disease. By a series
+of painstaking and brilliant experiments, the demonstration of the
+role played by "disassociated memories" in causing certain
+functional nervous and mental troubles has been achieved. It has
+been shown that severe emotional shocks, frights, griefs, worries,
+may be--and frequently are--completely effaced from conscious
+recollection, while continuing to be vividly remembered in the
+depths of the subconscious. It has been shown that thence they may,
+and frequently do, exercise a baleful effect upon the whole organism,
+giving rise to disease symptoms, the particular type of which were
+determined by the victim's self-suggestion. As a preliminary to
+effecting a permanent cure to such disorders, it is necessary to get
+at these disassociated memories and drag them back into the full
+light of conscious recollection. To get at them, medical
+psychologists make use of hypnotism, automatic writing,
+crystal-gazing--in short, of any method which will force an entrance
+into that higher time-world, whereby the forgotten past may become
+the present. This accomplished, and the crucial moment recovered and
+transfixed, the victim of the aborted opportunity is led to deal
+with it as one may deal with the fluid, and may not deal with the
+fixed. Again his past is plastic to the operation of his
+intelligence and his will. Here is glad news for mortals: the past
+recoverable and in a manner revocable!
+
+Buddha taught that all sin is ignorance, and this teaching has
+escaped oblivion because its truth has echoed in so many human hearts.
+We find that it is possible to deal with our old ignorances in the
+light of later knowledge. What is this but the self-forgiveness of
+sins? Subconsciously we may be always at work, mending the past.
+Repentance is the conscious recognition of some culmination of this
+obscure process, when the heart is suffused with the inner gladness
+of liberation from the payment of old karmic debts. Christ's words,
+"Thy sins are forgiven," spoken to the woman who washed his feet
+with her tears, sanctions this idea--that the past is remediable by
+knowledge and by love.
+
+Conceding this much, we must equally admit the possibility of
+moulding the future, of adjusting the will to the event which shall
+befall. If the present moment can again intersect the stream of past
+conscious experience, it may equally do so with regard to the future.
+This brings up the tremendous questions of free-will and
+fore-ordination. Upon these the Oriental doctrines of karma and
+reincarnation cast the only light by which the reason consents to be
+guided. As these doctrines are intimately related both to higher
+time and to trance revelations, some consideration of karma and
+reincarnation may appropriately find place here.
+
+
+KARMA AND REINCARNATION
+
+Karma is that self-adjusting force in human affairs which restores
+harmony disturbed by action. It is the moral law of compensation,
+and by its operation produces all conditions of life, misery and
+happiness, birth, death, and re-birth; itself being both the cause
+and the effect of action. Its operation is indicated in the phrase,
+"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
+
+The essential idea of reincarnation is indicated in the following
+quotation from the Upanishads: "And as a goldsmith, taking a piece
+of gold, turns it into another, newer, and more beautiful shape, so
+does this Self, having thrown off this body and dispelled all
+ignorance, make unto himself another and more beautiful shape."
+
+Reincarnation is the periodic "dip" of an immortal individual into
+materiality for the working out of karma, after an interval, long or
+short, spent under other conditions of existence. These alternations
+constitute the broader and deeper diapason of human life, of which
+the change from waking to sleeping represents the lesser, and the
+momentary awareness and unawareness of the sense mechanism to
+stimulation, the least.
+
+Thus a physical incarnation, in the broadest sense of the term, is
+the interval, long or short, of the immersion of consciousness in
+materiality. Under fatigue, the cell life withdraws; that is, it
+ceases to respond to physical stimuli, and so passes out of
+incarnation. When this occurs _en masse_ there transpires that
+hiatus of the personal consciousness called sleep, and while sleep
+lasts the personality is out of incarnation. After death--in the
+interval between one life and the next--the specific memories of the
+personality fade out as in sleep, or rather, become latent, leaving
+the soul, the permanent life-center, clear and colorless, a
+mysterious focus of spiritual forces and affinities (the seeds of
+karma) ready for another sowing in the world of men. This center
+of consciousness is thereupon drawn to the newly forming body,
+the life environment of which will rightly and justly--perhaps
+retributively--bring the tendencies and characteristics of the
+conscious center into objectivity again. Character is destiny, and
+character is self-created. "All that we are is the result of what we
+have thought." But in the vast complexity and volume of human life
+there is a constant production of forms, with all the varieties of
+characteristics and capacities requisite to meet the needs of every
+soul, thirsty for the destiny that awaits it; and here heredity
+plays its part. Beyond the individual soul is the world-soul, which
+periodically incarnates in the humanity of a planet, and beyond the
+worlds of a single system, suns and congeries of suns.
+
+The profound and pregnant doctrines of karma and reincarnation, here
+so sketchily outlined, are but expansions of one of the fundamental
+propositions of all Eastern philosophical systems, that the effect is
+the unfolding of the cause in time.
+
+To omit a consideration of karma and reincarnation in connection
+with higher time would be to force a passage and then not follow
+where it leads. The idea of time curvature is implicit in the ideas
+of karma and reincarnation. For what is karma but the return of time,
+the flowering in the present of some seed sown elsewhere and long ago?
+And what is reincarnation but the major cycle of that sweep into
+objective existence and out again, of which the alternation between
+waking and sleeping is the lesser counterpart?
+
+
+COLONEL DE ROCHAS' EXPERIMENTS
+
+During the past few years evidence has been accumulating that we
+never really forget anything. We have rediscovered the memory of the
+subconscious mind. It is generally known that in the mesmeric or
+somnambulistic sleep things hopelessly beyond recall for the
+habitual mind come to the surface, in fragments, or in whole series,
+as the case may be. It is perhaps news to some readers, however,
+that the memory of past lives has been recovered in this way. This
+but confirms the Eastern secret teaching that could we remember our
+dream experiences we should recover the knowledge of our past
+incarnations.
+
+Among the achievements of Eastern hypnotism is the recovery of the
+memory of past births. Colonel de Rochas appears to have paralleled
+this achievement in the West. Certain of his experiments have been
+admirably reported by Maurice Maeterlinck in the eighth chapter of
+_Our Eternity_. Maeterlinck's account, somewhat condensed, is
+given here, because it so well illustrates the liberation of
+consciousness from the tyranny of time as we conceive it. He says:
+
+"First of all, it is only right to say that Colonel de Rochas is a
+savant who seeks nothing but objective truth and does so with a
+scientific strictness and integrity that have never been questioned.
+He puts certain exceptional subjects into a hypnotic sleep and, by
+means of downward passes, makes them trace back the whole course of
+their existence. He thus takes them successively to their youth,
+their adolescence and down to the extreme limits of their childhood.
+At each of these hypnotic stages, the subject reassumes the
+consciousness, the character and the state of mind which he
+possessed at the corresponding stage in his life. He goes over the
+same events, with their joys and their sorrows. If he has been ill,
+he once more passes through his illness, his convalescence and his
+recovery.
+
+"Let us, to come to details, take one of the simplest cases. The
+subject is a girl of eighteen, called Joséphine. She lives at Voiron,
+in the department of Isére. By means of downward passes she is
+brought back to the condition of a baby at its mother's breast The
+passes continue and the wonder-tale runs its course. Joséphine can
+no longer speak; and we have the great silence of infancy, which
+seems to be followed by a silence more mysterious still. Joséphine
+no longer answers except by signs: _she is not yet born_. 'She is
+floating in darkness.' They persist; the sleep becomes heavier; and
+suddenly, from the depths of that sleep, rises the voice of another
+being, a voice unexpected and unknown, the voice of a churlish,
+distrustful and discontented old man. They question him. At first he
+refuses to answer, saying that 'of course he's there, and he's
+speaking;' that 'he sees nothing;' and 'he's in the dark.' They
+increase the number of passes and gradually gain his confidence. His
+name is Jean Claude Bourdon; he is an old man; he has long been
+ailing and bedridden. He tells the story of his life. He was born at
+Champvent, in the parish of Polliat, in 1812. He went to school
+until he was eighteen and served his time in the army with the
+Seventh Artillery at Besançon; and he describes his gay time there,
+while the sleeping girl makes gestures of twirling an imaginary
+moustache. When he goes back to his native place, he does not marry,
+but he has a mistress. He leads a solitary life (I omit all but the
+essential facts), and dies at the age of seventy, after a long
+illness.
+
+"We now hear the dead man speak; and his posthumous revelations are
+not sensational, which, however, is not an adequate reason for
+doubting their genuineness. He feels himself growing out of his body;
+but he remains attached to it for a fairly long time. His fluidic
+body, which is at first diffused, takes a more concentrated form. He
+lives in darkness, which he finds disagreeable; but he does not
+suffer. At last, the night in which he is plunged is streaked with a
+few flashes of light. The idea comes to reincarnate himself and he
+draws near to her who is to be his mother (that is, the mother of
+Joséphine). He encircles her until the child is born, whereupon he
+gradually enters the child's body. Until about the seventh year, his
+body is surrounded by a sort of floating mist, in which he used to
+see many things which he has not seen since.
+
+"The next thing to be done is to go back beyond Jean Claude. A
+mesmerization lasting nearly three-quarters of an hour, without
+lingering at any intermediate stage, brings the old man back to
+babyhood. A fresh silence, a new limbo; and then, suddenly, another
+voice and an unexpected individual. This time it is an old woman who
+has been very wicked; and so she is in great torment (she is dead,
+at the actual instant; for, in this inverted world, lives go
+backward and of course begin at the end). She is in deep darkness,
+surrounded by evil spirits. She speaks at first in a faint voice,
+but always gives definite replies to the questions put to her,
+instead of cavilling at every moment, as Jean Claude did. Her name
+is Philoméne Carteron.
+
+"'By intensifying the sleep,' adds Colonel de Rochas, whom I will
+now quote, 'I induce the manifestations of a living Philoméne. She
+no longer suffers, seems very calm and always answers coldly and
+distinctly. She knows that she is unpopular in the neighborhood, but
+no one is a penny the worse and she will be even with them yet. She
+was born in 1702; her maiden name was Philoméne Cherpigny; her
+grandfather on the mother's side was called Pierre Machon and lived
+in Ozan. In 1732 she married, at Chevroux, a man named Carterton, by
+whom she had two children, both of whom she lost.'"
+
+Before her incarnation, Philoméne had been a little girl who died in
+infancy. Previous to that, she was a man who committed murder, and
+it was to expiate this crime that she endured such suffering in the
+darkness, and after her life as a little girl, when she had no time
+to do wrong. Colonel de Rochas did not think it wise to carry the
+hypnosis further, because the subject appeared exhausted and her
+paroxysms were painful to watch. He obtained analogous and even more
+surprising results with other subjects.
+
+Maeterlinck's comments upon all this are of negligible value. He
+pays a fine tribute to the theory of reincarnation. "There was never
+a more beautiful, a juster, a purer, a more moral, fruitful and
+probable creed," he says: yet for all that, it is clear that he has
+not been at pains fully to inform himself of the Eastern teaching.
+
+Colonel de Rochas' success, and that of all other experimenters
+along these lines, is due to their unconscious following of the
+Eastern method. He himself says that he "avoided everything that
+should put the subject on a definite tack,"--that is, he refrained
+from voluntary suggestion.
+
+Having referred so frequently and so familiarly to the Eastern
+belief in reincarnation, and hinted at a more solid foundation for
+that belief than the single series of experiments above referred to,
+it would be unfair to the reader not to gratify his curiosity more
+fully in regard to these matters. In the light of our hypothesis
+they take on an importance which justifies their further
+consideration here.
+
+
+
+
+VIII THE EASTERN TEACHING
+
+
+ORIENTAL PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS
+
+Western physical science, pursued with ardor and devotion for the
+past hundred years, has attained to a control over physical phenomena
+little short of magical, but in our understanding and mastery of
+subjective phenomena we are far behind those Eastern peoples who
+have made these matters the subject of study and experiment for
+thousands of years. The informed Hindu, rightly or wrongly, regards
+the Western practice of hypnotism, both in its methods and in its
+results, with mingled horror and contempt. To him it is not
+different from Black Magic, pernicious to operator and subject alike,
+since it involves an unwarrantable tyranny of the will on the part
+of the operator, and a dangerous submission to the obsession of an
+invading will on the part of the subject. Eastern hypnotism--at its
+highest and best--is profoundly different from Western, in that the
+sanctity of the individual is respected. Its aim is not to enslave
+the will, but temporarily to emancipate consciousness, under
+favorable circumstances, from its physical limitation.
+
+Eastern practical psychology and metaphysics can be understood only
+through a knowledge of Eastern physics. These we would call
+transcendental, since they recognize not one theatre of consciousness,
+but three: the gross, the subtle, and the pure. These correspond to
+the material, the etherial, and the empyreal worlds of Greek
+philosophy, and to the physical, astral, and mental planes of modern
+Theosophy. They may be thought of as universal substance in three
+different octaves of vibration. Upon this, the trained will of man
+is able to act directly, for the reason that--as claimed by
+Balzac--it is a _living_ force.
+
+In Eastern hypnotism the gross vibrations of the physical vehicle
+are inhibited by the will of the operator, putting the body of the
+subject to sleep, whereat the consciousness, free in its subtle body,
+awakens to a dimensionally higher world. The operator, by means of
+questions, reaps such profit as he may by following the "true dreams"
+of the entranced subject, scrupulously refraining from imposing his
+own will further than is necessary to obtain the information which he
+seeks. The higher power of Eastern hypnotism, totally unknown in the
+West, consists of inhibiting the subtle vibrations of the astral
+vehicle also, permitting the consciousness to revert to its
+"pure" condition. In these deep states of trance the subject is able
+to communicate knowledges shut away from the generality of
+men--among them the knowledge of past births.
+
+
+THE SELF-RECOVERED MEMORY OF PAST BIRTHS
+
+The strength of will necessary to accomplish this higher power of
+hypnotism is achieved by arduous and long-continued exercises in
+concentration, by the practice of a strict morality, and by
+submission to a physical regimen which few Occidentals would care to
+undergo. Severe as is this training, it is less so than that which
+the true Yogi imposes upon himself, and its fruits are less. The
+achievement to which he addresses himself is far beyond that of the
+most accomplished hypnotist. The Yogi scorns all supernormal powers,
+even while possessing them. The Yogi, as the word implies--it means
+literally union--seeks to unite himself with his own higher self, the
+eternal and immortal part of his own nature, and the achievement of
+this brings with it the freedom of the three worlds at all times,
+and in full consciousness. As this involves an inward turning of the
+mind and will, and the withdrawal from the ordinary active life of
+average humanity, he alone is witness of his own success. "The rest
+is silence."
+
+The knowledge of past births which may be obtained by the
+questionable and cumbersome method of hypnotism is one of the
+wayside flowers which the Yogi may pluck, if he will, on his path
+towards perfection. There are definite rules for the attainment of
+this knowledge, and they conform so closely to Colonel de Rochas'
+method--save for the fact that operator and subject are one and not
+twain--that it will be interesting to give them here. The ensuing
+passage is from the _Vishuddhi Marga_, or _Path of Purity_, a work
+written some sixteen hundred years ago by the famous sage,
+Buddhaghosha, whose name signifies the Voice of Buddha, the revealer
+of Buddha's teachings. It is quoted in Charles Johnston's _The
+Memory of Past Births_.
+
+"The devotee, then, who tries for the first time to call to mind
+former states of existence, should choose a time after breakfast,
+when he has returned from collecting alms, and is alone and plunged
+in meditation, and has been absorbed in the four trances in
+succession. On rising from the fourth trance, which leads to the
+higher powers, he should consider the event which last took place,
+namely, his sitting down; next, the spreading of the mat; the
+entering of the room; the putting away of bowl and robe; his eating;
+his leaving the village; his going the rounds of the village for alms;
+his entering the village for alms; his departure from the monastery;
+his offering adoration in the courts of the shrine and of the Bodhi
+tree; his washing the bowl; what he did between taking the bowl and
+rinsing his mouth; what he did at dawn; what he did in the middle
+watch of the night; what he did in the first watch of the night.
+Thus he must consider what he did for a whole day and night, going
+backwards over it in reverse order.
+
+"In the same reverse order he must consider what he did the day
+before, the day before that, up to the fifth day, the tenth day, a
+fortnight ago, a month ago, a year ago; and having in the same
+manner considered the previous ten and twenty years, and so on up to
+the time of his conception in this birth, he must then consider the
+name and form which he had at the moment of death in his last birth.
+But since the name and form of the last birth came quite to an end,
+and were replaced by others, this point of time is like thick
+darkness, and difficult to be made out by the mind of any person
+still deluded. But even such a one should not despair nor say: 'I
+shall never be able to penetrate beyond conception, or take as the
+object of my thought the name and form which I had in my last birth,
+at the moment of death,' but he should again and again enter the
+trance which leads to the higher powers, and each time he rises from
+the trance, he should again intend his mind upon that point of time.
+
+"Just as a strong man in cutting down a mighty tree to be used as
+the peaked roof of a pagoda, if the edge of his axe be turned in
+lopping off the branches and twigs, will not despair of cutting down
+the tree, but will go to an iron-worker's shop, have his axe
+sharpened, return, and go on with his cutting; and if the edge of
+his axe be turned a second time, he will a second time have it
+sharpened, and return, and go on with his cutting; and since nothing
+that he chopped once needs to be chopped again, he will in no long
+time, when there is nothing left to chop, fell that mighty tree. In
+the same way the devotee rising from the trance which leads to the
+higher powers, without considering what he has considered once, and
+considering only the moment of conception, in no long time will
+penetrate beyond the moment of conception, and take as his object
+the name and form which he had at the moment of death, in his last
+birth.
+
+"His alert attention having become possessed of this knowledge, he
+can call to mind many former states of existence, as, one birth, two
+births, three births, four births, five births, and so on, in the
+words of the text."
+
+This quotation casts an interesting light upon Eastern monasticism.
+The Buddhist monasteries are here revealed as schools of practical
+psychology, the life of the monk a life of arduous and unceasing
+labor, but labor of a sort which seems but idleness. The successive
+"initiations" which are the milestones on the "Path of Perfection"
+upon which the devotee has set his feet represent successive
+emancipations of consciousness gained through work and knowledge.
+Their nature may best be understood by means of a fanciful analogy.
+
+
+RELEASE
+
+If we assume that all life is conscious life, as much aware of its
+environment as the freedom of movement of its life vehicle in that
+environment permits, a corpuscle vibrating in a solid would have a
+certain sense of space and of movement in space gained from its own
+experience. Now imagine the solid, which is its world, to be
+subjected to the influence of heat. When the temperature reached a
+certain point the solid would transform itself into a liquid. To the
+corpuscle all the old barriers would seem to be broken down; space
+would be different, time would be different, and its world a
+different place. Again, at another increase of temperature, when the
+liquid became a gas, the corpuscle would experience a further
+emancipation: it would possess a further freedom, with all the facts
+of its universe to learn anew.
+
+Each of these successive crises would constitute for it an initiation,
+and since the heat has acted upon it from within, causing an
+expansion of its life vehicle, it would seem to itself to have
+attained to these new freedoms through self-development.
+
+The parallel is now plain to the reader: the corpuscle is the Yogi,
+bent on liberation: the heat which warms him is the Divine Love,
+centered in his heart, his initiations are the successive
+emancipations into higher and higher spaces, till he attains
+Nirvana--inherits the kingdom prepared for him from the foundation
+of the world. As latent heat resides in the corpuscle, so is _Release_
+hidden in the heart--release from time and space. The perception of
+this prompted the exultant apostrophe of Buddha, "Looking for the
+maker of this tabernacle, I have run through a course of many births,
+not finding him; and painful is birth again and again. But now,
+maker of the tabernacle, thou hast been seen; thou shalt not make up
+this tabernacle again. All thy rafters are broken, thy ridge-pole is
+sundered; the mind, approaching the Eternal, has attained the
+extinction of all desires."
+
+Upon the mystery of Nirvana the Higher Space Hypothesis casts not a
+little light. To "approach the Eternal" can only be to approach a
+condition where time is not. Because there is an escape from time in
+proportion as space dimensions are added to, and assimilated by,
+consciousness, any development involving this element of space
+conquest (and evolution is itself such a development) involves time
+annihilation also. To be in a state of desire is to be conditioned
+by a limitation, because one can desire only that which one has not
+or is not. The extinction of a desire is only another name for the
+transcending of a limitation--of all desires, of all limitations. If
+these limitations are of space they are of time also; therefore is
+the "approach to the Eternal" through the "extinction of all desire."
+Christ said, "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar of the temple
+of my God, and he shall go no more out"--go out, that is, into
+incarnation--into "time, besprent with seven-hued circumstance."
+
+Such are the testimonies of the world-saviors regarding the means
+and end of liberation. Below them on the evolutionary ladder stand
+the mystics, earth-bound, but soul-free; below them, in turn, yet
+far above common humanity, stand the men of genius, caught still in
+the net of passion, but able, in their work, to reflect something of
+the glory of the supernal world. Let us consider, in the next two
+chapters, each of these in turn.
+
+
+
+
+IX  THE MYSTICS
+
+
+HERMES TRISMEGISTUS
+
+The mystic, however far removed he may be from Nietzsche's ideal of
+the Superman, nevertheless represents superhumanity in the domain of
+consciousness. By means of quotations, taken almost at random from
+the rich literature of mysticism, the author will attempt to show
+that the consciousness of the mystic involves the awareness of
+dimensionally higher worlds. The first group of quotations is culled
+from certain of the Sacred Books of Hermes Trismegistus.
+
+"_Comprehend clearly_" (says Hermes to Asclepios) "_that this
+sensible world is enfolded, as in a garment, by the supernal world_."
+
+We think of our three dimensional space, "the sensible world," as
+_immersed_ in higher space; "enfolded as in a garment," therefore.
+And we think of the objects of our world as having extension in a
+dimensionally higher region, that "supernal world" in which the
+phenomena of this sensible world arise. For:
+
+"_Celestial order reigns over terrestrial order: all that is done
+and said upon earth has its origin in the heights, from which all
+essences are dispensed with measure and equilibrium: nor is there
+anything which does not emanate from one above and return thither_"
+
+
+THE PAGE AND THE PRESS
+
+The idea of an all-embracing unity within and behind the seeming
+manifoldness of life forms the ground rhythm of all inspired
+literature, sacred and profane alike. For clarity and conciseness it
+would be difficult to improve upon the formulation of this idea
+contained in the following fragment:
+
+"_In the manifold unity of universal life the innumerable
+individualities distinguished by their variations are, nevertheless,
+united in such a manner that the whole is one, and that everything
+proceeds from unity_.
+
+"_For all things depend upon unity, or develop from it, and because
+they appear distant from one another it is believed that they are
+many, whereas in their collectivity they form but one_."
+
+Now nothing so successfully resolves this paradox of the one and the
+many as the concept that the things of this world are embraced and
+united in a dimensionally higher world in a manner analogous to that
+in which all conic sections are embraced and united within the cone.
+A more elaborate and fanciful figure may serve to make this clearer
+to the mind.
+
+Conceive of this printed page as a plane world in which every letter
+is a person; every word a family; phrases and sentences, larger
+communities and groups. These "innumerable individualities,
+distinguished by their variations" must needs seem to themselves as
+"distant from one another," their very differences of form and
+arrangement a barrier to any superior unity. Yet all the while,
+solely by reason of this diversity, they are co-operating towards an
+end of which they cannot be aware. The mind of the reader unites and
+interprets the letters into continuous thought, though they be
+voiceless as stones to one another. Even so may our sad and stony
+identities spell out a world's word which we know not of, by reason
+of our singularity and isolation. Moreover, in the electrotype block,
+the solid of which the printed page constitutes a plane presentment,
+all the letters are actually "united in such a manner that the whole
+is one." The metal that has moulded each into its significant form
+amalgamates them into a higher unity. So also the power that makes
+us separate is the same power that makes us one.
+
+
+THE SHIP AND ITS CAPTAIN
+
+Here follows the lament of the souls awaiting incarnation:
+
+  "_Behold the sad future in store for us--to minister to the wants of
+  a fluctuating and dissoluble body! No more may our eyes distinguish
+  the souls divine! Hardly through these watery spheres shall we
+  perceive, with sighs, our ancestral heaven: at intervals even we
+  shall cease altogether to behold it. By this disastrous sentence
+  direct vision is denied to us; we can see only by the aid of the
+  outer light; these are but windows that we possess--not eyes. Nor
+  will our pain be less when we hear in the fraternal breathing of the
+  winds with which no longer can we mingle our own, since ours will
+  have for its dwelling, instead of the sublime and open world, the
+  narrow prison of the breast_!"
+
+That the soul--the so-called subliminal self--draws from a broader,
+deeper experience than the purely rational consciousness is a
+commonplace of modern psychology. Hinton conceives of the soul as
+_higher-dimensional_ with relation to the body, but so concerned
+with the management and direction of its lower-dimensional vehicle
+as to have lost, for the time being, its orientation, thinking and
+moving only in those ways of which the body is capable. The analogy
+he uses, of a ship and its captain, is so happy, and the whole
+passage has so direct a bearing upon the Hermetic fragment quoted,
+that it is given here entire.
+
+"I adopt the hypothesis that that which thinks in us has an ample
+experience, of which the intuitions we use in dealing with the world
+of real objects are a part; of which experience, the intuition of
+four-dimensional forms and motions is also a part. The process we
+are engaged in intellectually is the reading of the obscure signals
+of our nerves into a world of reality, by means of intuitions
+derived from the inner experience.
+
+"The image I form is as follows: Imagine the captain of a modern
+battleship directing its course. He has his charts before him; he is
+in communication with his associates and subordinates; can convey his
+messages and commands to every part of the ship, and receive
+information from the conning tower and the engine room. Now suppose
+the captain, immersed in the problem of the navigation of his ship
+over the ocean, to have so absorbed himself in the problem of the
+direction of the craft over the plane surface of the sea that he
+forgets himself. All that occupies his attention is the kind of
+movement that his ship makes. The operations by which that movement
+is produced have sunk below the threshold of his consciousness; his
+own actions, by which he pushes the buttons, gives the orders, are
+so familiar as to be automatic; his mind is on the motion of the
+ship as a whole. In such a case we can imagine that he identifies
+himself with the ship; all that enters his conscious thought is the
+direction of its movement over the plane surface of the ocean.
+
+"Such is the relation, as I imagine it, of the soul to the body. A
+relation which we can imagine as existing momentarily in the case of
+the captain is the normal one in the case of the soul with its craft.
+As the captain is capable of a kind of movement, an amplitude of
+motion, which does not enter into his thoughts with regard to the
+directing of the ship over the plane surface of the ocean, so the
+soul is capable of a kind of movement, has an amplitude of motion,
+which is not used in its task of directing the body in the
+three-dimensional region in which the body's activity lies. If for
+any reason it becomes necessary for the captain to consider
+three-dimensional motions with regard to his ship, it would not be
+difficult for him to gain the materials for thinking about such
+motions; all he has to do is to call experience into play. As far as
+the navigation of the ship is concerned, however, he is not obliged
+to call on such experience. The ship as a whole simply moves on a
+surface. The problem of three-dimensional movement does not
+ordinarily concern its steering. And thus with regard to ourselves
+all those movements and activities which characterize our bodily
+organs are three-dimensional; we never need to consider the ampler
+movements. But we do more than use these movements of our body to
+effect our aims by direct means; we have now come to the pass when
+we act indirectly on nature, when we call processes into play which
+lie beyond the reach of any explanation we can give by the kind of
+thought which has been sufficient for the steering of our craft as a
+whole.
+
+"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 passages from _The Virgin of the World_ show a
+remarkable resemblance between the Hermetic philosophy and modern
+higher-space 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 space." 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 passing 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 passers-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 passers-by opened his lips, to what, let
+me ask you, could they refer the voice, if not to the shadow which
+was passing?"
+
+"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-space
+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 Space 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: space is different: distance is different He says,
+"_Space in heaven is not like space in the world, for space 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 analysis, 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 space. 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 space.
+
+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 space. Swedenborg's angels
+are men freed from these limitations. We suffer because the free
+thing in us is hampered by the restrictions of a space to which it
+is not native. Reason sufficient for such restriction is apparent in
+the success that crowns every effort at the annihilation of space,
+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 SPACE-EATER
+
+Man has been called the thinking animal. _Space-eater_ would be a
+more appropriate title, since he so dauntlessly and persistently
+addresses himself to overcoming the limitations of his space. 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
+space-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 pawns 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 space annihilation, that which, discarnate, it
+could compass 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 space 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
+participates 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
+
+There is the utmost unanimity in the testimony of the mystics that
+the world without and the world within are but different aspects of
+the same reality--"_The eye with which I see God is the same eye with
+which He sees me_." They never weary of the telling of the
+solidarity and invisible continuity of life, the inclusion not only
+of the minute in the vast, but of the vast in the minute. We may
+accept this form of perception as characteristic of consciousness in
+its free state. Its instrument is the _intuition_, which divines
+relations between diverse things through a perception of unity. The
+instrument of the purely mundane consciousness, on the other hand,
+is the _reason_, which dissevers and dissects phenomena, divining
+unity through correlation. Now if physical phenomena, in all their
+manifoldness, are lower-dimensional projections, upon a
+lower-dimensional space, of a higher unity, then reason and
+intuition are seen to be two modes of one intelligence, engaged in
+apprehending life from below (by means of the reason) through its
+diversity, and from above (by means of intuition) through its unity.
+
+Those who recognize in the intuition a valid organ of knowledge, are
+disposed to exalt it above the reason, but at our present state of
+evolution, and given our environment, it would seem that the reason
+is the more generally useful faculty of the two. In that unfolding,
+that manifesting of the higher in the lower--which is the idea the
+four-dimensionalist has of the world--the painstaking, minute,
+methodical action of the reasoning mind applied to phenomena
+achieves results impossible to Pisgah-sighted intuition. The power,
+peculiar to the reason, of isolating part after part from the whole
+to which it belongs, and considering them thus isolated, makes
+possible in the end a synthesis in which the whole is not merely
+glimpsed, but known to the last detail.
+
+The method of the reason is symbolized in so trifling a thing as the
+dealing out one by one of a pack of cards and their reassembling.
+The pack has been made to show forth its content by a process of
+disruption--of slicing. Similarly, if a scientist wants to gain a
+thorough comprehension of a complicated organism, he dissects it, or
+submits it to a process of slicing, studying each slice separately
+under the microscope while keeping constantly in mind the relation
+of one slice to another. This amounts to nothing less than reducing
+a thing from three dimensions to two, in order to know it thoroughly.
+Now the flux of things corresponds to the four-dimensional aspect of
+the world, and with this the reason finds it impossible to deal. As
+Bergson has so well shown, the reason cuts life into countless
+cross-sections: a thing must be dead before it can be dissected.
+This is why the higher-dimensional aspect of life, divined by the
+intuition, escapes rational analysis.
+
+
+THE COIL OF LIFE
+
+Swedenborg's description of "the ascent and descent of forms" and
+the "forces and powers" which flow therefrom, suggests, by reason of
+the increasing amplitude and variety of form and motion, a
+progression from space to space. This description is too long and
+involved to find place here, but its conclusion is as follows:
+
+"_Such now is the ascent and descent of forms or substances in the
+greatest, and in our least universe: similar also is the descent of
+all forces and powers which flow from them. But all their perfection
+consists in the possibility and virtue of varying themselves, or of
+changing states, which possibility increases with their elevations,
+so that in number it exceeds all the series of calculations unfolded
+by human minds, and still inwardly involved by them: which
+infinities finally become what is finite in the Supreme. Our ideas
+are merely progressions by variations of form, and thus by actual
+changes of state_."
+
+His sense of the beauty and orderliness of the whole process, and
+his despair of communicating it, find characteristic utterance in
+the following passage:
+
+"_If thou could'st discern, my beloved, how distinctly and
+ordinately these forms are arranged and connected with each other,
+from the mere aspect and infinity of so many wonderful things
+connected with each other, from the mere aspect and infinity of so
+many wonderful things conspiring into one, thou would'st fall down,
+from an inmost impulse, with sacred astonishment, and at the same
+time pious joy, to perform an act of worship and of love before such
+an architect_."
+
+In his description of the manner in which these forms cohere and
+successively unfold, he introduces one of the basic concepts of
+higher space thought; namely, that in the "descent of forms" from
+space to space, that which in the higher exists all together--that
+is, _simultaneously_--can only manifest itself in the lower
+piecemeal--that is, _successively_. He says:
+
+"_Nothing is together in any texture or effect which was not
+successively introduced; and everything is therein, according as
+order itself introduces it: wherefore simultaneous order derives its
+birth, nature and perfection from successive orders, and the former
+is only rendered perspicuous and plain by the latter.... What is
+supreme in things successive takes the inmost place in things
+simultaneous: thus things superior in order super-involve things
+inferior and wrap them together, that these latter may become
+exterior in the same order: by this method first principles, which
+are also called simple, unfold themselves, and involve themselves in
+things posterior or compound: wherefore every perfection of what is
+outermost flows forth from inmost principles by their series: hence
+thy beauty, my daughter, the only parent of which is order itself_."
+
+This passage, like a proffered dish full of rare fruit, tempts the
+metaphysical appetite by the wealth and variety of its appeal; but
+not to weary the reader, the author will content himself by the
+abstraction of a single plum. The plum in question is simply this
+(and the reader is asked to read the quotation carefully again): may
+not every act, incident, circumstance in a human life be the
+"uncoiling" of a karmic aggregate? This coil of life may be thought
+of most conveniently in this connection as the _character_ of the
+person, a character built up, or "successively introduced" in
+antecedent lives. The sequence of events resultant on its "unwinding"
+would be the destiny of the person--a destiny determined, necessarily,
+by past action. This concept gives a new and more eloquent meaning
+to the phrase "Character is destiny." If we carry our thought no
+further, we are plunged into the slough of determinism--sheer
+fatality. But in each reincarnation, however predetermined every act
+and event, their reaction upon consciousness remains a matter of
+determination--is therefore _self_-determined. We may not control
+the event, but our acceptance of it we may control. Moreover, each
+"unwinding" of the karmic coil takes place in a new environment, in a
+world more highly organized by reason of the play upon it of the
+collective consciousness of mankind. Though the same individual
+again and again intersects the stream of mundane experience, it is an
+evolving ego and an augmenting stream. Therefore each life of a
+given series forms a different, a more intricate, and a more amazing
+pattern: in each the thread is drawn from nearer the central energy,
+which is divine, and so shows forth more of the coiled power within
+the soul.
+
+
+
+
+X  GENIUS
+
+
+IMMANENCE
+
+The greatest largess to the mind which higher thought brings is the
+conviction of a transcendent existence. Though we do not know the
+nature of this existence, except obscurely, we are assured of its
+reality and of its immanence, through a growing sense that all that
+happens to us is simply our relation to it.
+
+In our ant-like efforts to attain to some idea of the nature of this
+transcendent reality, let us next avail ourselves of the help
+afforded by the artist and the man of genius, too troubled by the
+flesh for perfect clarity of vision, too troubled by the spirit not
+to attempt to render or record the Pisgah-glimpses of the
+world-order now and then vouchsafed. For the genius stands midway
+between man and Beyond-man: in Nietzsche's phrase, "Man is a bridge
+and not a goal."
+
+Of all the writers on the subject of genius, Schopenhauer is the
+most illuminating, perhaps because he suffered from it so. According
+to him, the essence of genius lies in the perfection and energy of
+its _perceptions_. Schopenhauer says, "He who is endowed with talent
+thinks more quickly and more correctly than others; but the genius
+beholds another world from them all, although only because he has a
+more profound perception of the world which lies before them also,
+in that it presents itself in his mind more objectively, and
+consequently in greater purity and distinctness." This profounder
+perception arises from his detachment: his intellect has to a
+certain extent freed itself from the service of his will, and leads
+an independent life. So long as the intellect is in the service of
+the will, that which has no relation to the will does not exist for
+the intellect; but along with this partial severance of the two
+there comes a new power of perception, synthetic in its nature, a
+complex of relationships not reproducible in _linear_ thought, for
+the mind is oriented simultaneously in _many_ different directions.
+Of this order of perception the well-known case of Mozart is a
+classic example. He is reported to have said of his manner of
+composing, "I can see the whole of it in my mind at a single glance ...
+in which way I do not hear it in my imagination at all as
+succession--the way it comes later--but all at once, as it were. It
+is a rare feast! all the inventing and making goes on in me as in a
+beautiful strong dream."
+
+
+TIMELESSNESS
+
+The inspirations of genius come from a failure of attention to life,
+which, all paradoxically, brings vision--the power to see life
+clearly and "see it whole." Consciousness, unconditioned by time,
+"in a beautiful strong dream," awakens to the perception of a world
+that is timeless. It brings thence some immortelle whose power of
+survival establishes the authenticity of the inspiration. However
+local and personal any masterpiece may be, it escapes by some potent
+magic all geographical and temporal categories, and appears always
+new-born from a sphere in which such categories do not exist.
+
+No writer was more of his period than Shakespeare, yet how
+contemporary he seems to each succeeding generation. Leonardo, in a
+perfect portrait, showed forth the face of a subtle, sensuous, and
+mocking spirit, against a background of wild rocks. It represents
+not alone the soul-phase of the later Renaissance, but of every
+individual and of every civilization which on life's dangerous and
+orgiastic substratum has reared a mere garden of delight. Living
+hearts throb to the music penned by the dead hand of Mozart and of
+Beethoven; the clownings of Aristophanes arouse laughter in our
+music halls; Euripides is as subtle and world-weary as any modern;
+the philosophies of Parminides and Heraclitus are recrudescent in that
+of Bergson; and Plato discusses higher space under a different name.
+
+
+BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL: BEAUTY
+
+The second characteristic of works of genius is their indifference
+to all man-made moral standards. They are beyond all that goes by
+the name of good and evil, in that the two are used indifferently
+for the furtherance of a purely aesthetic end. The Beyond-man
+discovers beauty in the abyss, and ugliness in mere worldly rectitude.
+Leonardo painted the Medusa head, with its charnel pallor and its
+crown of writhing snakes, no less lovingly than the sweet-tender
+face of the Christ of the Cenacolo, and the beauty is not less,
+though of an opposite sort. Shakespeare's most profound sayings and
+most magical poetry are as often as not put in the mouths of his
+villains and his clowns. To genius, pain is purgation; ugliness,
+beauty in disturbance. It injects the acid of irony into success,
+and distils the attar of felicity from failure. It teaches that the
+blows of fate are aimed, not at us, but at our fetters; that death
+is swallowed up in victory, that the Hound of Heaven is none other
+than the Love of God.
+
+Though genius rebels at our moralities, it always submits itself to
+beauty. Emerson says, "Goethe and Carlyle, and perhaps Novalis, have
+an undisguised dislike or contempt for common virtue standing on
+common principles. Meantime they are dear lovers, steadfast
+maintainers of the pure, ideal morality. But they worship it as the
+highest beauty, their love is artistic." And so it is throughout the
+whole hierarchy of men of genius. "Beauty is Truth: Truth, Beauty,"
+is the motto which guides their far-faring feet, as they lead us
+wheresoever they will. With Victor Hugo, we follow, undisgusted,
+through the sewers of old Paris: his sense of beauty disinfects them
+for us. With Balzac and Tolstoy we gaze unrevolted upon the
+nethermost depths of human depravity, discerning moral beauty even
+there; while with Virgil, Dante and Milton, we walk unscathed in
+Hell itself. The _terribilita_ of Michaelangelo, the chaos and
+anarchy of Shakespeare at his greatest, as in Lear--these find
+expression in perfect rhythms, so potent that we recognize them as
+proceeding from a supernal beauty, the beauty of that soul "from
+which also cometh the life of man and of beast, and of the birds of
+the air and of the fishes of the sea."
+
+
+THE DAEMONIC
+
+  "Unknown,--albeit lying near,--
+  To men the path to the Daemon sphere."
+
+But to men of genius--"Minions of the Morning Star"--the path is not
+unknown, and for this reason the daemonic element constantly shows
+itself in their works and in their lives. Dante, Cellini, Goethe,
+three men as unlike in the nature of their several gifts and in
+their temperaments as could easily be named together, are drawn to a
+common likeness through the daemonic gleam which plays and hovers
+over them at times. With William Blake it was a flame that wrapped
+him round. Today no one knows how Brunelleschi was able to construct
+his great dome without centering, nor how Michaelangelo could limn
+his terrible figures on the wet plaster of the Sistine vault with
+such extraordinary swiftness and skill; but we have their testimony
+that they invoked and received divine aid. Shakespeare, the
+master-magician, is silent on this point of supernatural
+assistance--as on all points--except as his plays speak for him;
+but how eloquently they speak! "The Tempest" is made up of the
+daemonic; the murky tragedy of "Macbeth" unfolds under the guidance
+of incarnate forces of evil which drive the hero to his doom and
+final deliverance in death: Hamlet sees and communes with the ghost
+of his father; in short, the supernatural is as much a part of these
+plays as salt is part of the ocean. If from any masterpiece we could
+abstract everything not strictly rational--every element of wonder,
+mystery, and enchantment--it would be like taking all of the unknown
+quantities out of an equation: there would be nothing left to solve.
+The mind of genius is a wireless station attuned to the vibrations
+from the daemonic sphere; the works of genius fascinate and delight
+us largely for this reason: we, too, respond to these vibrations and
+are demonologists in our secret hearts.
+
+For the interest which we take in genius has its root in the
+interest which we take in ourselves. Genius but utters experiences
+common to us all, records perceptions of a world-order which we too
+have glimpsed. Love, hope, pain, sorrow, disappointment, often
+effect that momentary purgation which enables consciousness to
+function independently of the tyrant will. These hours have for us a
+noetic value--"some veil did fall"--revealing visions remembered
+even unto the hour of death.
+
+
+"DEATH"
+
+That "failure of attention to life" which begets inspiration in the
+man of genius comes, indeed, daily to every one, but without his
+being able to profit by it. For what is sleep but a failure of
+attention to life--so complete a failure that memory brings back
+nothing save that little caught in the net of dreams--yet even this
+little is so charged with creative energy as to give rise to the
+saying that every man is a genius in his dreams.
+
+Death also is a failure of attention to life, the greatest that we
+know, and poorest therefore in plunder from supernatural realms.
+Nevertheless reports of persons who have narrowly escaped death give
+evidence at least that to those emancipated by death, life, viewed
+from some higher region of space, is perceived as a unity. When a
+man is brought face to face with death, the events of life pass
+before the mind's eye in an instant, and he comes from such an
+experience not only with deeper insight into himself, but into the
+meaning and purpose of life also. The faces of the dead, those
+parchments where are written the last testament of the departed
+spirit, bear an expression of solemn peace, sometimes of joy,
+sometimes of wonder: terror and agony are seldom written there, save
+when the fatal change comes in some painful or unnatural way.
+
+
+THE PLAY OF BRAHM
+
+Inspiration, dreams, visions at the moment of death--these things we
+say are _irrational_, and so in a sense they are. Bergson has
+compared the play of reason upon phenomena to the action of a
+cinematograph machine which reproduces the effect of motion by
+flashing upon the screen a correlated series of _fixed_ images. In
+like manner the reason dissects the flux of life and presents it to
+consciousness part by part, but never as a whole. In supernormal
+states however we may assume that with the breakdown of some barrier
+life flows in like a tidal wave, paralyzing the reason, and
+therefore presenting itself in an irrational manner to consciousness.
+Were reason equal to the strain put upon it under these circumstances,
+in what light might the phantasmagoria of human life appear? Might
+it not be perceived as a representation, merely, of a supernal world,
+higher-dimensional in relation to our own? Just as a moving picture
+shows us the round and living bodies of men and women as flat
+images on a plane, enacting there some mimic drama, so on the
+three-dimensional screen of the world men and women engaged in
+unfolding the drama of personal life may be but the images of souls
+enacting, on higher planes of being, the drama of their own salvation.
+The reluctance of the American aborigine to be photographed is said
+to have been due to his belief that something of his personality,
+his human potency, went into the image, leaving him by so much the
+poorer from that time forth. Suppose such indeed to be the case:
+that the flat-man on the moving picture screen leads his little life
+of thought and emotion, related to the mental and emotional life of
+the living original as the body is related to its photographic
+counterpart. In similar manner the potencies of the higher self, the
+dweller in higher spaces, may flow into and express themselves in and
+through us. We may be images in a world of images; our thoughts
+shadows of archetypal ideas, our acts a shadow-play upon the
+luminous screen of material existence, revealing there, however
+imperfectly, the moods and movements of a higher self in a higher
+space.
+
+The saying, "All the world's a stage," may be true in a sense
+Shakespeare never intended. It formulates, in effect, the oldest of
+all philosophical doctrines, that contained in the Upanishads of
+Brahma, the Enjoyer, who takes the form of a mechanically perfect
+universe in order to read his own law with eyes of his own creation.
+"He thought: 'Shall I send forth worlds?' He sent forth these worlds."
+To the question, "What worlds?" the Higher Space Hypothesis makes
+answer, "Dimensional systems, from lowest to highest, each one a
+_representation_ of the one next above, where it stands _dramatized_,
+as it were. This is the play of Brahm; endlessly to dissever, in
+time and space, and to unite in consciousness, like the geometrician
+who discovers every ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola, in the cone
+where all inhere."
+
+The particular act of the drama of unfolding consciousness upon
+which the curtain is now upfurled is that wherein we discover the
+world to be indeed a stage, a playground for forces masquerading as
+forms: "they have their exits and their entrances," or, as expressed
+in the Upanishads, "All that goes hence (dies on earth) heaven
+consumes it all; and all that goes thence (returns from heaven to a
+new life) the earth consumes it all."
+
+
+
+
+XI THE GIFT OF FREEDOM
+
+
+CONCEPT AND CONDUCT
+
+A surgeon once remarked to the author that among his professional
+associates he had noticed an increasing awareness of the invisible.
+This he claimed was manifest in the fact that the young men educated
+since the rise of bacteriological science were more punctilious in
+the matter of extreme personal cleanliness and the sterilization of
+their instruments than the older and often more accomplished
+surgeons whose habits in these matters had been formed before the
+general sense of an _invisible_ menace had become acute.
+
+This anecdote well illustrates the unconscious reaction of new
+concepts upon conduct. Preoccupation with the problems of space
+hyper-dimensionality cannot fail to produce profound changes in our
+ethical outlook upon life and in our attitude towards our fellow
+beings. The nature of these changes it is not difficult to forecast.
+
+Although higher-space thought makes painfully clear our limitations,
+it nevertheless leads to the perception that these very limitations
+are inhibited powers. In this way it supplies us with a workable
+method whereby we may enter that transcendental world of which we
+glimpse so many vistas. This method consists in first becoming aware
+of a limitation, and then in forcing ourselves to dramatize the
+experience that would be ours if the limitation did not affect us.
+We then discover in ourselves a power for transcending the limitation,
+and presently we come to live in the new mode as easily as in the old.
+Thought, conscious of its own limitations, leads to the New Freedom.
+"Become what thou art!" is the maxim engraved upon the lintel of
+this new Temple of Initiation.
+
+
+SELFLESSNESS
+
+Higher-space speculation is an education in _selflessness_, for it
+demands the elimination of what Hinton calls _self-elements_ of
+observation. The diurnal motion of the sun is an example of a
+self-element: it has nothing to do with the sun but everything to do
+with the observer. The Ptolemaic system founded on this illusion
+tyrannized over the human mind for centuries, but who knows of how
+many other illusions we continue to be victims--for the worst of a
+self-element is that its presence is never dreamed of until it is
+done away with. The Theory of Relativity presents us with an effort
+to get rid of the self-element in regard to space and time. A
+self-centered man cannot do full justice to this theory: it requires
+of the mind a certain detachment, and the idea becomes clear in
+proportion as this detachment, this selflessness, is attained.
+
+So while it would be too much to claim that higher thought makes men
+unselfish, it at least cracks the hard shell in which their
+selfishness abides. If a man disciplines himself to abdicate his
+personal point of view in thinking about the world he lives in, it
+makes easier a similar attitude in relation to his fellow men.
+
+
+HUMILITY
+
+One of the earliest effects of selfless thought is the exorcism of
+all arrogance. The effort to dramatize the relation of an earthworm
+to its environment makes us recognize that its predicament is our own,
+different only in degree. We are exercising ourselves in humility
+and meekness, but of a sort leading to a mastery that may well make
+the meek the inheritors of the earth. Hinton was himself so meek a
+man that his desire did not rise to the height of expecting or
+looking for the beautiful or the good: he simply asked for something
+to know. He despaired of knowing anything definitely and certainly
+except arrangements in space. We have his testimony as to how
+abundantly this hunger and thirst after that right knowledge which
+is righteousness was gratified. "All I want to do," he says,
+"is to make this humble beginning of knowledge and show how
+inevitably, by devotion to it, it leads to marvellous and
+far-distant truths, and how, by strange paths, it leads directly
+into the presence of some of the highest conceptions which great
+minds have given us."
+
+Here speaks the blessed man referred to by the psalmist, "Whose
+delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate
+day and night." Abandoning a vain search after abstractions, and
+applying his simple formula to life, Hinton found that it enabled
+him to express the faith in his heart in terms conformable to reason;
+that it led back to, and illumined the teachings of every spiritual
+instructor and inspirer of mankind.
+
+
+SOLIDARITY
+
+That we are all members of one body, branches of one vine, is a
+matter of faith and of feeling; but with the first use of the weapon
+of higher thought the paradox of the one and the many is capable of
+so clear and simple a resolution that the sublime idea of human
+solidarity is brought down from the nebulous heaven of the mystic to
+the earth of every day life. To our ordinary space-thought, men are
+isolated, distinct, each "an infinitely repellent particle," but we
+conceive of space too narrowly. The broader view admits the idea
+that men are related by reason of a superior union, that their
+isolation is but an affair of limited consciousness. Applying this
+concept to conduct, we come to discern a literal truth in the words
+of the Master, "He who hath done it unto the least of these my
+children, hath done it unto me," and "Where two or three are
+gathered together in my name." If we conceive of each individual as a
+"slice" or cross-section of a higher being, each fragment isolated
+by an inhibition of consciousness which it is moment by moment
+engaged in transcending, the sacrifice of the Logos takes on a new
+meaning. This disseverance into millions of human beings is that
+each may realize God in himself. Conceiving of humanity as God's
+broken body, we are driven to make peace among its members, and by
+realization we become the Children of God.
+
+
+LIVE OPENLY
+
+"_Blessed are the meek," "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst
+after righteousness." "Blessed are the peacemakers_." It would not
+be impossible to trace a relation between higher space thought and
+the other beatitudes also, but it will suffice simply to note the
+fact that the central and essential teaching of the Sermon on the
+Mount, "Let your light shine before men" is implicit in the
+conviction of every one who thinks on higher space: he must _live
+openly_. By continual dwelling upon the predicament of the flat-man,
+naked, as it were, to observation from an eye which looks down upon
+his plane, we come to realize our own exposure. In that large world
+all that we think, or do, or imagine, lies open, palpable; there is
+no such thing as secrecy. Imbued with this idea, we begin to live
+openly because we must; but soon we come to do so because we desire
+it. In making toward one another our limited lives open and manifest,
+we treat each other in the service of truth as though we were all
+members of that higher world. We imitate, in our world, our true
+existence in a higher world, and so help to establish heavenly
+conditions upon earth.
+
+
+NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL
+
+The problem of ugliness and evil would seem at first thought to be
+totally unrelated to the subject of space hyperdimensionality, but
+there is at least a symbolical relation. This was suggested to the
+author by the endeavor of two friends whose interests were
+pre-eminently mathematical to discover what certain four-dimensional
+figures would look like in three-dimensional space. They found
+that in a great number of cases these cross-sections, when
+thus isolated, revealed little of the symmetry and beauty of their
+higher-dimensional archetypes. It is clear that a beautiful form of
+our world, traversing a plane, would show nothing of its beauty to
+the planeman, who lacked the power of perceiving it entire; for the
+sense of beauty is largely a matter of co-ordination. We give the
+names of evil, chance, fate, ugliness, to those aspects of life and
+of the world that we fail to perceive in their true relations, in
+regard to which our power of correlation breaks down. Yet we often
+find that in the light of fuller knowledge or subsequent experience,
+the fortune which seemed evil was really good fortune in the making,
+that the chance act or encounter was too momentous in its
+consequences to be regarded as other than ordained.
+
+The self-element plays a large part in our idea of good and evil,
+ugliness and beauty. "All things are as they seem to all." Desire of
+her will make any woman beautiful, and fear will exercise an absolute
+inhibition upon the aesthetic sense. As we recede in time from events,
+they more and more emancipate themselves from the tyranny of our
+personal prejudices and predilections, and we are able to perceive
+them with greater clarity, more as they appear from the standpoint
+of higher time and higher space. "Old, unhappy, far-off things, and
+battles long ago" lose their poignancy of pain and take on the
+poignancy of beauty. The memory of suffering endured is often the
+last thing from which we would be parted, while humdrum happiness we
+are quite willing to forget. Because we realize completely only in
+retrospect, it may well be that the present exists chiefly for the
+sake of the future. Then let the days come with veiled faces, accept
+their gifts whose value we are so little able to appraise! There is
+a profound and practical truth in Christ's saying, "Resist not evil."
+Honor this truth by use, and welcome destiny in however sinister a
+guise.
+
+
+THE IMMANENT DIVINE
+
+In the fact of the limited nature of our space perceptions is found
+a connecting link between materialism and idealism. For, passing
+deeper and deeper in our observation of the material world, that
+which we at first felt as real passes away to become but the outward
+sign of a reality infinitely greater, of which our realities are
+appearances only, and we become convinced of the existence of
+_an immanent divine._ "In Him we live and move and have our being."
+Our space is but a limitation of infinite "room to move about":
+"_In my Father's house are many mansions_." Our time is but a
+limitation of infinite duration: "_Before Abraham was, I am_." Our
+sense of space is the consciousness that we abide in Him; our sense
+of time is the consciousness that He abides in us. Both are modes of
+apprehension of divinity--growing, expanding modes. In conceiving of
+a space of more than three dimensions we prove that our relation to
+God is not static, but dynamic. Christ said to the man who was sick
+of the palsy, "Rise, take up thy bed and walk." The narrow concept
+of three-dimensional space is a bed in which the human mind has lain
+so long as to become at last inanimate. The divine voice calls to us
+again to demonstrate that we are alive. Thinking in terms of the
+higher we issue from the tomb of materialism into the sunlight of
+that sane and life-giving idealism which is Christ's.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Four-Dimensional Vistas, by Claude Fayette Bragdon
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR-DIMENSIONAL VISTAS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 11906-8.txt or 11906-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/9/0/11906/
+
+Produced by PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year. For example:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/etext06
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL
+
+
diff --git a/old/11906-8.zip b/old/11906-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab693e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/11906-8.zip
diff --git a/old/11906.txt b/old/11906.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1313dd6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/11906.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3887 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Four-Dimensional Vistas, by Claude Fayette Bragdon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Four-Dimensional Vistas
+
+Author: Claude Fayette Bragdon
+
+Release Date: April 4, 2004 [EBook #11906]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR-DIMENSIONAL VISTAS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FOUR-DIMENSIONAL
+VISTAS
+
+by
+
+Claude Bragdon
+
+[Illustration]
+
+New York
+
+
+
+   "_Perception has a destiny_."
+                        _Emerson_.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+There are two notable emancipations of the mind from the tyranny of
+mere appearances that have received scant attention save from
+mathematicians and theoretical physicists.
+
+In 1823 Bolyai declared with regard to Euclid's so-called axiom of
+parallels, "I will draw two lines through a given point, both of
+which will be parallel to a given line." The drawing of these lines
+led to the concept of the curvature of space, and this to the idea
+of _higher_ space.
+
+The recently developed Theory of Relativity has compelled the
+revision of the time concept as used in classical physics. One
+result of this has been to introduce the notion of _curved_ time.
+
+These two ideas, of curved time and higher space, by their very
+nature are bound to profoundly modify human thought. They loosen the
+bonds within which advancing knowledge has increasingly labored,
+they lighten the dark abysses of consciousness, they reconcile the
+discoveries of Western workers with the inspirations of Eastern
+dreamers; but best of all, they open vistas, they offer "glimpses
+that may make us less forlorn."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I. THE QUEST OF FREEDOM
+
+The Undiscovered Country--Miracles--The Failure of Common Sense--The
+Function of Science--Mathematics--Intuition--Our Sense of Space--The
+Subjectivity of Space--The Need of an Enlarged Space-Concept.
+
+II. THE DIMENSIONAL LADDER
+
+Learning to Think in Terms of Spaces--From the Cosmos to the
+Corpuscle--And Beyond--Evolution as Space-Conquest--Dimensional
+Sequences--Man the Geometer--Higher, and Highest, Space.
+
+III.  PHYSICAL PHENOMENA
+
+Looking for the Greater in the Less--Symmetry--Other Allied
+Phenomena--Isomerism--The Orbital Motion of Spheres: Cell-Subdivision--
+The Electric Current--The Greater Universe--A Hint from Astronomy--
+Gravitation--The Ether of Space.
+
+IV.  TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS
+
+Zoellner--Apparitions--Possession--Clairvoyance in Space--Clairvoyance
+in Time--Pisgah Sights of Life's Pageant.
+
+V. CURVED TIME
+
+Time from the Standpoint of Experiment and of Conscious Experience--
+Relativity--The Spoon-Man--The Orbital Movement of Time--Materiality
+the Mirror of Consciousness--Periodicity.
+
+VI. SLEEP AND DREAMS
+
+Sleep--Dreams--Time in Dreams--The Eastern Teaching in regard to Sleep
+and Dreams--Space in Dreams--The Phenomenon of Pause.
+
+
+VII. THE NIGHT SIDE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
+
+The Field of Psychic Research--Modifying the Past--Karma and
+Reincarnation--Colonel De Rochas' Experiments.
+
+VIII. THE EASTERN TEACHING
+
+Oriental Physics and Metaphysics--The Self-Recovered Memory of past
+Births--Release.
+
+IX. THE MYSTICS
+
+Hermes Trismegistus--The Page and the Press--The Ship and its
+Captain--Direct Vision--Plato's Shadow-Watchers--Swedenborg--Man,
+the Space-Eater--The Within and Without--Intuition and Reason--The
+Coil of Life.
+
+X. GENIUS
+
+Immanence--Timelessness--Beyond Good and Evil: Beauty--The Daemonic--
+"A Dream and a Forgetting"--The Play of Brahm.
+
+XI. THE GIFT OF FREEDOM
+
+Concept and Conduct--Selflessness--Humility--Solidarity--Live Openly--
+Non-Resistance to Evil--The Immanent Divine.
+
+
+
+
+
+FOUR-DIMENSIONAL VISTAS
+
+
+
+I THE QUEST OF FREEDOM
+
+
+THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
+
+Expectancy of freedom is the dominant note of to-day. Amid the crash
+of armies and the clash of systems we await some liberating stroke
+which shall release us from the old dreary thralldoms. As Nietzsche
+says, "It would seem as though we had before us, as a reward for all
+our toils, a country still undiscovered, the horizons of which no
+one has yet seen, a beyond to every country and every refuge of the
+ideal that man has ever known, a world so overflowing with beauty,
+strangeness, doubt, terror and divinity, that both our curiosity and
+our lust of possession are frantic with eagerness."
+
+Should a name be demanded for this home of freedom, there are those
+who would unhesitatingly call it _The Fourth Dimension of Space_.
+For such readers as may be ignorant of the amazing content of this
+seemingly meaningless phrase, any summary attempt at enlightenment
+will lead only to deeper mystification. To the question, where and
+what is the fourth dimension, the answer must be, it is here--in us,
+and all about us--in a direction toward which we can never point
+because at right angles to all the directions that we know. Our
+space cannot contain it, because it contains our space. No walls
+separate us from this demesne, not even the walls of our fleshly
+prison; yet we may not enter, even though we are already "there." It
+is the place of dreams, of living dead men: it is _At the Back of
+the North Wind_ and _Behind the Looking Glass_.
+
+So might one go on, piling figure upon figure and paradox upon
+paradox, to little profit. The effective method is the ordered and
+deliberate one; therefore the author asks of his reader the
+endurance of his curiosity pending certain necessary preparations of
+the mind.
+
+
+MIRACLES
+
+Could one of our aviators have landed in ancient Athens, doubtless
+he would have been given a place in the Greek Pantheon, for the old
+idea of a demigod was a man with wings. Why, then, does a flying man
+so little amaze us? Because we know about engines, and the smell of
+gasoline has dulled our sense of the sublime. The living voice of a
+dead man leaves us unterrified if only we can be sure that it comes
+from a phonograph; but let that voice speak to us out of vacancy and
+we fall a prey to the same order of alarm that is felt by a savage
+at the report of a gun that he has never seen.
+
+This illustration very well defines the nature of a miracle: it is a
+manifestation of power new to experience, and counter to the current
+thought of the time, Miracles are therefore always in order, they
+always happen. It is nothing that the sober facts of to-day are more
+marvellous than the fictions of Baron Munchausen, so long as we
+understand them: it is everything that phenomena are multiplying,
+that we are unable to understand. This increasing pressure upon
+consciousness _from a new direction_ has created a need to found
+belief on something firmer than a bottomless gullibility of mind.
+This book is aimed to meet that need by giving the mind the freedom
+of new spaces; but before it can even begin to do so, the reader
+must be brought to see the fallacy of attempting to measure the
+limits of the possible by that faculty known as common sense. And by
+common sense is meant, not the appeal to abstract reason, but to
+concrete experience.
+
+
+THE FAILURE OF COMMON SENSE
+
+Common sense had scarce had its laugh at Bell, and its shout of
+"I told you so!" at poor Langley, when lo! the telephone became the
+world's nervous system, and aeroplanes began to multiply like summer
+flies. To common sense the alchemist's dream of transmuting lead
+into gold seems preposterous, yet in a hundred laboratories radium
+is breaking down into helium, and the new chemistry bids fair to
+turn the time-honored jeer at the alchemists completely upside down.
+A wife whose mind was oriented in the new direction effectually
+silenced her husband's ridicule of what he called her credulity by
+reminding him that when wireless telegraphy was first suggested he
+had exclaimed, "Ah, that, you know, is one of the things that is not
+possible!" He was betrayed by his common sense.
+
+The lessons such things teach us are summed up in the reply of Arago,
+the great savant, to the wife of Daguerre. She asked him if he
+thought her husband was losing his mind because he was trying to
+make permanent the image in a mirror. Arago is said to have answered,
+"He who, outside of pure mathematics, says a thing is impossible,
+speaks without reason."
+
+Common sense neither leads nor lags, but is ever limited to the
+passing moment: the common knowledge of to-day was the mystery and
+enchantment of the day before yesterday, and will be the mere
+commonplace of the day after to-morrow. If common sense can so
+little anticipate the ordinary and orderly advancement of human
+knowledge, it is still less able to take that leap into the dark
+which is demanded of it now. The course of wisdom is therefore to
+place reliance upon reason and intuition, leaving to common sense
+the task of guiding the routine affairs of life, and guiding these
+alone.
+
+
+THE FUNCTION OF SCIENCE
+
+In enlisting the aid of reason in our quest for freedom, we shall be
+following in the footsteps of mathematicians and theoretical
+physicists. In their arduous and unflinching search after truth they
+have attained to a conception of the background of phenomena of far
+greater breadth and grandeur than that of the average religionist of
+to-day. As a mathematician once remarked to a neo-theosophist,
+"Your idea of the ether is a more material one than the materialist's
+own." Science has, however, imposed upon itself its own limitations,
+and in this connection these should be clearly understood.
+
+Science is that knowledge which can be gained by exact observation
+and correct thinking. If science makes use of any methods but these
+it ceases to be itself. Science has therefore nothing to do with
+morals: it gives the suicide his pistol, the surgeon his life-saving
+lance, but neither admonishes nor judges them. It has nothing to do
+with emotion: it exposes the chemistry of a tear, the mechanism of
+laughter; but of sorrow and happiness it has naught to say. It has
+nothing to do with beauty: it traces the movements of the stars, and
+tells of their constitution; but the fact of their singing together,
+and that "such harmony is in immortal souls," it leaves to poet and
+philosopher. The timbre, loudness, pitch, of musical tones, is a
+concern of science; but for this a Beethoven symphony is no better
+than the latest ragtime air from the music halls. In brief, science
+deals only with _phenomena_, and its gift to man is power over his
+material environment.
+
+
+MATHEMATICS
+
+The gift of pure mathematics, on the other hand, is primarily to the
+mind and spirit: the fact that man uses it to get himself out of his
+physical predicaments is more or less by the way. Consider for a
+moment this paradox. Mathematics, the very thing common sense swears
+by and dotes on, contradicts common sense at every turn. Common
+sense balks at the idea of _less than nothing_; yet the _minus_
+quantity, which in one sense is less than nothing in that something
+must be added to it to make it equal to nothing, is a concept
+without which algebra would have to come to a full stop. Again, the
+science of quaternions, or more generally, a vector analysis in
+which the progress of electrical science is essentially involved,
+embraces (explicitly or implicitly) the extensive use of _imaginary_
+or _impossible_ quantities of the earlier algebraists. The very
+words "imaginary" and "impossible" are eloquent of the defeat of
+common sense in dealing with concepts with which it cannot
+practically dispense, for even the negative or imaginary solutions
+of imaginary quantities almost invariably have some physical
+significance. A similar statement might also be made with regard to
+_transcendental_ functions.
+
+Mathematics, then, opens up ever new horizons, and its achievements
+during the past one hundred years give to thought the very freedom
+it seeks. But if science is dispassionate, mathematics is even more
+austere and impersonal. It cares not for teeming worlds and hearts
+insurgent, so long as in the pure clarity of space, relationships
+exist. Indeed, it requires neither time nor space, number nor
+quantity. As the mathematician approaches the limits already
+achieved by study, the colder and thinner becomes the air and the
+fewer the contacts with the affairs of every day. The Promethean
+fire of pure mathematics is perhaps the greatest of all in man's
+catalogue of gifts; but it is not most itself, but least so, when,
+immersed in the manifoldness of phenomenal life, it is made to serve
+purely utilitarian ends.
+
+
+INTUITION
+
+Common sense, immersed in the mere business of living, knows no more
+about life than a fish knows about water. The play of reason upon
+phenomena dissects life, and translates it in terms of inertia. The
+pure logic of mathematics ignores life and disdains its limitations,
+leading away into cold, free regions of its own. Now our desire for
+freedom is not to vibrate in a vacuum, but to live more abundantly.
+_Intuition_ deals with life directly, and introduces us into
+life's own domain: it is related to reason as flame is related to
+heat. All of the great discoveries in science, all of the great
+solutions in mathematics, have been the result of a _flash_ of
+intuition, after long brooding in the mind. _Intuition illumines_.
+Intuition is therefore the light which must guide us into that
+undiscovered country conceded by mathematics, questioned by science,
+denied by common sense--_The Fourth Dimension of Space_.
+
+
+OUR SENSE OF SPACE
+
+Space has been defined as "room to move about." Let us accord to
+this definition the utmost liberty of interpretation. Let us
+conceive of space not alone as room to move ponderable bodies in,
+but as room to think, to feel, to strike out in unimaginable
+directions, to overtake felicities and knowledges unguessed by
+experience and preposterous to common sense. Space is not measurable:
+we attribute dimensionality to space because such is the method of
+the mind; and that dimensionality we attribute to space is
+progressive because progression is a law of the mind. The so-called
+dimensions of space are to space itself as the steps that a climber
+cuts in the face of a cliff are to the cliff itself. They are not
+necessary to the cliff: they are necessary only to the climber.
+Dimensionality is the mind's method of mounting to the idea of the
+infinity of space. When we speak of the fourth dimension, what we
+mean is the fourth stage in the apprehension of that infinity. We
+might as legitimately speak of a fifth dimension, but the
+profitlessness of any discussion of a fifth and higher stages lies
+in the fact that they can be intelligently approached only through
+the fourth, which is still largely unintelligible. The case is like
+that of a man promised an increase of wages after he had worked a
+month, who asks for his second month's pay before he is entitled to
+the first.
+
+
+THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE
+
+Without going deep into the doctrine of the ideality--that is, the
+purely subjective reality--of space, it is easy to show that we have
+arrived at our conception of a space of three dimensions by an
+intellectual process. The sphere of the senses is two-dimensional:
+except for the slight aid afforded by binocular vision, sight gives
+us moving pictures _on a plane_, and touch contacts _surfaces_ only.
+What circumstances, we may ask, have compelled our intellect to
+conceive of _solid_ space? This question has been answered as follows:
+
+"If a child contemplates his hand, he is conscious of its existence
+in a double manner--in the first place by its tangibility, the
+second by its image on the retina of his eye. By repeated groping
+about and touching, the child knows by experience that his hand
+retains the same form and extension through all the variations of
+distance and position under which it is observed, notwithstanding
+that the form and extension of the image on the retina constantly
+change with the different position and distance of his hand in
+respect to his eye. The problem is thus set to the child's
+understanding: how to reconcile to his comprehension the apparently
+contradictory facts of the _invariableness_ of the object together
+with the _variableness_ of its appearance. This is only possible
+within a space of three dimensions, in which, owing to perspective
+distortions and changes, these variations of projection can be
+reconciled with the constancy of the form of a body."
+
+Thus we have come to the idea of a three-dimensional space in order
+to overcome the apparent contradictoriness of facts of sensible
+experience. Should we observe in three-dimensional space
+contradictory facts our reason would be forced to reconcile these
+contradictions, also, and if they could be reconciled by the idea of
+a four-dimensional space our reason would accept this idea without
+cavil. Furthermore, if from our childhood, phenomena had been of
+daily occurrence requiring a space of four or more dimensions for an
+explanation conformable to reason, we should feel ourselves native
+to a space of four or more dimensions.
+
+Poincare, the great French mathematician and physicist, arrived at
+these same conclusions by another route. By a process of
+mathematical reasoning of a sort too technical to be appropriately
+given here, he discovers an order in which our categories range
+themselves naturally, and which corresponds with the points of space;
+and that this order presents itself in the form of what he calls a
+"three circuit distribution board." "Thus the characteristic property
+of space," he says, "that of having three dimensions, is only a
+property of our distribution board, _a property residing, so to speak,
+in human intelligence_." He concludes that a different association
+of ideas would result in a different distribution board, and that
+might be sufficient to endow space with a fourth dimension. He
+concedes that there may be thinking beings, living in our world,
+whose distribution board has four dimensions, and who do
+consequently think in hyperspace.
+
+
+THE NEED OF AN ENLARGED SPACE-CONCEPT
+
+It is the contrariety in phenomena already referred to, that is
+forcing advanced minds to entertain the idea of higher space.
+Mathematical physicists have found that experimental contradictions
+disappear if, instead of referring phenomena to a set of three space
+axes and one time axis of reference, they be referred to a set of
+four interchangeable axes involving four homogeneous co-ordinates.
+In other words, _time_ is made the fourth dimension. Psychic
+phenomena indicate that occasionally, in some individuals,
+the will is capable of producing physical movements for whose
+geometrico-mathematical definition a four-dimensional system of
+co-ordinates is necessary. This is only another step along the road
+which the human mind has always travelled: our conception of the
+cosmos grows more complete and more just at the same time that it
+recedes more and more beneath the surface of appearances.
+
+Far from the Higher Space Hypothesis complicating thought, it
+simplifies by synthesis and co-ordination in a manner analogous to
+that by which plane geometry is simplified when solid geometry
+becomes a subject of study. By immersing the mind in the idea of
+many dimensions, we emancipate it from the idea of dimensionality.
+But the mind moves most readily, as has been said, in ordered
+sequence. Frankly submitting ourselves to this limitation, even
+while recognizing it as such, let us learn such lessons from it as
+we can, serving the illusions that master us until we have made them
+our slaves.
+
+
+
+
+II THE DIMENSIONAL LADDER
+
+
+LEARNING TO THINK IN TERMS OF SPACES
+
+The Reader who is willing to consider the Higher Space Hypothesis
+seriously, who would discover, by its aid, new and profound truths
+closely related to life and conduct, should first of all endeavor to
+arouse in himself a new power of perception. This he will best
+accomplish by learning to discern dimensional sequences, not alone
+in geometry, but in the cosmos and in the natural world. By so doing
+he may erect for himself a veritable Jacob's ladder,
+
+  "Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross."
+
+He should accustom himself to ascend it, step by step, dimension by
+dimension. Then he will learn to trust Emerson's dictum, "Nature
+geometrizes," even in regions where the senses fail him, and the mind
+alone leads on. Much profitable amusement is to be gained by such
+exercises as follow. They are in the nature of a running up and down
+the scales in order to give strength and flexibility to a new set of
+mental fingers. Learning to think in terms of spaces contributes to
+our emancipation from the tyranny of space.
+
+
+FROM THE COSMOS TO THE CORPUSCLE
+
+By way of a beginning, proceed, by successive stages, from the
+contemplation of the greatest thing conceivable to the contemplation
+of the most minute, and note the space sequences revealed by this
+shifting of the point of view.
+
+The greatest thing we can form any conception of is the starry
+firmament made familiar to the mind through the study of astronomy.
+No limit to this vastitude has ever been assigned. Since the
+beginning of recorded time, the earth, together with the other
+planets and the sun, has been speeding through interstellar space at
+the rate of 300,000,000 miles a year, without meeting or passing a
+single star. A ray of light, travelling with a velocity so great as
+to be scarcely measurable within the diameter of the earth's orbit,
+takes years to reach even the nearest star, centuries to reach those
+more distant. Viewed in relation to this universe of suns, our
+particular sun and all its satellites--of which the earth is
+one--shrinks to a point (a _physical_ point, so to speak--not
+geometrical one).
+
+The mind recoils from these immensities: let us forsake them, then,
+for more familiar spaces, and consider the earth in its relation to
+the sun. Our planet appears as a _moving_ point, tracing out a
+_line_--a _one-space_--its path around the sun. Now let us remove
+ourselves in imagination only far enough from the earth for human
+beings thereon to appear as minute moving things, in the semblance,
+let us say, of insects infesting an apple. It is clear that from
+this point of view these beings have a freedom of movement in their
+"space" (the surface of the earth), of which the larger unit is not
+possessed; for while the earth itself can follow only a _line_, its
+inhabitants are free to move in the two dimensions of the surface of
+the earth.
+
+Abandoning our last coign of vantage, let us descend in imagination
+and mingle familiarly among men. We now perceive that these
+creatures which from a distance appeared as though flat upon the
+earth's surface, are in reality erect at right angles to its plane,
+and that they are endowed with the power to move their members in
+_three dimensions_. Indeed, man's ability to traverse the surface
+of the earth is wholly dependent upon his power of three-dimensional
+movement. Observe that with each transfer of our attention from
+greater units to smaller, we appear to be dealing with a power of
+movement in an additional dimension.
+
+Looking now in thought not _at_ the body of man, but _within_ it, we
+apprehend an ordered universe immensely vast in proportion to that
+physical ultimate we name the electron, as is the firmament immensely
+vast in proportion to a single star. It has been suggested that in
+the infinitely minute of organic bodies there is a power of movement
+in a _fourth_ dimension. If so, such four-dimensional movement may
+be the proximate cause of the phenomenon of _growth_--of those
+chemical changes and renewals whereby an organism is enabled to
+expand in three-dimensional space, just as by a three-dimensional
+power of movement (the act of walking) man is able to traverse his
+two-dimensional space--the surface of the earth.
+
+
+--AND BEYOND
+
+Proceed still further. Behind such organic change--assumed to be
+four-dimensional--there is the determination of some _will-to-live_,
+which manifests itself to consciousness as thought and as desire.
+Into these the idea of space does not enter: we think of them as in
+_time_. But if there are developments of other dimensions of space,
+thought and emotion may themselves be discovered to have space
+relations; that is, they may find expression in the forms of _higher_
+spaces. Thus is opened up one of those rich vistas in which the
+subject of the fourth dimension abounds, but into which we
+can only glance in passing. If there are such higher-dimensional
+_thought-forms_, our normal consciousness, limited to a world of
+three dimensions, can apprehend only their three-dimensional aspects,
+and these not simultaneously, but successively--that is, in _time_.
+According to this view, any unified series of _actions_--for example,
+the life of an individual, or of a group--would represent the
+straining, so to speak, of a thought-form through our _time_, as the
+bodies subject to these actions would represent its straining
+through our space.
+
+
+EVOLUTION AS SPACE-CONQUEST
+
+Evolution is a struggle for, and a conquest of, space; for evolution,
+as the word implies, is a _drawing out_ of what is inherent from
+latency into objective reality, or in other words into spatial--and
+temporal--extension.
+
+This struggle for space, by means of which the birth and growth of
+organisms is achieved, is the very texture of life, the plot of
+every drama. Cells subdivide; micro-organisms war on one another;
+plants contend for soil, light, moisture; flowers cunningly suborn
+the bee to bring about their nuptials; animals wage deadly warfare
+in their rivalry to bring more hungry animals into a space-hungry
+world. Man is not exempt from this law of the jungle. Nations
+intrigue and fight for land--of which wealth is only the symbol--and
+a nation's puissance is measured by its power to push forward into
+the territory of its neighbor. The self-same impulse drives the
+individual. One measure of the difference between men in the matter
+of efficiency is the amount of space each can command: one has a
+house and grounds in some locality where every square inch has an
+appreciable value; another some fractional part of a lodging house
+in the slums. When this bloodless, but none the less deadly, contest
+for space becomes acute, as in the congested quarters of great cities,
+man's ingenuity is taxed to devise effective ways of augmenting his
+_space-potency_, and he expands in a vertical direction. This
+third-dimensional extension, typified in the tunnel and in the
+skyscraper, is but the latest phase of a conquest of space which
+began with the line of the pioneer's trail through an untracked
+wilderness.
+
+
+DIMENSIONAL SEQUENCES
+
+Not only does nature everywhere geometrize, but she does so in a
+particular way, in which we discover dimensional sequences. Consider
+the transformation of solid, liquid, gas, from one to another, under
+the influence of heat. A solid, set in free motion, can follow only
+a _line_--as is the case of a thrown ball. A liquid has the added
+power of lateral extension. Its tendency, when intercepted, is to
+spread out in the two dimensions of a _plane_--as in the case of a
+griddle cake; while a gas expands universally in all directions, as
+shown by a soap-bubble. It is a reasonable inference that the fourth
+state of matter, the corpuscular, is affiliated to some
+four-dimensional manner of extension, and that there may be states
+beyond this, involving even higher development of space.
+
+Next glance at the vegetable kingdom. The seed, a _point_, generates
+a _line_ system, in stem, branches, twigs, from which depend _planes_
+in the form of leaves and flowers, and from these come fruit,
+_solids_.
+
+  "The point, the line, the surface and the sphere,
+  In seed, stem, leaf and fruit appear."
+
+A similar sequence may be noted within the body: the _line_-network
+of the nerves conveys the message of sensation from the _surface_ of
+the body to some center in the _solid_, of the brain--and thence to
+the Silent Thinker, "he who is without and within," or in terms of
+our hypothesis, "he who dwells in higher space."
+
+
+MAN THE GEOMETER
+
+When man essays the role of creator he cannot do otherwise than
+follow similar sequences: it is easy to discern dimensional
+progression in the products of man's ingenuity and skill. Consider,
+for example, the evolution of a building from its inception to its
+completion. It exists first of all in the mind of the architect, and
+there it is indubitably higher-spatial, for he can interpenetrate
+and examine every part, and he can consider it all at once, viewing
+it simultaneously from without and from within, just as one would be
+able to do in a space of four dimensions. He begins to give his idea
+physical embodiment by making with a pencil-_point, lines_ on a
+_plane_ (a piece of paper), the third dimension being represented
+by means of the other two. Next (if he is careful and wise) he makes
+a three-dimensional model. From the architect's drawings the engineer
+establishes his points, lays out his angles, and runs his lines upon
+the site itself. The mason follows, and with his footing courses
+makes ponderable and permanent the lines of the engineer. These
+lines become in due course walls--vertical planes. Floors and
+roofs--horizontal planes--follow, until some portion of
+three-dimensional space has been enclosed.
+
+Substantially the same sequence holds, whatever the kind of building
+or the character of the construction--whether a steel-framed
+skyscraper or a wooden shanty. A line system, represented by columns
+and girders in the one case, and by studs and rafters in the other,
+becomes, by overlay or interposition, a system of planes, so
+assembled and correlated as to define a solid.
+
+With nearly everything of man's creating--be it a bureau or a
+battleship--the process is as above described. First, a pattern to
+scale; next, an actual linear framework; then planes defining a solid.
+Consider almost any of the industries practiced throughout the ages:
+they may be conceived of thus in terms of dimensions; for example,
+those ancient ones of weaving and basket making. _Lines_ (threads in
+the one case, rushes in the other) are wrought into _planes_ to
+clothe a body or to contain a burden. Or think, if you choose, of
+the modern industry of book-making, wherein types are assembled,
+impressed upon sheets of paper, and these bound into volumes--
+_points, lines, planes, solids_. The book in turn becomes the unit
+of another dimensional order, in the library whose serried shelves
+form lines, which, combined into planes, define the lateral limits
+of the room.
+
+
+HIGHER--AND HIGHEST--SPACE
+
+These are truisms. What have they to do, it may be asked, with the
+idea of _higher_ spaces? They have everything to do with it, for in
+achieving the enclosure of any portion of solid space the limit of
+known dimensions has been reached without having come to any end.
+More dimensions--higher spaces--are required to account for higher
+things. All of the products of man's ingenuity are inanimate except
+as he himself animates them. They remain as they were made, machines,
+not organisms. They have no inherent life of their own, no power of
+growth and renewal. In this they differ from animate creation
+because the highest achievement of the creative faculty in man in a
+mechanical way lacks the life principle possessed by the plant. And
+as the most perfect machine is inferior in this respect to the
+humblest flower that grows, so is the highest product of the
+vegetable kingdom inferior to man himself, the maker of the machine;
+for he can reflect upon his own and the world's becoming, while the
+plant can only become.
+
+What is the reason for these differences of power and function?
+According to the Higher Space Hypothesis they are due to varying
+potencies of movement in the secret causeways and corridors of space.
+The higher functions of consciousness--volition, emotion,
+intellection--may be in some way correlated with the higher powers
+of numbers, and with the corresponding higher developments of space.
+Thus would the difference between physics and metaphysics become a
+difference of degree and not of kind. Evolution is to be conceived
+of as a continuous pushing back of the boundary between
+representation and reality, or as a conquest of space. We may
+conceive of space as of an infinite number of dimensions, and of
+consciousness as a moving--or rather as an expanding--point,
+embracing this infinity, involving worlds, powers, knowledges,
+felicities, within itself in everlasting progression.
+
+
+
+
+III PHYSICAL PHENOMENA
+
+
+LOOKING FOR THE GREATER IN THE LESS
+
+After the assured way in which the author has conducted the reader
+repeatedly up and down the dimensional ladder, it may be a surprise
+to learn that physical phenomena offer no irrefragable evidences of
+hyper-dimensionality. We could not think in higher space if
+consciousness were limited to three dimensions. The mathematical
+reality of higher space is never in question: the higher dimensions
+are as valid as the lower, but the hyper-dimensionality of matter is
+still unproven. Man's ant-like efforts to establish this as a truth
+have thus far been vain.
+
+Lest this statement discourage the reader at the very outset, he
+should understand the reason for such failure. We are _embedded_ in
+our own space, and if that space be embedded in higher space, how are
+we going to discover it? If space is curved, how are we going to
+measure its curvature? Our efforts to do so may be compared to
+measuring the distance between the tips of a bent bow by measuring
+along the bow instead of along the string.
+
+Imagine a scientifically-minded threadworm to inhabit a page of
+Euclid's solid geometry: the evidences of three-dimensionality are
+there, in the very diagrams underneath his eyes; but you could not
+_show_ him a solid--the flat page could not contain it, any more
+than our space can contain a form of four dimensions. You could only
+say to him, "These lines _represent_ a solid." He would have to
+depend on his _faith_ for belief and not on that "knowledge gained
+by exact observation and correct thinking" in which alone the
+scientist finds a sure ground for understanding.
+
+It is an axiom of science never to look outside three-space horizons
+for an understanding of phenomena when these can logically be
+accounted for within those horizons. Now because, on the Higher
+Space Hypothesis, each space is the container of all phenomena of
+its own order, the futility, for practical purposes, of going
+outside is at once apparent. The highly intelligent threadworm
+neither knows nor cares that the point of intersection of two lines
+in his diagram _represents_ a point in a space to which he is a
+stranger. The point is there, on his page: it is what he calls a
+_fact_. "Why raise" (he says) "these puzzling and merely academic
+questions? Why attempt to turn the universe completely upside down?"
+
+But though no _proofs_ of hyper-dimensionality have been found in
+nature, there are equally no contradictions of it, and by using a
+method not inductive, but deductive, the Higher Space Hypothesis
+is plausibly confirmed. Nature affords a sufficient number of
+_representations_ of four-dimensional forms and movements to justify
+their consideration.
+
+
+SYMMETRY
+
+Let us first flash the light of our hypothesis upon an all but
+universal characteristic of living forms, yet one of the most
+inexplicable--_symmetry_.
+
+Animal life exhibits the phenomenon of the right-and left-handed
+symmetry of solids. This is exemplified in the human body, wherein
+the parts are symmetrical with relation to the axial _plane_.
+Another more elementary type of symmetry is characteristic of the
+vegetable kingdom. A leaf in its general contour is symmetrical:
+here the symmetry is about a _line_--the midrib. This type of
+symmetry is readily comprehensible, for it involves simply a
+revolution through 180 degrees. Write a word on a piece of paper and
+quickly fold it along the line of writing so that the wet ink
+repeats the pattern, and you have achieved the kind of symmetry
+represented in a leaf.
+
+With the symmetry of solids, or symmetry with relation to an axial
+_plane_, no such simple movement as the foregoing suffices to
+produce or explain it, because symmetry about a plane implies
+_four-dimensional_ movement. It is easy to see why this must be so.
+In order to achieve symmetry in any space--that is, in any given
+number of dimensions--there must be revolution in the next higher
+space: one more dimension is necessary. To make the (two-dimensional)
+ink figure symmetrical, it had to be folded over _in the third
+dimension_. The revolution took place about the figure's _line_ of
+symmetry, and in a _higher_ dimension. In _three_-dimensional
+symmetry (the symmetry of solids) revolution must occur about the
+figure's _plane_ of symmetry, and in a higher--i.e., the _fourth_
+dimension. Such a movement we can reason about with mathematical
+definiteness: we see the result in the right- and left-handed
+symmetry of solids, but we cannot picture the movement ourselves
+because it involves a space of which our senses fail to give any
+account.
+
+Now could it be shown that the two-dimensional symmetry observed in
+nature is the result of a three-dimensional movement, the right-and
+left-handed symmetry of solids would by analogy be the result of a
+_four_-dimensional movement. Such revolution (about a plane) would
+be easily achieved, natural and characteristic, in four space, just
+as the analogous movement (about a line) is easy, natural, and
+characteristic, in our space of three dimensions.
+
+
+OTHER ALLIED PHENOMENA
+
+In the mirror image of a solid we have a representation of what
+would result from a four-dimensional revolution, the surface of the
+mirror being the plane about which the movement takes place. If such
+a change of position were effected in the constituent parts of a
+body as a mirror image of it _represents_, the body would have
+undergone a revolution in the fourth dimension. Now two varieties of
+tartaric acid crystallize in forms bearing the relation to one
+another of object to mirror image. It would seem more reasonable to
+explain the existence of these two identical, but reversed,
+varieties of crystal, by assuming the revolution of a single variety
+in the fourth dimension, than by any other method.
+
+There are two forms of sugar found in honey, dextrose and levulose.
+They are similar in chemical constitution, but the one is the
+reverse of the other when examined by polarized light--that is, they
+rotate the plane of polarization of a ray of light in opposite ways.
+If their atoms are conceived to have the power of motion in the
+fourth dimension, it would be easy to understand why they differ.
+Certain snails present the same characteristics as these two forms
+of sugar. Some are coiled to the right and others to the left; and
+it is remarkable that, like dextrose and levulose, their juices are
+optically the reverse of each other when studied by polarized light.
+
+Revolution in the fourth dimension would also explain the change in
+a body from producing a right-handed, to producing a left-handed,
+polarization of light.
+
+
+ISOMERISM
+
+In chemistry the molecules of a compound are assumed to consist of
+the atoms of the elements contained in the compound. These atoms are
+supposed to be at certain distances from one another. It sometimes
+happens that two compound substances differ in their chemical or
+physical properties, or both, even though they have like chemical
+elements in the same proportion. This phenomenon is called isomerism,
+and the generally accepted explanation is that the atoms in isomeric
+molecules are differently arranged, or grouped, in space. It is
+difficult to imagine how atoms, alike in number, nature, and
+relative proportion, can be so grouped as somehow to produce
+compounds with different properties, particularly as in
+three-dimensional space four is the greatest number of points whose
+mutual distances, six in number, are all independent of each other.
+In four-dimensional space, however, the _ten_ equal distances
+between any two of _five_ points are geometrically independent, thus
+greatly augmenting the number and variety of possible arrangements
+of atoms.
+
+This just escapes being the kind of proof demanded by science. If
+the independence of all the possible distances between the atoms of
+a molecule is absolutely required by theoretical chemical research,
+then science is really compelled, in dealing with molecules of more
+than four atoms, to make use of the idea of a space of more than
+three dimensions.
+
+
+THE ORBITAL MOTION OF SPHERES: CELL SUB-DIVISION
+
+There is in nature another representation of hyper-dimensionality
+which, though difficult to demonstrate, is too interesting and
+significant to be omitted here.
+
+Imagine a helix, intersected, in its vertical dimension, by a moving
+plane. If necessary to assist the mind, suspend a spiral spring
+above a pail of water, then raise the pail until the coils, one
+after another, become immersed. The spring would represent the helix,
+and the surface of the water the moving plane. Concentrating
+attention upon this surface, you would see a point--the elliptical
+cross-section of the wire where it intersected the plane--moving
+round and round in a circle. Next conceive of the wire itself as a
+lesser helix of many convolutions, and repeat the experiment. The
+point of intersection would then continually return upon its own
+track in a series of minute loops forming those lesser loops, which,
+moving circle-wise, registered the involvement of the helix in the
+plane.
+
+It is easy to go on imagining complicated structures of the nature
+of the spiral, and to suppose also that these structures are
+distinguishable from each other at every section. If we think of the
+intersection of these with the rising surface, as the atoms, or
+physical units, of a plane universe, we shall have a world of
+apparent motion, with bodies moving harmoniously amongst one another,
+each a cross-section of some part of an unchanging and unmoving
+three-dimensional entity.
+
+Now augment the whole by an additional dimension--raise everything
+one space. The helix of many helices would become four-dimensional,
+and superficial space would change to solid space: each tiny circle
+of intersection would become a sphere of the same diameter,
+describing, instead of loops, helices. Here we would be among
+familiar forms, describing familiar motions: the forms, for example,
+of the earth and the moon and of their motion about the sun; of the
+atom, as we imagine it, the molecule and the cell. For is not the
+sphere, or ovoid, the unit form of nature; and is not the spiral
+vortex its characteristic motion, from that of the nebula in the sky
+to the electron in the atom? Thus, on the hypothesis that our space
+is traversing four-dimensional space, and that the forms of our
+space are cross-sections of four-dimensional forms, the unity and
+harmony of nature would be accounted for in a remarkably simple
+manner.
+
+The above exercise of the imagination is a good preparation for the
+next demand upon it. Conceive a dichotomous tree--one that always
+divides into two branches--to pass through a plane. We should have,
+as a plane section, a circle of changing size, which would elongate
+and divide into two circles, each of which would do the same. This
+reminds us of the segmentation of cell life observed under the
+microscope, as though a four-dimensional figure were registering its
+passage through our space.
+
+
+THE ELECTRIC CURRENT
+
+Hinton conceived of an electric current as a four-dimensional vortex.
+He declared that on the Higher Space Hypothesis the revolution of
+the ether would yield the phenomenon of the electric current. The
+reader is referred to Hinton's book, _The Fourth Dimension_, for an
+extended development of this idea. What follows is a brief summary
+of his argument. First, he examines the characteristics of a vortex
+in a three-dimensional fluid. Then he conceives of what such a
+vortex would be in a four-dimensional medium of analogous properties.
+The whirl would be about a _plane_, and the contour of this plane
+would correspond to the ends of the axis line in the former vortex;
+and as before, the vortex would extend to the boundary. Every
+electric current forms a closed circuit: this is equivalent to the
+hyper-vortex having its ends in the boundary of the hyper-fluid. The
+vortex with a _surface_ as its axis, therefore, affords a geometric
+image of a closed circuit.
+
+Hinton supposes a conductor to be a body which has the property
+of serving as a terminal abutment to such a hyper-vortex as has
+been described. The conception that he forms of a closed current,
+therefore, is of a vortex sheet having its _edge_ along the
+circuit of the conducting wire. The whole wire would then be like
+the centers on which a spindle turns in three-dimensional space,
+and any interruption of the continuity of the wire would produce
+a _tension_ in place of a continuous revolution. The phenomena
+of electricity--polarity, induction, and the like--are of the nature
+of the stress and strain of a medium, but one possessing properties
+unlike those of ordinary matter. The phenomena can be explained in
+terms of higher space. If Hinton's hypothesis be the true explanation,
+the universality of electro-magnetic action would again point to the
+conclusion that our three-dimensional world is _superficial_--the
+surface, that is, of a four-dimensional universe.
+
+
+THE GREATER UNIVERSE
+
+This practically exhausts the list of accepted and accredited
+indications of hyper-dimensionality in our physical environment. But
+if the collective human consciousness is moving into the fourth
+dimension, such indications are bound to multiply out of all measure.
+It should be remembered that in Franklin's day electricity was
+manifest only in the friction of surfaces and in the thunderbolt.
+To-day all physical phenomena, in their last analysis, are considered
+to be electrical. The world is not different, but perception has
+evolved, and is evolving.
+
+There is another field, in which some of our ablest minds are
+searching for evidences of the curvature of space, the field of
+astronomy and astro-physics. But into this the layman hesitates to
+enter because the experts themselves have found no common ground of
+understanding. The ether of space is a battlefield strewn with dead
+and dying hypotheses; gravitation, like multiplication, is vexation;
+the very nature of time, form and movement is under vivid discussion,
+in connection with what is known as the Theory of Relativity.
+
+Notwithstanding these counter-currents of speculation, which should
+make the wise man speak smilingly of his wisdom, this summary
+remains incomplete without a reference to the pressure of higher
+space upon those adventurous minds that essay to deal with the
+profound problems of the greater universe, and a statement of the
+reasons for their feeling this pressure. These reasons are well
+suggested by Professor B.G. Harrison, in his _Popular Astronomy_. He
+says: "With the idea of a universe of finite dimensions there is the
+obvious difficulty of the beyond. The truth is that a universe of
+finite proportions is equally difficult to realize as one of
+infinite extent. Perhaps the nearest analogy to infinity that we can
+understand lies in our conception of a closed curve. It seems easier
+to imagine the endless movement of a sphere in a circular path than
+the case of one travelling in a straight line. Possibly this analogy
+may apply in some way to fourth-dimensional space, but the manner of
+its application is certainly not easy to understand. If we would
+imagine that all co-ordinates of time and space were curved, and
+eventually return to the same point, it might bring the ultimate
+comprehension one degree nearer."
+
+
+A HINT FROM ASTRONOMY
+
+The physical evidence that our space is thus curved in higher space,
+some have considered astronomy to furnish in what is called the
+"negative parallax" of certain distant stars. This cannot be passed
+by, though it is too deeply involved with the probable error of the
+observers themselves to be considered more than an interesting fact
+in this connection. Every one knows that the difference of angle
+under which an object is seen from two standpoints is called its
+parallax. The parallax of the stars--and the consequent knowledge of
+their distance--is obtained by observing them from opposite points
+of the earth's orbit around the sun. When a star is within measurable
+distance, these angles are acute, and the lines from the star to the
+earth at opposite sides of its orbit converge, therefore. But when
+these lines, as sometimes happens, appear to be _divergent_, the
+result is called a _negative_ parallax, and is explainable by higher
+space relationships. Obviously, the divergence of the lines would
+indicate that the object lies _behind_ the observer instead of in
+front of him. This anomaly can be explained by the curvature of space
+in the fourth dimension. If space is so curved, the path of light
+itself is curved also, and a man--were his vision immeasurably keen,
+not to say telescopic--could see the back of his own head! It is not
+worth while to give this question of negative parallax too much
+importance, by reason of the probability of error, but in this
+connection it should be stated that there appears to be an undue
+number of negative parallaxes recorded.
+
+
+GRAVITATION
+
+Gravitation remains a puzzle to science. The tendency of modern
+physics is to explain all material phenomena in terms of electrons
+and the ether, but the attempt to account for gravitation in this
+way is attended with difficulties. In order to cope with these, it
+seems necessary to assume that our universe is only a portion of a
+greater universe. This assumption readily lends itself to the
+conception of our universe as a three-dimensional meeting place of
+two portions of a universe of four dimensions--that is, its
+conception as a "higher" surface. This is a fundamental postulate of
+higher space speculation.
+
+One hypothesis advanced to explain gravitation assumes the existence
+of a constant hydrostatic pressure transmitted through the ether. A
+steady flow of ether into every electron in a gravitating system of
+bodies would give rise to forces of attraction between them, varying
+inversely as the square of the distance, according to Newton's law.
+But in order to avoid the conception of the continual destruction
+and creation of ether, it is necessary to assume a steady flow
+through every electron between our universe and the greater universe
+of which it is assumed to form a part Now because the electrons, in
+order to receive this flow, must lie on the boundary of this greater
+universe, the latter must be four-dimensional. Every electron, in
+other words, must be the starting point of a pathway into--and a
+terminal point out of--four-dimensional space. Here we have another
+familiar higher space concept.
+
+
+THE ETHER OF SPACE
+
+The ether of space, because it has at last found entrance, must be
+given a grudging hospitality in these pages, even though the
+mysterious stranger prove but a ghost. The Relativists would have it
+that with the acceptance of their point of view the ether may be
+eliminated; but if they take away the ether, they must give us
+something in its stead. In whatever way the science of the future
+disposes of this problem, it must take into account the fact of
+light transmission. On the theory that the ether is an elastic solid
+of amazing properties, in which the light waves vibrate _transversely_
+to their direction, it assists the mind to think of the ether as
+four-dimensional, because then a light wave would be a superficial
+disturbance of the medium--superficial, but three-dimensional, as
+must needs be the case with the surface of a four-dimensional solid.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This search for evidences of hyper-dimensionality in the universe
+accessible to our senses is like looking, not for a needle in a
+haystack, but for a haystack in a needle--for the greater in the less.
+From the purely physical evidences, all that can with certainty be
+said is that the hypothesis is not inconsistent with the facts of
+science or its laws; that it is being verified and rendered more
+probable by the investigations of science; that it is applicable to
+the description or explanation of all the observed phenomena, and
+assigns a cause fully adequate to have produced them.
+
+Now there is an order of phenomena that we call psychic. Because
+they are phenomenal they cannot occur outside of time and space
+altogether; because they are psychic they defy explanation in terms
+of the space and time of every-day life. Let us next examine these
+in the light of our hypothesis.
+
+
+
+
+IV  TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS
+
+ZOeLLNER
+
+In the year 1877, Johann Friedrich Zoellner, professor of physics and
+astronomy at the University of Leipsic, undertook to prove that
+certain (so-called) psychic phenomena were susceptible of explanation
+on the hypothesis of a four-dimensional space. He used as
+illustrations the phenomena induced by the medium Henry Slade. By
+the irony of events, Slade was afterward arrested and imprisoned for
+fraud, in England. This fact so prejudiced the public mind against
+Zoellner that his name became a word of scorn, and the fourth dimension
+a synonym for what is fatuous and false. Zoellner died of it, but
+since his death public opinion has undergone a change. There is a
+great and growing interest in everything pertaining to the fourth
+dimension, and belief in that order of phenomena upon which Zoellner
+based his deductions is supported by evidence at once voluminous and
+impressive.
+
+It is unnecessary to go into the question of the genuineness of the
+particular phenomena which Zoellner witnessed. His conclusions are
+alone important, since they apply equally to other manifestations,
+whose authenticity has never been successfully impeached. Zoellner's
+reasoning with regard to certain psychic phenomena is somewhat along
+the following lines.
+
+
+APPARITIONS
+
+_The intrusion (as an apparition) of a person or thing into a
+completely enclosed portion of three-space; or contrariwise, the
+exit (as an evanishment) out of such a space_.
+
+Because we lack the sense of four-dimensional space, we must here
+have recourse to analogy, and assume three-dimensional space to be
+the unsensed higher region encompassing a world of two dimensions,
+To a hypothetical flat-man of a two-space, any portion of his plane
+surrounded by an unbroken line would constitute an enclosure. Were
+he confined within it, escape would be impossible by any means known
+to him. Had he the ability to move in the third dimension, however,
+he could rise, pass over the enclosing line without disturbing it,
+and descend on the other side. The moment he forsook the plane he
+would disappear from two-dimensional space. Such a disappearance
+would constitute an occult phenomenon in a world of two dimensions.
+
+Correspondingly, an evanishment from any three-dimensional
+enclosure--such as a room with locked doors and windows--might be
+effected by means of a movement in the fourth dimension. Because a
+body would disappear from our perception the moment it forsook our
+space, such a disappearance would be a mystery; it would constitute
+an occult phenomenon. The thing would be no more mysterious, however,
+to a consciousness embracing four dimensions within its ken, than
+the transfer of an object from the inside to the outside of a plane
+figure without crossing its linear boundary is mysterious to us.
+
+
+POSSESSION
+
+_The temporary possession of a person's body, or some member of
+that body, by an alien will, as exemplified in automatic writing and
+obsession_.
+
+It would doubtless amaze the scientifically orthodox to know how
+many people habitually and successfully practice the dubious art of
+automatic writing--not mediums, so-called, but people of refinement
+and intelligence. Although the messages received in this way may
+emanate from the subconscious mind of the performer, there is
+evidence to indicate that they come sometimes from an intelligence
+discarnate, or from a person remote from the recipient in space.
+
+If such is indeed the case, if the will is extraneous, how does it
+possess itself of the nerves and muscles of the hand of the writer?
+The Higher Space Hypothesis is of assistance here. It is only
+necessary to remember that from the fourth dimension the interior of
+a solid is as much exposed as the interior of a plane figure is
+exposed from the region of the third dimension. A four-dimensional
+being would experience no difficulty, under suitable conditions, in
+possessing itself of any part of the bodily mechanism of another.
+
+The same would hold true in cases of possession and obsession; for
+if the bastion of the hand can thus be captured, so also may the
+citadel of the brain. Certain familiar forms of hypnotism are not
+different from obsession, the hypnotizer using the brain and body of
+his subject as though they were his own. All unconsciously to himself,
+he has called into play four-dimensional mechanics. Many cases of
+so-called dual personality are more easily explicable as possession
+by an alien will than on the less credible hypothesis that the
+character, habits, and language of a person can change utterly in a
+moment of time.
+
+
+CLAIRVOYANCE IN SPACE
+
+_Vision at a distance and the exercise of a superior power of sight_.
+
+Clairvoyance in space is of various kinds and degrees. Sometimes it
+consists in the perception of super-physical phenomena--the
+unfurling of a strange and wonderful land; and again it appears to
+be a higher power of ordinary vision, a kind of seeing to which the
+opacity of solids offers no impediment, or one involving spatial
+distances too great and too impeded for normal physical vision to be
+effective.
+
+That clairvoyance which consists in the ability to perceive not
+alone the superficies of things as ordinary vision perceives them,
+but their interiors as well, is analogous to the power given by the
+X-ray, by means of which, on a fluorescent screen, a man may behold
+the beating of his own heart. But, if the reports of trained
+clairvoyants are to be believed, there is this difference:
+everything appears to them without the distortions due to perspective,
+objects being seen as though they were inside and not outside of the
+perceiving organ, or as though the observer were in the object
+perceived; or in all places at the same time.
+
+Our analogy makes all this intelligible. To the flat-man,
+clairvoyance in space would consist in that power of perception
+which we exercise in reference to his plane. From the third
+dimension the boundaries of plane figures offer no impediment
+to the view of their interiors, and they themselves in no way
+impede our vision of surrounding objects. If we assume that
+clairvoyance in space is the perception of the things of our world
+from the region of the fourth dimension, the phenomena exactly
+conform to the demands of our analogy. It is no more difficult
+for a four-dimensional intelligence to understand the appearance
+or disappearance of a body in a completely closed room, or the
+withdrawal of an orange from its skin, without cutting or breaking
+that skin, than it is for us to see the possibility of taking up a
+pencil point from the center of a circle and putting it down outside.
+We are under no compulsion to draw a line across the circumference
+of the circle in order to enter or leave it. Moreover, the volume of
+our sensible universe embraced in the clairvoyant's field of view
+will increase in the same way that a balloonist's view increases in
+area as he rises above the surface of the earth. To account for
+clairvoyant vision at a distance, it is of course necessary to posit
+some perceptive organ other than the eye, but the fact that in
+trance the eyes are closed, itself demands this assumption.
+
+
+CLAIRVOYANCE IN TIME
+
+_The perception of a past event as in process of occurring, or the
+prevision of something which comes to pass later_.
+
+No mechanistic explanation will serve to account for this order of
+clairvoyance since it is inextricably involved in the mystery of
+consciousness itself. Yet our already overworked analogy can perhaps
+cast a little light even here.
+
+To the flat-man, the third dimension of objects passing through his
+plane translates itself to his experience into _time_. Were he
+capable of rising in the positive direction of the third dimension,
+he would have pre-vision, because he would be cognizant of that
+which had not yet intersected his plane: by sinking in the negative
+direction, he would have post-vision, because he could re-cognize
+that which had already passed.
+
+Now there are excellent reasons, other than those based on analogy,
+that the fourth-dimensional aspect of things may manifest itself to
+our ordinary experience, not as spatial extension, but as temporal
+change. Then, if we conceive of clairvoyance as a transcending by
+consciousness of our three-dimensional space, prevision and
+post-vision would be logically possible as corresponding to the
+positive and negative of the fourth dimension. This may be made
+clearer by the aid of a homely illustration.
+
+
+PISGAH SIGHTS OF LIFE'S PAGEANT
+
+Suppose you are standing on a street corner, watching a procession
+pass. You see the pageant as a sequence of objects and individuals
+appearing into view near by and suddenly, and disappearing in the
+same manner. This would represent our ordinary waking consciousness
+of what goes on in the world round about. Now imagine that you walk
+up the street in a direction opposite to that in which the
+procession is moving. You then rapidly pass in review a portion of
+the procession which had not yet arrived at the point you were a few
+moments before. This would correspond to the seeing of something
+before it "happened," and would represent the positive aspect of
+clairvoyance in time--prevision. Were you to start from your
+original position, and moving in the direction in which the
+procession was passing, overtake it at some lower street corner, you
+could witness the thing you had already seen. This would represent
+post-vision--clairvoyance of the past.
+
+A higher type of clairvoyance would be represented by the sweep of
+vision possible from a balloon. From that place of vantage the
+procession would be seen, not as a sequence, but simultaneously, and
+could be traced from its formation to its dispersal. Past, present
+and future would be merged in one.
+
+It is true that this explanation raises more questions than it
+answers: to account in this way for a marvel, a greater marvel must
+be imagined--that of transport out of one's own "space." The whole
+subject bristles with difficulties, not the least of which is that
+even to conceive of such a thing as prevision all our old ideas
+about time must be recast. This is being done in the Principle of
+Relativity, a subject which may appropriately engage our attention
+next.
+
+
+
+
+V  CURVED TIME
+
+
+TIME FROM THE STANDPOINT OF EXPERIMENT AND OF CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE
+
+In some moment of "sudden light" what one of us has not been able to
+say, with Rossetti,
+
+    "I have been here before,
+    But when or how I cannot tell."
+
+Are such strange hauntings of our House of Life due to the cyclic
+return of time? Perhaps,--but what is time?
+
+Suppose some one should ask you, "What is an hour?" Your answer
+might be, "It is the interval marked off by the clock-hand between 1
+and 2." "But what if your clock is running down or speeding up?" To
+this you would probably reply, "The clock is set and corrected by
+the earth, the sun and the stars, which are constant in their
+movements." _But they are not_. The earth is known to be running slow,
+by reason of tide friction, and this is likely to continue until it
+will revolve on its axis, not once a day, but once a year,
+presenting always the same face to the sun.
+
+We can only measure time by _uniform_ motion. Observe the vicious
+circle. Uniform motion means the covering of equal spaces in equal
+times. But how are we to determine our equal times? Ultimately we
+have no other criterion save the uniform motion of the clock-hand or
+the star dial. The very expressions, "uniform motion," "equal times,"
+beg the whole question of the nature of time.
+
+Let us then, in this predicament, consider time not from the
+standpoint of experiment, but of conscious experience--what Bergson
+calls "real duration."
+
+Every point along the line of memory, of conscious experience, has
+been traced out by that unresting stylus we call "the present moment."
+The question of its rate of motion we will not raise, as it is one
+with which we have found ourselves impotent to deal. We believe on
+the best of evidence that the conscious experience of others is
+conditioned like our own. For better understanding let us have
+recourse to a homely analogy: let us think of these more or less
+parallel lines of individual experience in the semblance of the
+strands of a skein of flax. Now if, _at the present moment_, this
+skein were cut with a straight knife at right angles to its length,
+the cut end would represent the _time plane_--that is, the present
+moment of all--and it would be the same for all providing that the
+time plane were flat _But is it really flat_? Isn't the straightness
+of the knife a mere poverty of human imagination? Existence is always
+richer and more dramatic than any diagram.
+
+  "Line in nature is not found;
+  Unit and universe are round.
+  In vain produced, all rays return;
+  Evil will bless and ice will burn."
+
+Undoubtedly the flat time-plane represents with fair accuracy the
+temporal conditions that obtain in the human aggregate in this world
+under normal conditions of consciousness, but if we consider our
+relation to intelligent beings upon distant worlds of the visible
+universe the conditions might be widely different The time section
+corresponding to what our straight knife made flat in the case of
+the flax may be--nay, probably is--strongly curved.
+
+
+RELATIVITY
+
+This crude analogy haltingly conveys what is meant by curved time.
+It is an idea which is implicit in the Theory of Relativity. This
+theory has profoundly modified many of our basic conceptions about
+the universe in which we are immersed. It is outside the province of
+this book and beyond the power of its author even so much as to
+sketch the main outlines of this theory, but certain of its
+conclusions are indispensable, since they baldly set forth our
+dilemma in regard to the measurement of space and time. We can
+measure neither except relatively, because they must be measured one
+by the other, and no matter how they vary, these variations always
+compensate one another, leaving us in the same state of ignorance
+that we were in before.
+
+Suppose that two intelligent beings, one on Mars, let us say, and
+the other on the earth, should attempt to establish _the same moment
+of time_, by the interchange of light signals, or by any other
+method which the most rigorous science could devise. Assume that
+they have for this purpose two identically similar and mechanically
+perfect chronometers, and that every difficulty of manipulation were
+successfully overcome. Their experiment could end only in failure,
+and the measure of this failure neither one, in his own place, could
+possibly know. If, after the experiment, the Martian, chronometer in
+hand, could be instantly and miraculously transported to the earth,
+and the two settings compared, they would be found to be different:
+how different, we do not know.
+
+The reason for the failure of any such experiment anywhere conducted
+can best be made plain by a crude paraphrase of a classic
+proposition from Relativity. Suppose it is required to determine the
+same moment of time at two different places on the earth's surface,
+as must be attempted in finding their difference in longitude. Take
+the Observatory at Greenwich for one place, and the observatory at
+Washington for the other. At the moment the sun is on the meridian
+of Greenwich, the exact time of crossing is noted and cabled to
+Washington. The chronometer at Washington is set accordingly, and
+the time checked back to Greenwich. This message arrives two seconds,
+say, after the original message was sent. Washington is at once
+notified of this double transmission interval. On the assumption
+that HALF of it represents the time the message took to travel from
+east to west, and the other half the time from west to east again,
+the Washington chronometer is set one second ahead of the signalled
+time, to compensate for its part of the loss. When the sun has
+reached the meridian of Washington, the whole process is repeated,
+and again as before, half of the time the message has taken to cross
+and recross the Atlantic is added to the Greenwich record of noon at
+Washington. The number of hours, minutes, seconds, and fractions of
+a second between these two corrected records represents the
+difference in solar time between the two places, and incidentally
+the same moment of time has been established for both--at least, so
+it would appear.
+
+But is it established? That each message took an equal time to
+travel each way is pure assumption, and happens to be a false one.
+The accuracy of the result is vitiated by a condition of things to
+which the Relativists have called attention. Our determination might
+be defended if Washington and Greenwich could be assumed to remain
+at rest during the experiments, and some argument might even be made
+in its favor if we could secure any cosmic assurance that the
+resultant motion of the earth should be the same when Greenwich
+signalled its noon to Washington and Washington its noon to Greenwich.
+
+Our present discussion is merely illustrative, or diagrammatic; so
+we will neglect the velocity of the earth in its orbit round the sun,
+some forty times greater than that of a cannon ball, and the more
+uncertain and more vertiginous speed of the whole solar system
+towards its unknown goal. Let us consider only the rotation of the
+earth on its axis, the tide-speed of day and night. To fix our idea,
+this may be taken, in our latitudes, at eighteen thousand miles per
+day, or perhaps half the speed of a Mauser rifle bullet.
+
+So fast, then, will Washington have been moving to meet the message
+from Greenwich. So fast will Greenwich have been retreating from
+Washington's message.
+
+Now the ultimate effect of motion on the time-determination cannot
+be calculated along any such simple lines as these. Indeed, it
+cannot be exactly calculated at all, for we have not all the data.
+But there is certainly _some_ effect. Suppose one rows four miles up
+a river against a current of two miles per hour, at a rowing speed
+of four miles per hour. This will take two hours, plainly. The
+return trip with the river's gift of two miles per hour will
+evidently require but forty minutes. _Two hours and forty minutes_
+for the round trip, then, of eight miles.
+
+Now then, to row eight miles in still water, according to our
+supposition, would have required but _two hours_. But, some one
+objects, the current must help the return trip as much as it
+hindered the outgoing! Ah, here is the snare that catches
+rough-and-ready common sense! How long would the double journey have
+taken _if the river current had been faster than our rowing speed_?
+How shall we schedule our trip if we cannot learn the correct speed,
+_or if it varies from minute to minute_?
+
+These explanations are necessarily symbolistic rather than
+demonstrative, but any one who will seriously follow out these lines
+of thought, or, still better, study the attitude of the hard-headed
+modern physicist towards our classical geometry and mechanics,
+cannot fail to realize how conventional, artificial--even
+phantasmal--are the limitations set by the primitive idea of flat
+space and straight time.
+
+The inferences which we may draw from our hypothetical experiment
+are plain. The settings of the two chronometers would be defective,
+they would not show the same time, but each of them would mark the
+_local_ time, proper to its own place. There would be no means of
+detecting the amount of error, since the messages were transmitted
+by a medium involved with them in their transportation. If only
+local time can be established, the possibility of a warped
+time-plane--the curvature of time--is directly opened up. Doubtless
+it is true that on so relatively minute a scale as is offered by the
+earth, any deviation from perfect flatness of the time-plane would
+be so inconsiderable and imperceptible as to make it scientifically
+negligible; but this by no means follows when we consider our
+relation to other worlds and other systems.
+
+A similar condition holds with regard to space-distortion. The
+Theory of Relativity enforces the conclusion that from the
+standpoint of our conventions in regard to these matters, all bodies
+involved in transportation undergo a contraction in the direction of
+that transportation, while their dimensions perpendicular to the
+transportation remain invariable. This contraction is the same for
+all bodies. For bodies of low velocity, like the earth, this
+distortion would be almost immeasurably slight; but great or little,
+no measuring instruments on the body transporting would ever
+disclose it, for a measure would undergo the same contraction as the
+thing measured.
+
+
+THE SPOON-MAN
+
+These concepts that space and time are not as immutable as they
+appear: that our universe may suffer distortion, that time may lag
+or hasten without our being in the least aware, may be made
+interestingly clear by an illustration first suggested by Helmholtz,
+of which the following is in the nature of a paraphrase.
+
+If you look at your own image in the shining surface of a teapot, or
+the back of a silver spoon, all things therein appear grotesquely
+distorted, and all distances strangely altered. But if you choose to
+make the bizarre supposition that this spoon-world is real, and your
+image--the spoon-man--a thinking and speaking being, certain
+interesting facts could be developed by a discussion between
+yourself and him.
+
+You say, "Your world is a distorted transcript of the one in which I
+live."
+
+"Prove it to me," says the spoon-man.
+
+With a foot-rule you proceed to make measurements to show the
+rectangularity of the room in which you are standing. Simultaneously
+he makes measurements giving the same numerical results; for his
+foot-rule shrinks and curves in the exact proportion to give the
+true number of feet when he measures his shrunken and distorted rear
+wall. No measurement you can apply will prove you in the right, nor
+him in the wrong. Indeed he is likely to retort upon you that it is
+your room which is distorted, for he can show that in spite of all
+its nightmare aspects his world is governed by the same orderly
+geometry that governs yours.
+
+The above illustration deals purely with space relations, for such
+relations are easily grasped; but certain distortions in time
+relations are no less absolutely imperceptible and unprovable. So
+far from having any advantage over the spoon-man, our plight is his.
+The Principle of Relativity discovers us in the predicament of the
+Mikado's "prisoner pent," condemned to play with crooked cues and
+elliptical billiard balls, and of the opium victim, for whom
+"space swells" and time moves sometimes swift and sometimes slow.
+
+
+THE ORBITAL MOVEMENT OF TIME
+
+Now if our space is curved in higher space, since such curvature is
+at present undetectable by us, we must assume, as Hinton chose to
+assume, that it curves in the minute, or, as some astronomers assume,
+that its curve is vast. These assumptions are not mutually exclusive:
+they are quite in analogy with the general curvature of the earth's
+surface which is in no wise interfered with by the lesser curvatures
+represented by mountains and valleys. It is easiest to think of our
+space as completely curved in higher space in analogy with the
+surface of a sphere.
+
+Similarly, if time is curved, the idea of the cyclic return of time
+naturally (though not inevitably) follows, and the division of the
+greater cycles into lesser loops; for it is easier to assign this
+elliptical movement to time than any other, by reason of the orbital
+movements of the planets and their satellites. What results from
+conceptions of this order? Amazing things! If our space is curved in
+higher space, you may be looking toward the back of your own head.
+If time flows in cycles, in travelling toward to-morrow you may be
+facing yesterday.
+
+This "eternal return," so far from being a new idea, is so old that
+it has been forgotten. Its reappearance in novel guise, along with
+so many other recrudescences, itself beautifully illustrates time
+curvature in consciousness. _Yugas_, time cycles, are an integral
+and inexpugnable part of Oriental metaphysics. "Since the soul
+perpetually runs," says Zoroaster, "in a certain space of time it
+passes through all things, which circulation being accomplished, it
+is compelled to run back again through all things, and unfold the
+same web of generation in the world." Time curvature is implicit in
+the Greek idea of the iron, bronze, silver, and golden ages,
+succeeding each other in the same order: the winter, seed-time,
+summer and harvest of the larger year. Astrology, seership, prophecy,
+become plausible on the higher-time hypothesis. From this point of
+view history becomes less puzzling and paradoxical. What were the
+Middle Ages but a forgetting of Greek and Roman civilization, and
+what was the Renaissance but a remembering of them--a striving to
+re-create the ruined stage-settings and to re-enact the urbane play
+of Pagan life. The spirit of the Crusades is now again animate
+throughout Europe. Nations are uniting in a Holy War against the
+Infidel _de nos jours_.
+
+But it is in the individual consciousness that time curvature
+receives its most striking confirmation--those lesser returns and
+rhythms to which we give the name of periodicity. Before considering
+these, however, a fundamental fallacy of the modern mind must be
+exposed.
+
+
+MATERIALITY THE MIRROR OF CONSCIOUSNESS
+
+Our vicious habit of seeking the explanation of everything--even
+thought and emotion--in materiality, has betrayed us into the error
+of attributing to organic and environic changes the very power by
+which they are produced. We are wont to think of feeling, the form
+in which Being manifests to consciousness, as an effect instead of
+as a cause. When Sweet Sixteen becomes suddenly and mysteriously
+interesting to the growing boy, it is not because sex has awakened
+in his body, but because the dread time has come for him to
+contemplate the Idea of Woman in his soul. If you are sleepy, it is
+not because the blood has begun to flow away from your brain, but
+because your body has begun to bore you. Night has brought back the
+Idea of Freedom, and consciousness chloroforms the thing that
+clutches it. If you are ill, you grow cold or your temperature rises:
+it is the signal by which you know that your consciousness is
+turning toward the Idea of Pain.
+
+Just as a savage looks for a man behind a mirror, we foolishly seek
+in materiality for that which is not there. The soul determines
+circumstance: the soul contains the event which shall befall. The
+organic and environic rearrangements incident to obscure rotations
+in higher space are like the changes a mirror-image undergoes as an
+object draws near and then recedes from its plane. This is only a
+figure of speech, but it is susceptible of almost literal application.
+Ideas, emerging from the subconscious, appproach, intersect, recede
+from, and re-approach the stream of conscious experience; taking the
+forms of aversions and desires, they register themselves in action,
+and by reason of time curvature, everything that occurs, recurs.
+
+
+PERIODICITY
+
+We recognize and accept this cyclic return of time in such familiar
+manifestations of it as Nature affords in _periodicity_. We recognize
+it also in our mental and emotional life, when the periods can be
+co-ordinated with known physical phenomena, as in the case of the
+wanderlust which comes in the mild melancholy of autumn, the moods that
+go with waning day, and winter night. It is only when these recurrences
+do not submit themselves to our puny powers of analysis and measurement
+that we are incredulous of a larger aspect of the law of time-return.
+Sleep for example, is not less mysterious than death which, too,
+may be but "a sleep and a forgetting." The reason that sleep fails to
+terrify us as death does is because experience has taught that
+_memory leafs the chasm_. Why should death bedreaded any more than
+bedtime? Because we fear that we shall forget. But do we really forget?
+As Pierre Janet so tersely puts it, "Whatever has gone into the mind
+may come out of the mind," and in a subsequent chapter this aphorism
+will be shown to have extension in a direction of which the author of
+it appears not to have been aware. Memory links night to night and
+winter to winter, but such things as "the night-time of the spirit"
+and "the winter of our discontent" are not recognized as having either
+cause or consequence. Now though the well-springs of these states of
+consciousness remain obscure, there is nothing unreasonable in
+believing that they are recrudescences of far-off, forgotten moods
+and moments; neither is it absurd to suppose that they may be related
+to the movements and positions of the planets, as night and winter
+are related to the axial and orbital movements of the earth.
+
+But there are other, and even more interesting, evidences of time
+curvature in consciousness. These lead away into new regions which
+it is our pleasure now to explore.
+
+
+
+
+VI SLEEP AND DREAMS
+
+
+SLEEP
+
+Our space is called three-dimensional because it takes three
+numbers--measurement in three mutually perpendicular directions--to
+determine and mark out any particular point from the totality of
+points. Time, as the individual experiences it, is called
+one-dimensional for an analogous reason: one number is all that is
+required to determine and mark out any particular event of a series
+from all the rest. Now in order to establish a position in a space of
+four dimensions it would be necessary to measure in _four_ mutually
+perpendicular directions. Time curvature opens up the possibility of
+a corresponding higher development in time: one whereby time would
+be more fittingly symbolized by a plane than by a linear figure.
+Indeed, the familiar mystery of memory calls for such a conception.
+Memory is a carrying forward of the past into the present, and the
+fact that we can recall a past event without mentally rehearsing
+all the intermediate happenings in inverse order, shows that in
+the time aspect of memory there is simultaneity as well as
+sequence--time ceases to be linear and becomes _plane_. More
+remarkable illustrations of the sublimation of the time-sense are
+to be found in the phenomena of sleep and dreams.
+
+"Oh, thou that sleepest, what is sleep?" asks the curious Leonardo.
+Modern psychological science has little to offer of a positive
+nature in answer to this world-old question, but it has at least
+effectively disposed of the absurd theories of the materialists who
+would have us believe that sleep is a mere matter of blood
+circulation or of intoxication by accumulation of waste products in
+the system. Sleep states are not abnormal, but part and parcel of
+the life existence of the individual. When a person is asleep he has
+only become unresponsive to the mass of stimuli of the external
+world which constitutes his environment. As Sidis says, "When our
+interest in external existence fags and fades away, we go to sleep.
+When our interests in the external world cease, we draw up the
+bridges, so to say, interrupt all external communication as far as
+possible, and become isolated in our own fortress and repair to our
+own world of organic activity and inner dream life. Sleep is the
+interruption of our intercourse with the external world: it is the
+laying down of our arms in the struggle of life. Sleep is a truce
+with the world."
+
+The twin concepts of higher space and curved time sanction a view of
+sleep even bolder. Sleep is more than a longing of the body to be
+free of the flame which consumes it: the flame itself aspires to be
+free--that is to say, consciousness, tiring of its tool, the brain,
+and of the world, its workshop, takes a turn into the plaisance of
+the fourth dimension, where time and space are less rigid to resist
+the fulfillment of desire.
+
+
+DREAMS
+
+We find a confirmation of this view in dream phenomena. But however
+good the evidence, we shall fail to make out a case unless dream
+experiences are conceded to be as real as any other. The reluctance
+we may have to make this concession comes first from the purely
+subjective character of dreams, and secondly from their triviality
+and irrationality--it is as though the muddy sediment of daytime
+thought and feeling and that alone were there cast forth. In answer
+to the first objection, advanced psychology affirms that the
+subconscious mind, from which dreams arise, approaches more nearly
+to the omniscience of true being than the rational mind of waking
+experience. The triviality and irrationality of dreams are
+sufficiently accounted for if the dream state is thought of as the
+meeting place of two conditions of consciousness: the foam and
+flotsam "of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn," whose vastitude,
+whose hidden life, and rich argosies of experience, can only be
+inferred from the fret of the tide on their nether shore--the tired
+brain in sleep.
+
+For it is the _remembered_ dream alone that is incoherent--the dream
+that comes clothed in the rags and trappings of this work-a-day world,
+and so leaves some recoverable record on the brain. We all feel that
+the dreams we cannot remember are the most wonderful. Who has not
+wakened with the sense of some incommunicable experience of terror or
+felicity, too strange and poignant to submit itself to concrete
+symbolization, and so is groped for by the memory in vain? We know
+that dreams grow more ordered and significant as they recede from
+the surface of consciousness to its depths. Deep sleep dreams are in
+the true sense clairvoyant, though for the most part irrecoverable--
+"Canst thou draw out Leviathan with an hook?" DuPrel and others have
+shown that the difference between ordinary dreaming, somnambulance,
+trance and ecstasy, is only a matter of redistribution of
+thresholds--that they are all related states and merge into one
+another. We have, therefore, every right to believe that for a
+certain number of hours out of the twenty-four we are all sybils and
+seers, however little most of us are able to profit by it.
+Infrequently, in moments of peculiar susceptibility, the veil is
+lifted, but the art of _dreaming true_ remains for the most part
+unmastered--one of the precious gifts which the future holds in store
+for the sons and daughters of men.
+
+The partial waking state is the soil in which remembered dreams
+develop most luxuriously. Paradoxical as it may sound, they are the
+product, not of our sleep, but of our waking. Such dreams belong to
+both worlds, partly to the three-dimensional and partly to the
+four-dimensional. While dreams are often only a hodge-podge of
+daytime experiences, their incredible rapidity, alien to that
+experience, gives us our first faint practicable intimation of a
+higher development of time.
+
+
+TIME IN DREAMS
+
+The unthinkable velocity of time in dreams may be inferred from
+the fact that between the moment of impact of an impression
+at the sense-periphery and its reception at the center of
+consciousness--moments so closely compacted that we think of them as
+simultaneous--a coherent series of representations may take place,
+involving what seem to be protracted periods for their unfoldment.
+Every reader will easily call to mind dream experiences of this
+character, in which the long-delayed denouement was suggested and
+prepared for by some extraneous sense-impression, showing that the
+entire dream drama unfolded within the time it took that impression
+to travel from the skin to the brain.
+
+Hasheesh dreams, because they so often occur during some momentary
+lapse from normal consciousness and are therefore measurable by its
+time scale, are particularly rich in the evidence of the looping of
+time. Fitzhugh Ludlow narrates, in _The Hasheesh Eater_, the dreams
+that visited him in the brief interval between two of twenty or more
+awakenings, on his walk homeward after his first experience with the
+drug. He says, "I existed by turns in different places and various
+states of being. Now I swept my gondola through the moonlit lagoons
+of Venice. Now Alp on Alp towered above my view, and the glory of
+the coming sun flashed purple light upon the topmost icy pinnacle.
+Now in the primeval silence of some unexplored tropical forest I
+spread my feathery leaves, a giant fern, and swayed and nodded in
+the spice-gales over a river whose waves at once sent up clouds of
+music and perfume. My soul changes to a vegetable essence, thrilled
+with a strange and unimagined ecstasy."
+
+Earlier in the same evening, when he was forced to keep awake in
+order not to betray his condition, the dream time-scale appears to
+have imposed itself upon his waking consciousness with the following
+curious effect. A lady asked him some question connected with a
+previous conversation. He says, "As mechanically as an automaton I
+began to reply. As I heard once more the alien and unreal tones of
+my own voice, I became convinced that it was some one else who spoke,
+and in another world. I sat and listened: still the voice kept
+speaking. Now for the first time I experienced that vast change which
+hasheesh makes in all measurements of time. The first word of the
+reply occupied a period sufficient for the action of a drama; the
+last left me in complete ignorance of any point far enough back in
+the past to date the commencement of the sentence. Its enunciation
+might have occupied years. I was not in the same life which had held
+me when I heard it begun."
+
+This well-known fact, that we cannot measure dreams by our time scale,
+proves that subjective time does not correspond with objective, and
+that the "dream organ" of consciousness has a time scale of its own.
+If in our waking state we experience one kind of time, and in
+dreams quite another, the solution of the mystery should be sought
+in the _vehicle_ of consciousness, for clearly the limit of
+impressionability or power of response of the vehicle establishes
+the time scale, just as the size of the body with relation to
+objects establishes the space scale. Time must be different for the
+ant and the elephant, for example, as space is different.
+
+Our sense of time is wholly dependent upon the rapidity with which
+impressions succeed one another. Were we capable of receiving only
+one impression an hour, like a bell struck every hour with a hammer,
+the ordinary term of life would seem very short. On the other hand,
+if our time sense were always as acute as it is in dreams, uncounted
+aeons would seem to be lived through in the interval between
+childhood and old age.
+
+Imagine a music machine so cunningly constructed and adjusted as not
+only to sound each note and chord in its proper sequence and relation,
+but to regulate also the duration of the sound vibration. If this
+machine were operated in such a manner as to play, in a single
+second of time, the entire overture of an opera which would normally
+occupy half an hour, we should hear only an unintelligible noise a
+second long. This would be due to no defect in the _sound-producing_
+mechanism, but to the limitations of the _sound-receiving_ mechanism,
+our auditory apparatus. Could this be altered to conform to the
+unusual conditions--could it capture and convey to consciousness
+every note of the overture in a second of time--that second would
+seem to last half an hour, provided that every other criterion for
+the measurement of duration were denied for the time being.
+
+Now dreams _seem_ long: we only discover afterwards and by accident
+their almost incredible brevity. May we not--must we not--infer from
+this that the body is an organ of many stops and more than one
+keyboard, and that in sleep it gives forth this richer music. The
+theory of a higher-dimensional existence during sleep accounts in
+part for the great longing for sleep. "What is it that is much
+desired by man, but which they know not while possessing?" again
+asks Leonardo. "It is sleep," is his answer. This longing for sleep
+is more than a physical longing, and the refreshment it brings is
+less of the flesh than of the spirit. It is possible to withstand
+the deprivation of food and water longer and better than the
+deprivation of sleep. Its recuperative power is correspondingly
+greater.
+
+Experiments have been made with mature University students by which
+they have been kept awake ninety-six hours. When the experiments
+were finished, the young men were allowed to sleep themselves out,
+until they felt they were thoroughly rested. All awoke from a long
+sleep completely refreshed, but the one who took longest to restore
+himself from his protracted vigil slept only one-third more time
+than was regular with him. And this has been the experience over and
+over again of men in active life who have been obliged to keep awake
+for long periods by the absolute necessities of the situation in
+which they have been placed.
+
+In this fact there is surely another hint of the sublimation of the
+time sense during sleep. While it would be an unwarrantable
+assumption to suppose that the period of recuperation by sleep must
+be as long, or nearly as long, as the period of deprivation, the
+ratio between the two presents a discrepancy so great that it would
+seem as though this might be due to an acceleration of the time
+element of consciousness.
+
+
+THE EASTERN TEACHING IN REGARD TO SLEEP AND DREAMS
+
+In this matter of the wonder, the mystery, the enchantment, of sleep
+and dreams, the most modern psychology and the most ancient wisdom
+meet on common ground. Eastern wisdom casts such a light upon the
+problems of subjectivity that it should not be lightly dismissed.
+For uncounted centuries Hindu-Aryan spiritual science has recognized,
+not one plane or condition of consciousness, but three; waking,
+dreaming, and deep sleep--the gross, the subtle and the pure. In the
+waking state--that is, with the vehicle attuned to vibrate to
+materiality--the individual self is as a captive in a citadel of
+flesh, aware of only so much of the universal life as chances to
+enact itself before the windows of his prison. In the dream state,
+when the more violent vibrations of the body are stilled in sleep,
+consciousness becomes active in its subtle (four-dimensional) vehicle,
+and ranges free throughout the ampler spaces of this subtler world.
+In deep sleep, consciousness reverts to its pure condition--the
+individual self becomes the All-Self: the rainbow, no longer
+prismatic by reason of its refraction in materiality, becomes the
+pure white light; the melody of life resolves itself into the
+primordial harmony; sequence becomes simultaneity, and Time, no
+longer "besprent with seven-hued circumstance," is swallowed up in
+duration.
+
+"_There are two paths for him, within and without, and they both
+turn back in a day and a night.... After having subdued by sleep all
+that belongs to the body, he, not asleep himself, looks down upon
+the sleeping. Having assumed light, he goes again to his place, the
+golden person, the lonely bird_"  UPANISHADS.
+
+
+SPACE IN DREAMS
+
+However preposterous may appear to us this notion that the waking
+state, in which we feel ourselves most potent and alive, is really
+one of inhibition--that the world is only a "shoal of time"--it is
+curiously borne out by the baffling phenomena of dreams and is in
+perfect accord with the Higher Space Hypothesis. The possibility of
+shaking off the grip of sleep under appropriate circumstances, the
+fact that we can watch in our sleep, and awake at the right moment,
+that we can sleep and still watch and keep awake in regard to
+special objects and particular persons--these things form
+insuperable difficulties for all those plausible, and apparently
+scientific, theories of sleep current in the West; but they fit
+perfectly with the Eastern idea that "he, not asleep himself, looks
+down upon the sleeping." And to the questions, "How, and from whence?"
+in the light of our hypothesis we may answer, "By the curvature of
+time, consciousness escapes into the fourth dimension."
+
+Myers shows that he was in need of just this clue in order to
+account for some of the dream experiences recorded in _Human
+Personality_, since he asks for "an intermediate conception of
+space--something between space as we know it in the material world
+and space as we imagine it to disappear in the ideal world." He
+suggests that in dreams and trance there may be a clearer and more
+complete perception of space than is at present possible to us. A
+corresponding sublimation of the time sense is no less necessary to
+account for time in dreams. Although we seem to triumph over space
+and time to such a tune as to eliminate them, dream experiences have
+both form and sequence. Now because form presupposes space, and time
+is implicit in sequence, there arises the necessity for that
+"intermediate conception" of both space and time provided by our
+hypothesis.
+
+
+THE PHENOMENON OF PAUSE
+
+Let us conceive of sleep less narrowly than we are accustomed to:
+think of it only as one phase of the phenomenon of pause, of
+arrested physical activity, universal throughout nature. The cell
+itself experiences fatigue and goes to sleep--"perchance to dream,"
+Modern experimental science in the domain of physiology and
+psychology proves that we see and do not see, hear and do not hear,
+feel and do not feel, in successive instants. We are asleep, in
+other words, not merely hour by hour, but moment by moment--and
+perhaps age by age as well.
+
+Where is consciousness during these intervals, long or short, when
+the senses fail to respond to the stimuli of the external world? It
+is somewhere else, awake to some other environment. Though we may
+not be able to verify this from our own experience, there are
+methods whereby it can be verified. Clairvoyance is one of these,
+hypnotism is another--that kind of hypnotism whereby an entranced
+person is made to give a report of his excursions and adventures in
+the mysterious House of Sleep. It is a well-known fact that these
+experiences increase in intensity, coherence and in a certain sort
+of omniscience, directly in proportion to the depth of the trance.
+The revelations obtained in this way are sometimes amazing. The
+inherent defect of this method of obtaining information is the
+possibility of deception, and for that reason science still looks
+askance at all evidence drawn from this source. But in essaying to
+write a book about the fourth dimension from any aspect but the
+mathematical, the author has put himself outside the pale of
+orthodox science, so he is under no compulsion to ignore a field so
+rich merely because it appears to be tainted by a certain amount of
+fallibility and is even under suspicion of fraud. Diseased oysters,
+though not edible, produce pearls, and a pearl of great price is the
+object of this quest. Let us glance, therefore, at the findings of
+hypnotism and kindred phenomena.
+
+
+
+
+VII  THE NIGHT SIDE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
+
+
+THE FIELD OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH
+
+It is difficult to divest the words hypnotism and clairvoyance of
+certain sordid and sinister associations. We are apt to think of
+them only as urban flora of the dust and dark, cultivated for profit
+by itinerant professors and untidy sibyls. Larger knowledge of the
+night side of human nature, however, profoundly modifies this view.
+The invoked image is then of some hushed and studious chamber where
+a little group of people sit attentive to the voice of one
+entranced--listeners at the keyhole of the door to another world.
+This "news from nowhere," garnered under so-called test conditions
+and faithfully recorded, has grown by now to a considerable
+literature, accessible to all--one with which every well-informed
+person is assumed to have at least a passing acquaintance.
+
+A marked and constant characteristic of trance phenomena consists of
+an apparent confusion between past, present and future. As in the
+game of three-card monte, it appears impossible to tell in what order
+the three will turn up--_was, is_ and _will be_, lose their special
+significance. Clairvoyance, in its time aspect, whether spontaneous,
+hypnotically induced, or self-induced, is susceptible of
+classification as post-vision, present vision, and prevision.
+Post-vision is that in which past events are not recollected merely,
+but seen or experienced. It is the past become present. Present
+vision is clairvoyance of things transpiring elsewhere; the present,
+remote in space, but not in time. Prevision is the future in the
+present. These various orders of _clear-seeing_ transcend the limits
+of the actual knowledge and experience of the seer. This
+classification and these definitions are important only to us, to
+whom past, present, and future stand sharply differentiated in
+thought and in experience; not to the clairvoyant, who, though bound
+in body to our space and time, is consciously free in a world where
+these discriminations vanish. Why do they vanish? This question can
+best be answered by means of a homely analogy.
+
+For a symbol of the flow of time in waking consciousness, imagine
+yourself in a railway carriage which jogs along a main-travelled
+line at a rate predetermined by the time-table. You approach, reach
+and pass such stations as are intersected by that particular railway,
+and you get a view of the landscape which every other traveler shares.
+Having once left a station, you cannot go back to it, nor can you
+arrive at places further along the line before the train itself
+takes you there. Compare this with the freedom to do either of these
+things, and any number of others, if you suddenly change from the
+train to an automobile. Then, in effect, you have the freedom of a
+new dimension. In the one case, you must travel along a single line
+at a uniform rate; in the other, you are able to strike out in any
+direction and regulate your speed at will. You can go back to a
+place after the train has left it; you can go forward to some place
+ahead, before the train arrives, or you can strike out into, and
+traverse, new country. In short, your freedom, temporal and spatial,
+will be related to that of the train-bound traveler, somewhat as is
+trance consciousness to everyday waking life.
+
+
+MODIFYING THE PAST
+
+Modern psychology has demonstrated the existence of a great
+undercurrent of mental and emotional life, transcending the
+individual's conscious experience, in which the most complex
+processes are carried on without the individual's conscious
+participation. The clearest symbol by which this fact may be figured
+to the imagination is the one already presented: the comparison of
+the subjective field to a plane, in which the conscious experience
+of the individual is represented by a single line. In sleep and
+trance we have an augmented freedom of movement and so are able to
+travel here and there, backward and forward, not only among our own
+"disassociated memories" but in that greater and more mysterious
+demesne which comprehends what we call the future, as well as the
+present and the past.
+
+The profound significance of the disassociation and sublimation of
+memory by hypnotism, or by whatever other means the train of
+personal experience and recollection can be thrown off the track,
+appears to have been ignored on its theoretical side--that is, as
+establishing the return of time. It has cleverly been turned to
+practical account, however, in the treatment of disease. By a series
+of painstaking and brilliant experiments, the demonstration of the
+role played by "disassociated memories" in causing certain
+functional nervous and mental troubles has been achieved. It has
+been shown that severe emotional shocks, frights, griefs, worries,
+may be--and frequently are--completely effaced from conscious
+recollection, while continuing to be vividly remembered in the
+depths of the subconscious. It has been shown that thence they may,
+and frequently do, exercise a baleful effect upon the whole organism,
+giving rise to disease symptoms, the particular type of which were
+determined by the victim's self-suggestion. As a preliminary to
+effecting a permanent cure to such disorders, it is necessary to get
+at these disassociated memories and drag them back into the full
+light of conscious recollection. To get at them, medical
+psychologists make use of hypnotism, automatic writing,
+crystal-gazing--in short, of any method which will force an entrance
+into that higher time-world, whereby the forgotten past may become
+the present. This accomplished, and the crucial moment recovered and
+transfixed, the victim of the aborted opportunity is led to deal
+with it as one may deal with the fluid, and may not deal with the
+fixed. Again his past is plastic to the operation of his
+intelligence and his will. Here is glad news for mortals: the past
+recoverable and in a manner revocable!
+
+Buddha taught that all sin is ignorance, and this teaching has
+escaped oblivion because its truth has echoed in so many human hearts.
+We find that it is possible to deal with our old ignorances in the
+light of later knowledge. What is this but the self-forgiveness of
+sins? Subconsciously we may be always at work, mending the past.
+Repentance is the conscious recognition of some culmination of this
+obscure process, when the heart is suffused with the inner gladness
+of liberation from the payment of old karmic debts. Christ's words,
+"Thy sins are forgiven," spoken to the woman who washed his feet
+with her tears, sanctions this idea--that the past is remediable by
+knowledge and by love.
+
+Conceding this much, we must equally admit the possibility of
+moulding the future, of adjusting the will to the event which shall
+befall. If the present moment can again intersect the stream of past
+conscious experience, it may equally do so with regard to the future.
+This brings up the tremendous questions of free-will and
+fore-ordination. Upon these the Oriental doctrines of karma and
+reincarnation cast the only light by which the reason consents to be
+guided. As these doctrines are intimately related both to higher
+time and to trance revelations, some consideration of karma and
+reincarnation may appropriately find place here.
+
+
+KARMA AND REINCARNATION
+
+Karma is that self-adjusting force in human affairs which restores
+harmony disturbed by action. It is the moral law of compensation,
+and by its operation produces all conditions of life, misery and
+happiness, birth, death, and re-birth; itself being both the cause
+and the effect of action. Its operation is indicated in the phrase,
+"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
+
+The essential idea of reincarnation is indicated in the following
+quotation from the Upanishads: "And as a goldsmith, taking a piece
+of gold, turns it into another, newer, and more beautiful shape, so
+does this Self, having thrown off this body and dispelled all
+ignorance, make unto himself another and more beautiful shape."
+
+Reincarnation is the periodic "dip" of an immortal individual into
+materiality for the working out of karma, after an interval, long or
+short, spent under other conditions of existence. These alternations
+constitute the broader and deeper diapason of human life, of which
+the change from waking to sleeping represents the lesser, and the
+momentary awareness and unawareness of the sense mechanism to
+stimulation, the least.
+
+Thus a physical incarnation, in the broadest sense of the term, is
+the interval, long or short, of the immersion of consciousness in
+materiality. Under fatigue, the cell life withdraws; that is, it
+ceases to respond to physical stimuli, and so passes out of
+incarnation. When this occurs _en masse_ there transpires that
+hiatus of the personal consciousness called sleep, and while sleep
+lasts the personality is out of incarnation. After death--in the
+interval between one life and the next--the specific memories of the
+personality fade out as in sleep, or rather, become latent, leaving
+the soul, the permanent life-center, clear and colorless, a
+mysterious focus of spiritual forces and affinities (the seeds of
+karma) ready for another sowing in the world of men. This center
+of consciousness is thereupon drawn to the newly forming body,
+the life environment of which will rightly and justly--perhaps
+retributively--bring the tendencies and characteristics of the
+conscious center into objectivity again. Character is destiny, and
+character is self-created. "All that we are is the result of what we
+have thought." But in the vast complexity and volume of human life
+there is a constant production of forms, with all the varieties of
+characteristics and capacities requisite to meet the needs of every
+soul, thirsty for the destiny that awaits it; and here heredity
+plays its part. Beyond the individual soul is the world-soul, which
+periodically incarnates in the humanity of a planet, and beyond the
+worlds of a single system, suns and congeries of suns.
+
+The profound and pregnant doctrines of karma and reincarnation, here
+so sketchily outlined, are but expansions of one of the fundamental
+propositions of all Eastern philosophical systems, that the effect is
+the unfolding of the cause in time.
+
+To omit a consideration of karma and reincarnation in connection
+with higher time would be to force a passage and then not follow
+where it leads. The idea of time curvature is implicit in the ideas
+of karma and reincarnation. For what is karma but the return of time,
+the flowering in the present of some seed sown elsewhere and long ago?
+And what is reincarnation but the major cycle of that sweep into
+objective existence and out again, of which the alternation between
+waking and sleeping is the lesser counterpart?
+
+
+COLONEL DE ROCHAS' EXPERIMENTS
+
+During the past few years evidence has been accumulating that we
+never really forget anything. We have rediscovered the memory of the
+subconscious mind. It is generally known that in the mesmeric or
+somnambulistic sleep things hopelessly beyond recall for the
+habitual mind come to the surface, in fragments, or in whole series,
+as the case may be. It is perhaps news to some readers, however,
+that the memory of past lives has been recovered in this way. This
+but confirms the Eastern secret teaching that could we remember our
+dream experiences we should recover the knowledge of our past
+incarnations.
+
+Among the achievements of Eastern hypnotism is the recovery of the
+memory of past births. Colonel de Rochas appears to have paralleled
+this achievement in the West. Certain of his experiments have been
+admirably reported by Maurice Maeterlinck in the eighth chapter of
+_Our Eternity_. Maeterlinck's account, somewhat condensed, is
+given here, because it so well illustrates the liberation of
+consciousness from the tyranny of time as we conceive it. He says:
+
+"First of all, it is only right to say that Colonel de Rochas is a
+savant who seeks nothing but objective truth and does so with a
+scientific strictness and integrity that have never been questioned.
+He puts certain exceptional subjects into a hypnotic sleep and, by
+means of downward passes, makes them trace back the whole course of
+their existence. He thus takes them successively to their youth,
+their adolescence and down to the extreme limits of their childhood.
+At each of these hypnotic stages, the subject reassumes the
+consciousness, the character and the state of mind which he
+possessed at the corresponding stage in his life. He goes over the
+same events, with their joys and their sorrows. If he has been ill,
+he once more passes through his illness, his convalescence and his
+recovery.
+
+"Let us, to come to details, take one of the simplest cases. The
+subject is a girl of eighteen, called Josephine. She lives at Voiron,
+in the department of Isere. By means of downward passes she is
+brought back to the condition of a baby at its mother's breast The
+passes continue and the wonder-tale runs its course. Josephine can
+no longer speak; and we have the great silence of infancy, which
+seems to be followed by a silence more mysterious still. Josephine
+no longer answers except by signs: _she is not yet born_. 'She is
+floating in darkness.' They persist; the sleep becomes heavier; and
+suddenly, from the depths of that sleep, rises the voice of another
+being, a voice unexpected and unknown, the voice of a churlish,
+distrustful and discontented old man. They question him. At first he
+refuses to answer, saying that 'of course he's there, and he's
+speaking;' that 'he sees nothing;' and 'he's in the dark.' They
+increase the number of passes and gradually gain his confidence. His
+name is Jean Claude Bourdon; he is an old man; he has long been
+ailing and bedridden. He tells the story of his life. He was born at
+Champvent, in the parish of Polliat, in 1812. He went to school
+until he was eighteen and served his time in the army with the
+Seventh Artillery at Besancon; and he describes his gay time there,
+while the sleeping girl makes gestures of twirling an imaginary
+moustache. When he goes back to his native place, he does not marry,
+but he has a mistress. He leads a solitary life (I omit all but the
+essential facts), and dies at the age of seventy, after a long
+illness.
+
+"We now hear the dead man speak; and his posthumous revelations are
+not sensational, which, however, is not an adequate reason for
+doubting their genuineness. He feels himself growing out of his body;
+but he remains attached to it for a fairly long time. His fluidic
+body, which is at first diffused, takes a more concentrated form. He
+lives in darkness, which he finds disagreeable; but he does not
+suffer. At last, the night in which he is plunged is streaked with a
+few flashes of light. The idea comes to reincarnate himself and he
+draws near to her who is to be his mother (that is, the mother of
+Josephine). He encircles her until the child is born, whereupon he
+gradually enters the child's body. Until about the seventh year, his
+body is surrounded by a sort of floating mist, in which he used to
+see many things which he has not seen since.
+
+"The next thing to be done is to go back beyond Jean Claude. A
+mesmerization lasting nearly three-quarters of an hour, without
+lingering at any intermediate stage, brings the old man back to
+babyhood. A fresh silence, a new limbo; and then, suddenly, another
+voice and an unexpected individual. This time it is an old woman who
+has been very wicked; and so she is in great torment (she is dead,
+at the actual instant; for, in this inverted world, lives go
+backward and of course begin at the end). She is in deep darkness,
+surrounded by evil spirits. She speaks at first in a faint voice,
+but always gives definite replies to the questions put to her,
+instead of cavilling at every moment, as Jean Claude did. Her name
+is Philomene Carteron.
+
+"'By intensifying the sleep,' adds Colonel de Rochas, whom I will
+now quote, 'I induce the manifestations of a living Philomene. She
+no longer suffers, seems very calm and always answers coldly and
+distinctly. She knows that she is unpopular in the neighborhood, but
+no one is a penny the worse and she will be even with them yet. She
+was born in 1702; her maiden name was Philomene Cherpigny; her
+grandfather on the mother's side was called Pierre Machon and lived
+in Ozan. In 1732 she married, at Chevroux, a man named Carterton, by
+whom she had two children, both of whom she lost.'"
+
+Before her incarnation, Philomene had been a little girl who died in
+infancy. Previous to that, she was a man who committed murder, and
+it was to expiate this crime that she endured such suffering in the
+darkness, and after her life as a little girl, when she had no time
+to do wrong. Colonel de Rochas did not think it wise to carry the
+hypnosis further, because the subject appeared exhausted and her
+paroxysms were painful to watch. He obtained analogous and even more
+surprising results with other subjects.
+
+Maeterlinck's comments upon all this are of negligible value. He
+pays a fine tribute to the theory of reincarnation. "There was never
+a more beautiful, a juster, a purer, a more moral, fruitful and
+probable creed," he says: yet for all that, it is clear that he has
+not been at pains fully to inform himself of the Eastern teaching.
+
+Colonel de Rochas' success, and that of all other experimenters
+along these lines, is due to their unconscious following of the
+Eastern method. He himself says that he "avoided everything that
+should put the subject on a definite tack,"--that is, he refrained
+from voluntary suggestion.
+
+Having referred so frequently and so familiarly to the Eastern
+belief in reincarnation, and hinted at a more solid foundation for
+that belief than the single series of experiments above referred to,
+it would be unfair to the reader not to gratify his curiosity more
+fully in regard to these matters. In the light of our hypothesis
+they take on an importance which justifies their further
+consideration here.
+
+
+
+
+VIII THE EASTERN TEACHING
+
+
+ORIENTAL PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS
+
+Western physical science, pursued with ardor and devotion for the
+past hundred years, has attained to a control over physical phenomena
+little short of magical, but in our understanding and mastery of
+subjective phenomena we are far behind those Eastern peoples who
+have made these matters the subject of study and experiment for
+thousands of years. The informed Hindu, rightly or wrongly, regards
+the Western practice of hypnotism, both in its methods and in its
+results, with mingled horror and contempt. To him it is not
+different from Black Magic, pernicious to operator and subject alike,
+since it involves an unwarrantable tyranny of the will on the part
+of the operator, and a dangerous submission to the obsession of an
+invading will on the part of the subject. Eastern hypnotism--at its
+highest and best--is profoundly different from Western, in that the
+sanctity of the individual is respected. Its aim is not to enslave
+the will, but temporarily to emancipate consciousness, under
+favorable circumstances, from its physical limitation.
+
+Eastern practical psychology and metaphysics can be understood only
+through a knowledge of Eastern physics. These we would call
+transcendental, since they recognize not one theatre of consciousness,
+but three: the gross, the subtle, and the pure. These correspond to
+the material, the etherial, and the empyreal worlds of Greek
+philosophy, and to the physical, astral, and mental planes of modern
+Theosophy. They may be thought of as universal substance in three
+different octaves of vibration. Upon this, the trained will of man
+is able to act directly, for the reason that--as claimed by
+Balzac--it is a _living_ force.
+
+In Eastern hypnotism the gross vibrations of the physical vehicle
+are inhibited by the will of the operator, putting the body of the
+subject to sleep, whereat the consciousness, free in its subtle body,
+awakens to a dimensionally higher world. The operator, by means of
+questions, reaps such profit as he may by following the "true dreams"
+of the entranced subject, scrupulously refraining from imposing his
+own will further than is necessary to obtain the information which he
+seeks. The higher power of Eastern hypnotism, totally unknown in the
+West, consists of inhibiting the subtle vibrations of the astral
+vehicle also, permitting the consciousness to revert to its
+"pure" condition. In these deep states of trance the subject is able
+to communicate knowledges shut away from the generality of
+men--among them the knowledge of past births.
+
+
+THE SELF-RECOVERED MEMORY OF PAST BIRTHS
+
+The strength of will necessary to accomplish this higher power of
+hypnotism is achieved by arduous and long-continued exercises in
+concentration, by the practice of a strict morality, and by
+submission to a physical regimen which few Occidentals would care to
+undergo. Severe as is this training, it is less so than that which
+the true Yogi imposes upon himself, and its fruits are less. The
+achievement to which he addresses himself is far beyond that of the
+most accomplished hypnotist. The Yogi scorns all supernormal powers,
+even while possessing them. The Yogi, as the word implies--it means
+literally union--seeks to unite himself with his own higher self, the
+eternal and immortal part of his own nature, and the achievement of
+this brings with it the freedom of the three worlds at all times,
+and in full consciousness. As this involves an inward turning of the
+mind and will, and the withdrawal from the ordinary active life of
+average humanity, he alone is witness of his own success. "The rest
+is silence."
+
+The knowledge of past births which may be obtained by the
+questionable and cumbersome method of hypnotism is one of the
+wayside flowers which the Yogi may pluck, if he will, on his path
+towards perfection. There are definite rules for the attainment of
+this knowledge, and they conform so closely to Colonel de Rochas'
+method--save for the fact that operator and subject are one and not
+twain--that it will be interesting to give them here. The ensuing
+passage is from the _Vishuddhi Marga_, or _Path of Purity_, a work
+written some sixteen hundred years ago by the famous sage,
+Buddhaghosha, whose name signifies the Voice of Buddha, the revealer
+of Buddha's teachings. It is quoted in Charles Johnston's _The
+Memory of Past Births_.
+
+"The devotee, then, who tries for the first time to call to mind
+former states of existence, should choose a time after breakfast,
+when he has returned from collecting alms, and is alone and plunged
+in meditation, and has been absorbed in the four trances in
+succession. On rising from the fourth trance, which leads to the
+higher powers, he should consider the event which last took place,
+namely, his sitting down; next, the spreading of the mat; the
+entering of the room; the putting away of bowl and robe; his eating;
+his leaving the village; his going the rounds of the village for alms;
+his entering the village for alms; his departure from the monastery;
+his offering adoration in the courts of the shrine and of the Bodhi
+tree; his washing the bowl; what he did between taking the bowl and
+rinsing his mouth; what he did at dawn; what he did in the middle
+watch of the night; what he did in the first watch of the night.
+Thus he must consider what he did for a whole day and night, going
+backwards over it in reverse order.
+
+"In the same reverse order he must consider what he did the day
+before, the day before that, up to the fifth day, the tenth day, a
+fortnight ago, a month ago, a year ago; and having in the same
+manner considered the previous ten and twenty years, and so on up to
+the time of his conception in this birth, he must then consider the
+name and form which he had at the moment of death in his last birth.
+But since the name and form of the last birth came quite to an end,
+and were replaced by others, this point of time is like thick
+darkness, and difficult to be made out by the mind of any person
+still deluded. But even such a one should not despair nor say: 'I
+shall never be able to penetrate beyond conception, or take as the
+object of my thought the name and form which I had in my last birth,
+at the moment of death,' but he should again and again enter the
+trance which leads to the higher powers, and each time he rises from
+the trance, he should again intend his mind upon that point of time.
+
+"Just as a strong man in cutting down a mighty tree to be used as
+the peaked roof of a pagoda, if the edge of his axe be turned in
+lopping off the branches and twigs, will not despair of cutting down
+the tree, but will go to an iron-worker's shop, have his axe
+sharpened, return, and go on with his cutting; and if the edge of
+his axe be turned a second time, he will a second time have it
+sharpened, and return, and go on with his cutting; and since nothing
+that he chopped once needs to be chopped again, he will in no long
+time, when there is nothing left to chop, fell that mighty tree. In
+the same way the devotee rising from the trance which leads to the
+higher powers, without considering what he has considered once, and
+considering only the moment of conception, in no long time will
+penetrate beyond the moment of conception, and take as his object
+the name and form which he had at the moment of death, in his last
+birth.
+
+"His alert attention having become possessed of this knowledge, he
+can call to mind many former states of existence, as, one birth, two
+births, three births, four births, five births, and so on, in the
+words of the text."
+
+This quotation casts an interesting light upon Eastern monasticism.
+The Buddhist monasteries are here revealed as schools of practical
+psychology, the life of the monk a life of arduous and unceasing
+labor, but labor of a sort which seems but idleness. The successive
+"initiations" which are the milestones on the "Path of Perfection"
+upon which the devotee has set his feet represent successive
+emancipations of consciousness gained through work and knowledge.
+Their nature may best be understood by means of a fanciful analogy.
+
+
+RELEASE
+
+If we assume that all life is conscious life, as much aware of its
+environment as the freedom of movement of its life vehicle in that
+environment permits, a corpuscle vibrating in a solid would have a
+certain sense of space and of movement in space gained from its own
+experience. Now imagine the solid, which is its world, to be
+subjected to the influence of heat. When the temperature reached a
+certain point the solid would transform itself into a liquid. To the
+corpuscle all the old barriers would seem to be broken down; space
+would be different, time would be different, and its world a
+different place. Again, at another increase of temperature, when the
+liquid became a gas, the corpuscle would experience a further
+emancipation: it would possess a further freedom, with all the facts
+of its universe to learn anew.
+
+Each of these successive crises would constitute for it an initiation,
+and since the heat has acted upon it from within, causing an
+expansion of its life vehicle, it would seem to itself to have
+attained to these new freedoms through self-development.
+
+The parallel is now plain to the reader: the corpuscle is the Yogi,
+bent on liberation: the heat which warms him is the Divine Love,
+centered in his heart, his initiations are the successive
+emancipations into higher and higher spaces, till he attains
+Nirvana--inherits the kingdom prepared for him from the foundation
+of the world. As latent heat resides in the corpuscle, so is _Release_
+hidden in the heart--release from time and space. The perception of
+this prompted the exultant apostrophe of Buddha, "Looking for the
+maker of this tabernacle, I have run through a course of many births,
+not finding him; and painful is birth again and again. But now,
+maker of the tabernacle, thou hast been seen; thou shalt not make up
+this tabernacle again. All thy rafters are broken, thy ridge-pole is
+sundered; the mind, approaching the Eternal, has attained the
+extinction of all desires."
+
+Upon the mystery of Nirvana the Higher Space Hypothesis casts not a
+little light. To "approach the Eternal" can only be to approach a
+condition where time is not. Because there is an escape from time in
+proportion as space dimensions are added to, and assimilated by,
+consciousness, any development involving this element of space
+conquest (and evolution is itself such a development) involves time
+annihilation also. To be in a state of desire is to be conditioned
+by a limitation, because one can desire only that which one has not
+or is not. The extinction of a desire is only another name for the
+transcending of a limitation--of all desires, of all limitations. If
+these limitations are of space they are of time also; therefore is
+the "approach to the Eternal" through the "extinction of all desire."
+Christ said, "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar of the temple
+of my God, and he shall go no more out"--go out, that is, into
+incarnation--into "time, besprent with seven-hued circumstance."
+
+Such are the testimonies of the world-saviors regarding the means
+and end of liberation. Below them on the evolutionary ladder stand
+the mystics, earth-bound, but soul-free; below them, in turn, yet
+far above common humanity, stand the men of genius, caught still in
+the net of passion, but able, in their work, to reflect something of
+the glory of the supernal world. Let us consider, in the next two
+chapters, each of these in turn.
+
+
+
+
+IX  THE MYSTICS
+
+
+HERMES TRISMEGISTUS
+
+The mystic, however far removed he may be from Nietzsche's ideal of
+the Superman, nevertheless represents superhumanity in the domain of
+consciousness. By means of quotations, taken almost at random from
+the rich literature of mysticism, the author will attempt to show
+that the consciousness of the mystic involves the awareness of
+dimensionally higher worlds. The first group of quotations is culled
+from certain of the Sacred Books of Hermes Trismegistus.
+
+"_Comprehend clearly_" (says Hermes to Asclepios) "_that this
+sensible world is enfolded, as in a garment, by the supernal world_."
+
+We think of our three dimensional space, "the sensible world," as
+_immersed_ in higher space; "enfolded as in a garment," therefore.
+And we think of the objects of our world as having extension in a
+dimensionally higher region, that "supernal world" in which the
+phenomena of this sensible world arise. For:
+
+"_Celestial order reigns over terrestrial order: all that is done
+and said upon earth has its origin in the heights, from which all
+essences are dispensed with measure and equilibrium: nor is there
+anything which does not emanate from one above and return thither_"
+
+
+THE PAGE AND THE PRESS
+
+The idea of an all-embracing unity within and behind the seeming
+manifoldness of life forms the ground rhythm of all inspired
+literature, sacred and profane alike. For clarity and conciseness it
+would be difficult to improve upon the formulation of this idea
+contained in the following fragment:
+
+"_In the manifold unity of universal life the innumerable
+individualities distinguished by their variations are, nevertheless,
+united in such a manner that the whole is one, and that everything
+proceeds from unity_.
+
+"_For all things depend upon unity, or develop from it, and because
+they appear distant from one another it is believed that they are
+many, whereas in their collectivity they form but one_."
+
+Now nothing so successfully resolves this paradox of the one and the
+many as the concept that the things of this world are embraced and
+united in a dimensionally higher world in a manner analogous to that
+in which all conic sections are embraced and united within the cone.
+A more elaborate and fanciful figure may serve to make this clearer
+to the mind.
+
+Conceive of this printed page as a plane world in which every letter
+is a person; every word a family; phrases and sentences, larger
+communities and groups. These "innumerable individualities,
+distinguished by their variations" must needs seem to themselves as
+"distant from one another," their very differences of form and
+arrangement a barrier to any superior unity. Yet all the while,
+solely by reason of this diversity, they are co-operating towards an
+end of which they cannot be aware. The mind of the reader unites and
+interprets the letters into continuous thought, though they be
+voiceless as stones to one another. Even so may our sad and stony
+identities spell out a world's word which we know not of, by reason
+of our singularity and isolation. Moreover, in the electrotype block,
+the solid of which the printed page constitutes a plane presentment,
+all the letters are actually "united in such a manner that the whole
+is one." The metal that has moulded each into its significant form
+amalgamates them into a higher unity. So also the power that makes
+us separate is the same power that makes us one.
+
+
+THE SHIP AND ITS CAPTAIN
+
+Here follows the lament of the souls awaiting incarnation:
+
+  "_Behold the sad future in store for us--to minister to the wants of
+  a fluctuating and dissoluble body! No more may our eyes distinguish
+  the souls divine! Hardly through these watery spheres shall we
+  perceive, with sighs, our ancestral heaven: at intervals even we
+  shall cease altogether to behold it. By this disastrous sentence
+  direct vision is denied to us; we can see only by the aid of the
+  outer light; these are but windows that we possess--not eyes. Nor
+  will our pain be less when we hear in the fraternal breathing of the
+  winds with which no longer can we mingle our own, since ours will
+  have for its dwelling, instead of the sublime and open world, the
+  narrow prison of the breast_!"
+
+That the soul--the so-called subliminal self--draws from a broader,
+deeper experience than the purely rational consciousness is a
+commonplace of modern psychology. Hinton conceives of the soul as
+_higher-dimensional_ with relation to the body, but so concerned
+with the management and direction of its lower-dimensional vehicle
+as to have lost, for the time being, its orientation, thinking and
+moving only in those ways of which the body is capable. The analogy
+he uses, of a ship and its captain, is so happy, and the whole
+passage has so direct a bearing upon the Hermetic fragment quoted,
+that it is given here entire.
+
+"I adopt the hypothesis that that which thinks in us has an ample
+experience, of which the intuitions we use in dealing with the world
+of real objects are a part; of which experience, the intuition of
+four-dimensional forms and motions is also a part. The process we
+are engaged in intellectually is the reading of the obscure signals
+of our nerves into a world of reality, by means of intuitions
+derived from the inner experience.
+
+"The image I form is as follows: Imagine the captain of a modern
+battleship directing its course. He has his charts before him; he is
+in communication with his associates and subordinates; can convey his
+messages and commands to every part of the ship, and receive
+information from the conning tower and the engine room. Now suppose
+the captain, immersed in the problem of the navigation of his ship
+over the ocean, to have so absorbed himself in the problem of the
+direction of the craft over the plane surface of the sea that he
+forgets himself. All that occupies his attention is the kind of
+movement that his ship makes. The operations by which that movement
+is produced have sunk below the threshold of his consciousness; his
+own actions, by which he pushes the buttons, gives the orders, are
+so familiar as to be automatic; his mind is on the motion of the
+ship as a whole. In such a case we can imagine that he identifies
+himself with the ship; all that enters his conscious thought is the
+direction of its movement over the plane surface of the ocean.
+
+"Such is the relation, as I imagine it, of the soul to the body. A
+relation which we can imagine as existing momentarily in the case of
+the captain is the normal one in the case of the soul with its craft.
+As the captain is capable of a kind of movement, an amplitude of
+motion, which does not enter into his thoughts with regard to the
+directing of the ship over the plane surface of the ocean, so the
+soul is capable of a kind of movement, has an amplitude of motion,
+which is not used in its task of directing the body in the
+three-dimensional region in which the body's activity lies. If for
+any reason it becomes necessary for the captain to consider
+three-dimensional motions with regard to his ship, it would not be
+difficult for him to gain the materials for thinking about such
+motions; all he has to do is to call experience into play. As far as
+the navigation of the ship is concerned, however, he is not obliged
+to call on such experience. The ship as a whole simply moves on a
+surface. The problem of three-dimensional movement does not
+ordinarily concern its steering. And thus with regard to ourselves
+all those movements and activities which characterize our bodily
+organs are three-dimensional; we never need to consider the ampler
+movements. But we do more than use these movements of our body to
+effect our aims by direct means; we have now come to the pass when
+we act indirectly on nature, when we call processes into play which
+lie beyond the reach of any explanation we can give by the kind of
+thought which has been sufficient for the steering of our craft as a
+whole.
+
+"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 passages from _The Virgin of the World_ show a
+remarkable resemblance between the Hermetic philosophy and modern
+higher-space 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 space." 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 passing 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 passers-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 passers-by opened his lips, to what, let
+me ask you, could they refer the voice, if not to the shadow which
+was passing?"
+
+"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-space
+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 Space 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: space is different: distance is different He says,
+"_Space in heaven is not like space in the world, for space 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 analysis, 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 space. 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 space.
+
+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 space. Swedenborg's angels
+are men freed from these limitations. We suffer because the free
+thing in us is hampered by the restrictions of a space to which it
+is not native. Reason sufficient for such restriction is apparent in
+the success that crowns every effort at the annihilation of space,
+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 SPACE-EATER
+
+Man has been called the thinking animal. _Space-eater_ would be a
+more appropriate title, since he so dauntlessly and persistently
+addresses himself to overcoming the limitations of his space. 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
+space-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 pawns 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 space annihilation, that which, discarnate, it
+could compass 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 space 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
+participates 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
+
+There is the utmost unanimity in the testimony of the mystics that
+the world without and the world within are but different aspects of
+the same reality--"_The eye with which I see God is the same eye with
+which He sees me_." They never weary of the telling of the
+solidarity and invisible continuity of life, the inclusion not only
+of the minute in the vast, but of the vast in the minute. We may
+accept this form of perception as characteristic of consciousness in
+its free state. Its instrument is the _intuition_, which divines
+relations between diverse things through a perception of unity. The
+instrument of the purely mundane consciousness, on the other hand,
+is the _reason_, which dissevers and dissects phenomena, divining
+unity through correlation. Now if physical phenomena, in all their
+manifoldness, are lower-dimensional projections, upon a
+lower-dimensional space, of a higher unity, then reason and
+intuition are seen to be two modes of one intelligence, engaged in
+apprehending life from below (by means of the reason) through its
+diversity, and from above (by means of intuition) through its unity.
+
+Those who recognize in the intuition a valid organ of knowledge, are
+disposed to exalt it above the reason, but at our present state of
+evolution, and given our environment, it would seem that the reason
+is the more generally useful faculty of the two. In that unfolding,
+that manifesting of the higher in the lower--which is the idea the
+four-dimensionalist has of the world--the painstaking, minute,
+methodical action of the reasoning mind applied to phenomena
+achieves results impossible to Pisgah-sighted intuition. The power,
+peculiar to the reason, of isolating part after part from the whole
+to which it belongs, and considering them thus isolated, makes
+possible in the end a synthesis in which the whole is not merely
+glimpsed, but known to the last detail.
+
+The method of the reason is symbolized in so trifling a thing as the
+dealing out one by one of a pack of cards and their reassembling.
+The pack has been made to show forth its content by a process of
+disruption--of slicing. Similarly, if a scientist wants to gain a
+thorough comprehension of a complicated organism, he dissects it, or
+submits it to a process of slicing, studying each slice separately
+under the microscope while keeping constantly in mind the relation
+of one slice to another. This amounts to nothing less than reducing
+a thing from three dimensions to two, in order to know it thoroughly.
+Now the flux of things corresponds to the four-dimensional aspect of
+the world, and with this the reason finds it impossible to deal. As
+Bergson has so well shown, the reason cuts life into countless
+cross-sections: a thing must be dead before it can be dissected.
+This is why the higher-dimensional aspect of life, divined by the
+intuition, escapes rational analysis.
+
+
+THE COIL OF LIFE
+
+Swedenborg's description of "the ascent and descent of forms" and
+the "forces and powers" which flow therefrom, suggests, by reason of
+the increasing amplitude and variety of form and motion, a
+progression from space to space. This description is too long and
+involved to find place here, but its conclusion is as follows:
+
+"_Such now is the ascent and descent of forms or substances in the
+greatest, and in our least universe: similar also is the descent of
+all forces and powers which flow from them. But all their perfection
+consists in the possibility and virtue of varying themselves, or of
+changing states, which possibility increases with their elevations,
+so that in number it exceeds all the series of calculations unfolded
+by human minds, and still inwardly involved by them: which
+infinities finally become what is finite in the Supreme. Our ideas
+are merely progressions by variations of form, and thus by actual
+changes of state_."
+
+His sense of the beauty and orderliness of the whole process, and
+his despair of communicating it, find characteristic utterance in
+the following passage:
+
+"_If thou could'st discern, my beloved, how distinctly and
+ordinately these forms are arranged and connected with each other,
+from the mere aspect and infinity of so many wonderful things
+connected with each other, from the mere aspect and infinity of so
+many wonderful things conspiring into one, thou would'st fall down,
+from an inmost impulse, with sacred astonishment, and at the same
+time pious joy, to perform an act of worship and of love before such
+an architect_."
+
+In his description of the manner in which these forms cohere and
+successively unfold, he introduces one of the basic concepts of
+higher space thought; namely, that in the "descent of forms" from
+space to space, that which in the higher exists all together--that
+is, _simultaneously_--can only manifest itself in the lower
+piecemeal--that is, _successively_. He says:
+
+"_Nothing is together in any texture or effect which was not
+successively introduced; and everything is therein, according as
+order itself introduces it: wherefore simultaneous order derives its
+birth, nature and perfection from successive orders, and the former
+is only rendered perspicuous and plain by the latter.... What is
+supreme in things successive takes the inmost place in things
+simultaneous: thus things superior in order super-involve things
+inferior and wrap them together, that these latter may become
+exterior in the same order: by this method first principles, which
+are also called simple, unfold themselves, and involve themselves in
+things posterior or compound: wherefore every perfection of what is
+outermost flows forth from inmost principles by their series: hence
+thy beauty, my daughter, the only parent of which is order itself_."
+
+This passage, like a proffered dish full of rare fruit, tempts the
+metaphysical appetite by the wealth and variety of its appeal; but
+not to weary the reader, the author will content himself by the
+abstraction of a single plum. The plum in question is simply this
+(and the reader is asked to read the quotation carefully again): may
+not every act, incident, circumstance in a human life be the
+"uncoiling" of a karmic aggregate? This coil of life may be thought
+of most conveniently in this connection as the _character_ of the
+person, a character built up, or "successively introduced" in
+antecedent lives. The sequence of events resultant on its "unwinding"
+would be the destiny of the person--a destiny determined, necessarily,
+by past action. This concept gives a new and more eloquent meaning
+to the phrase "Character is destiny." If we carry our thought no
+further, we are plunged into the slough of determinism--sheer
+fatality. But in each reincarnation, however predetermined every act
+and event, their reaction upon consciousness remains a matter of
+determination--is therefore _self_-determined. We may not control
+the event, but our acceptance of it we may control. Moreover, each
+"unwinding" of the karmic coil takes place in a new environment, in a
+world more highly organized by reason of the play upon it of the
+collective consciousness of mankind. Though the same individual
+again and again intersects the stream of mundane experience, it is an
+evolving ego and an augmenting stream. Therefore each life of a
+given series forms a different, a more intricate, and a more amazing
+pattern: in each the thread is drawn from nearer the central energy,
+which is divine, and so shows forth more of the coiled power within
+the soul.
+
+
+
+
+X  GENIUS
+
+
+IMMANENCE
+
+The greatest largess to the mind which higher thought brings is the
+conviction of a transcendent existence. Though we do not know the
+nature of this existence, except obscurely, we are assured of its
+reality and of its immanence, through a growing sense that all that
+happens to us is simply our relation to it.
+
+In our ant-like efforts to attain to some idea of the nature of this
+transcendent reality, let us next avail ourselves of the help
+afforded by the artist and the man of genius, too troubled by the
+flesh for perfect clarity of vision, too troubled by the spirit not
+to attempt to render or record the Pisgah-glimpses of the
+world-order now and then vouchsafed. For the genius stands midway
+between man and Beyond-man: in Nietzsche's phrase, "Man is a bridge
+and not a goal."
+
+Of all the writers on the subject of genius, Schopenhauer is the
+most illuminating, perhaps because he suffered from it so. According
+to him, the essence of genius lies in the perfection and energy of
+its _perceptions_. Schopenhauer says, "He who is endowed with talent
+thinks more quickly and more correctly than others; but the genius
+beholds another world from them all, although only because he has a
+more profound perception of the world which lies before them also,
+in that it presents itself in his mind more objectively, and
+consequently in greater purity and distinctness." This profounder
+perception arises from his detachment: his intellect has to a
+certain extent freed itself from the service of his will, and leads
+an independent life. So long as the intellect is in the service of
+the will, that which has no relation to the will does not exist for
+the intellect; but along with this partial severance of the two
+there comes a new power of perception, synthetic in its nature, a
+complex of relationships not reproducible in _linear_ thought, for
+the mind is oriented simultaneously in _many_ different directions.
+Of this order of perception the well-known case of Mozart is a
+classic example. He is reported to have said of his manner of
+composing, "I can see the whole of it in my mind at a single glance ...
+in which way I do not hear it in my imagination at all as
+succession--the way it comes later--but all at once, as it were. It
+is a rare feast! all the inventing and making goes on in me as in a
+beautiful strong dream."
+
+
+TIMELESSNESS
+
+The inspirations of genius come from a failure of attention to life,
+which, all paradoxically, brings vision--the power to see life
+clearly and "see it whole." Consciousness, unconditioned by time,
+"in a beautiful strong dream," awakens to the perception of a world
+that is timeless. It brings thence some immortelle whose power of
+survival establishes the authenticity of the inspiration. However
+local and personal any masterpiece may be, it escapes by some potent
+magic all geographical and temporal categories, and appears always
+new-born from a sphere in which such categories do not exist.
+
+No writer was more of his period than Shakespeare, yet how
+contemporary he seems to each succeeding generation. Leonardo, in a
+perfect portrait, showed forth the face of a subtle, sensuous, and
+mocking spirit, against a background of wild rocks. It represents
+not alone the soul-phase of the later Renaissance, but of every
+individual and of every civilization which on life's dangerous and
+orgiastic substratum has reared a mere garden of delight. Living
+hearts throb to the music penned by the dead hand of Mozart and of
+Beethoven; the clownings of Aristophanes arouse laughter in our
+music halls; Euripides is as subtle and world-weary as any modern;
+the philosophies of Parminides and Heraclitus are recrudescent in that
+of Bergson; and Plato discusses higher space under a different name.
+
+
+BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL: BEAUTY
+
+The second characteristic of works of genius is their indifference
+to all man-made moral standards. They are beyond all that goes by
+the name of good and evil, in that the two are used indifferently
+for the furtherance of a purely aesthetic end. The Beyond-man
+discovers beauty in the abyss, and ugliness in mere worldly rectitude.
+Leonardo painted the Medusa head, with its charnel pallor and its
+crown of writhing snakes, no less lovingly than the sweet-tender
+face of the Christ of the Cenacolo, and the beauty is not less,
+though of an opposite sort. Shakespeare's most profound sayings and
+most magical poetry are as often as not put in the mouths of his
+villains and his clowns. To genius, pain is purgation; ugliness,
+beauty in disturbance. It injects the acid of irony into success,
+and distils the attar of felicity from failure. It teaches that the
+blows of fate are aimed, not at us, but at our fetters; that death
+is swallowed up in victory, that the Hound of Heaven is none other
+than the Love of God.
+
+Though genius rebels at our moralities, it always submits itself to
+beauty. Emerson says, "Goethe and Carlyle, and perhaps Novalis, have
+an undisguised dislike or contempt for common virtue standing on
+common principles. Meantime they are dear lovers, steadfast
+maintainers of the pure, ideal morality. But they worship it as the
+highest beauty, their love is artistic." And so it is throughout the
+whole hierarchy of men of genius. "Beauty is Truth: Truth, Beauty,"
+is the motto which guides their far-faring feet, as they lead us
+wheresoever they will. With Victor Hugo, we follow, undisgusted,
+through the sewers of old Paris: his sense of beauty disinfects them
+for us. With Balzac and Tolstoy we gaze unrevolted upon the
+nethermost depths of human depravity, discerning moral beauty even
+there; while with Virgil, Dante and Milton, we walk unscathed in
+Hell itself. The _terribilita_ of Michaelangelo, the chaos and
+anarchy of Shakespeare at his greatest, as in Lear--these find
+expression in perfect rhythms, so potent that we recognize them as
+proceeding from a supernal beauty, the beauty of that soul "from
+which also cometh the life of man and of beast, and of the birds of
+the air and of the fishes of the sea."
+
+
+THE DAEMONIC
+
+  "Unknown,--albeit lying near,--
+  To men the path to the Daemon sphere."
+
+But to men of genius--"Minions of the Morning Star"--the path is not
+unknown, and for this reason the daemonic element constantly shows
+itself in their works and in their lives. Dante, Cellini, Goethe,
+three men as unlike in the nature of their several gifts and in
+their temperaments as could easily be named together, are drawn to a
+common likeness through the daemonic gleam which plays and hovers
+over them at times. With William Blake it was a flame that wrapped
+him round. Today no one knows how Brunelleschi was able to construct
+his great dome without centering, nor how Michaelangelo could limn
+his terrible figures on the wet plaster of the Sistine vault with
+such extraordinary swiftness and skill; but we have their testimony
+that they invoked and received divine aid. Shakespeare, the
+master-magician, is silent on this point of supernatural
+assistance--as on all points--except as his plays speak for him;
+but how eloquently they speak! "The Tempest" is made up of the
+daemonic; the murky tragedy of "Macbeth" unfolds under the guidance
+of incarnate forces of evil which drive the hero to his doom and
+final deliverance in death: Hamlet sees and communes with the ghost
+of his father; in short, the supernatural is as much a part of these
+plays as salt is part of the ocean. If from any masterpiece we could
+abstract everything not strictly rational--every element of wonder,
+mystery, and enchantment--it would be like taking all of the unknown
+quantities out of an equation: there would be nothing left to solve.
+The mind of genius is a wireless station attuned to the vibrations
+from the daemonic sphere; the works of genius fascinate and delight
+us largely for this reason: we, too, respond to these vibrations and
+are demonologists in our secret hearts.
+
+For the interest which we take in genius has its root in the
+interest which we take in ourselves. Genius but utters experiences
+common to us all, records perceptions of a world-order which we too
+have glimpsed. Love, hope, pain, sorrow, disappointment, often
+effect that momentary purgation which enables consciousness to
+function independently of the tyrant will. These hours have for us a
+noetic value--"some veil did fall"--revealing visions remembered
+even unto the hour of death.
+
+
+"DEATH"
+
+That "failure of attention to life" which begets inspiration in the
+man of genius comes, indeed, daily to every one, but without his
+being able to profit by it. For what is sleep but a failure of
+attention to life--so complete a failure that memory brings back
+nothing save that little caught in the net of dreams--yet even this
+little is so charged with creative energy as to give rise to the
+saying that every man is a genius in his dreams.
+
+Death also is a failure of attention to life, the greatest that we
+know, and poorest therefore in plunder from supernatural realms.
+Nevertheless reports of persons who have narrowly escaped death give
+evidence at least that to those emancipated by death, life, viewed
+from some higher region of space, is perceived as a unity. When a
+man is brought face to face with death, the events of life pass
+before the mind's eye in an instant, and he comes from such an
+experience not only with deeper insight into himself, but into the
+meaning and purpose of life also. The faces of the dead, those
+parchments where are written the last testament of the departed
+spirit, bear an expression of solemn peace, sometimes of joy,
+sometimes of wonder: terror and agony are seldom written there, save
+when the fatal change comes in some painful or unnatural way.
+
+
+THE PLAY OF BRAHM
+
+Inspiration, dreams, visions at the moment of death--these things we
+say are _irrational_, and so in a sense they are. Bergson has
+compared the play of reason upon phenomena to the action of a
+cinematograph machine which reproduces the effect of motion by
+flashing upon the screen a correlated series of _fixed_ images. In
+like manner the reason dissects the flux of life and presents it to
+consciousness part by part, but never as a whole. In supernormal
+states however we may assume that with the breakdown of some barrier
+life flows in like a tidal wave, paralyzing the reason, and
+therefore presenting itself in an irrational manner to consciousness.
+Were reason equal to the strain put upon it under these circumstances,
+in what light might the phantasmagoria of human life appear? Might
+it not be perceived as a representation, merely, of a supernal world,
+higher-dimensional in relation to our own? Just as a moving picture
+shows us the round and living bodies of men and women as flat
+images on a plane, enacting there some mimic drama, so on the
+three-dimensional screen of the world men and women engaged in
+unfolding the drama of personal life may be but the images of souls
+enacting, on higher planes of being, the drama of their own salvation.
+The reluctance of the American aborigine to be photographed is said
+to have been due to his belief that something of his personality,
+his human potency, went into the image, leaving him by so much the
+poorer from that time forth. Suppose such indeed to be the case:
+that the flat-man on the moving picture screen leads his little life
+of thought and emotion, related to the mental and emotional life of
+the living original as the body is related to its photographic
+counterpart. In similar manner the potencies of the higher self, the
+dweller in higher spaces, may flow into and express themselves in and
+through us. We may be images in a world of images; our thoughts
+shadows of archetypal ideas, our acts a shadow-play upon the
+luminous screen of material existence, revealing there, however
+imperfectly, the moods and movements of a higher self in a higher
+space.
+
+The saying, "All the world's a stage," may be true in a sense
+Shakespeare never intended. It formulates, in effect, the oldest of
+all philosophical doctrines, that contained in the Upanishads of
+Brahma, the Enjoyer, who takes the form of a mechanically perfect
+universe in order to read his own law with eyes of his own creation.
+"He thought: 'Shall I send forth worlds?' He sent forth these worlds."
+To the question, "What worlds?" the Higher Space Hypothesis makes
+answer, "Dimensional systems, from lowest to highest, each one a
+_representation_ of the one next above, where it stands _dramatized_,
+as it were. This is the play of Brahm; endlessly to dissever, in
+time and space, and to unite in consciousness, like the geometrician
+who discovers every ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola, in the cone
+where all inhere."
+
+The particular act of the drama of unfolding consciousness upon
+which the curtain is now upfurled is that wherein we discover the
+world to be indeed a stage, a playground for forces masquerading as
+forms: "they have their exits and their entrances," or, as expressed
+in the Upanishads, "All that goes hence (dies on earth) heaven
+consumes it all; and all that goes thence (returns from heaven to a
+new life) the earth consumes it all."
+
+
+
+
+XI THE GIFT OF FREEDOM
+
+
+CONCEPT AND CONDUCT
+
+A surgeon once remarked to the author that among his professional
+associates he had noticed an increasing awareness of the invisible.
+This he claimed was manifest in the fact that the young men educated
+since the rise of bacteriological science were more punctilious in
+the matter of extreme personal cleanliness and the sterilization of
+their instruments than the older and often more accomplished
+surgeons whose habits in these matters had been formed before the
+general sense of an _invisible_ menace had become acute.
+
+This anecdote well illustrates the unconscious reaction of new
+concepts upon conduct. Preoccupation with the problems of space
+hyper-dimensionality cannot fail to produce profound changes in our
+ethical outlook upon life and in our attitude towards our fellow
+beings. The nature of these changes it is not difficult to forecast.
+
+Although higher-space thought makes painfully clear our limitations,
+it nevertheless leads to the perception that these very limitations
+are inhibited powers. In this way it supplies us with a workable
+method whereby we may enter that transcendental world of which we
+glimpse so many vistas. This method consists in first becoming aware
+of a limitation, and then in forcing ourselves to dramatize the
+experience that would be ours if the limitation did not affect us.
+We then discover in ourselves a power for transcending the limitation,
+and presently we come to live in the new mode as easily as in the old.
+Thought, conscious of its own limitations, leads to the New Freedom.
+"Become what thou art!" is the maxim engraved upon the lintel of
+this new Temple of Initiation.
+
+
+SELFLESSNESS
+
+Higher-space speculation is an education in _selflessness_, for it
+demands the elimination of what Hinton calls _self-elements_ of
+observation. The diurnal motion of the sun is an example of a
+self-element: it has nothing to do with the sun but everything to do
+with the observer. The Ptolemaic system founded on this illusion
+tyrannized over the human mind for centuries, but who knows of how
+many other illusions we continue to be victims--for the worst of a
+self-element is that its presence is never dreamed of until it is
+done away with. The Theory of Relativity presents us with an effort
+to get rid of the self-element in regard to space and time. A
+self-centered man cannot do full justice to this theory: it requires
+of the mind a certain detachment, and the idea becomes clear in
+proportion as this detachment, this selflessness, is attained.
+
+So while it would be too much to claim that higher thought makes men
+unselfish, it at least cracks the hard shell in which their
+selfishness abides. If a man disciplines himself to abdicate his
+personal point of view in thinking about the world he lives in, it
+makes easier a similar attitude in relation to his fellow men.
+
+
+HUMILITY
+
+One of the earliest effects of selfless thought is the exorcism of
+all arrogance. The effort to dramatize the relation of an earthworm
+to its environment makes us recognize that its predicament is our own,
+different only in degree. We are exercising ourselves in humility
+and meekness, but of a sort leading to a mastery that may well make
+the meek the inheritors of the earth. Hinton was himself so meek a
+man that his desire did not rise to the height of expecting or
+looking for the beautiful or the good: he simply asked for something
+to know. He despaired of knowing anything definitely and certainly
+except arrangements in space. We have his testimony as to how
+abundantly this hunger and thirst after that right knowledge which
+is righteousness was gratified. "All I want to do," he says,
+"is to make this humble beginning of knowledge and show how
+inevitably, by devotion to it, it leads to marvellous and
+far-distant truths, and how, by strange paths, it leads directly
+into the presence of some of the highest conceptions which great
+minds have given us."
+
+Here speaks the blessed man referred to by the psalmist, "Whose
+delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate
+day and night." Abandoning a vain search after abstractions, and
+applying his simple formula to life, Hinton found that it enabled
+him to express the faith in his heart in terms conformable to reason;
+that it led back to, and illumined the teachings of every spiritual
+instructor and inspirer of mankind.
+
+
+SOLIDARITY
+
+That we are all members of one body, branches of one vine, is a
+matter of faith and of feeling; but with the first use of the weapon
+of higher thought the paradox of the one and the many is capable of
+so clear and simple a resolution that the sublime idea of human
+solidarity is brought down from the nebulous heaven of the mystic to
+the earth of every day life. To our ordinary space-thought, men are
+isolated, distinct, each "an infinitely repellent particle," but we
+conceive of space too narrowly. The broader view admits the idea
+that men are related by reason of a superior union, that their
+isolation is but an affair of limited consciousness. Applying this
+concept to conduct, we come to discern a literal truth in the words
+of the Master, "He who hath done it unto the least of these my
+children, hath done it unto me," and "Where two or three are
+gathered together in my name." If we conceive of each individual as a
+"slice" or cross-section of a higher being, each fragment isolated
+by an inhibition of consciousness which it is moment by moment
+engaged in transcending, the sacrifice of the Logos takes on a new
+meaning. This disseverance into millions of human beings is that
+each may realize God in himself. Conceiving of humanity as God's
+broken body, we are driven to make peace among its members, and by
+realization we become the Children of God.
+
+
+LIVE OPENLY
+
+"_Blessed are the meek," "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst
+after righteousness." "Blessed are the peacemakers_." It would not
+be impossible to trace a relation between higher space thought and
+the other beatitudes also, but it will suffice simply to note the
+fact that the central and essential teaching of the Sermon on the
+Mount, "Let your light shine before men" is implicit in the
+conviction of every one who thinks on higher space: he must _live
+openly_. By continual dwelling upon the predicament of the flat-man,
+naked, as it were, to observation from an eye which looks down upon
+his plane, we come to realize our own exposure. In that large world
+all that we think, or do, or imagine, lies open, palpable; there is
+no such thing as secrecy. Imbued with this idea, we begin to live
+openly because we must; but soon we come to do so because we desire
+it. In making toward one another our limited lives open and manifest,
+we treat each other in the service of truth as though we were all
+members of that higher world. We imitate, in our world, our true
+existence in a higher world, and so help to establish heavenly
+conditions upon earth.
+
+
+NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL
+
+The problem of ugliness and evil would seem at first thought to be
+totally unrelated to the subject of space hyperdimensionality, but
+there is at least a symbolical relation. This was suggested to the
+author by the endeavor of two friends whose interests were
+pre-eminently mathematical to discover what certain four-dimensional
+figures would look like in three-dimensional space. They found
+that in a great number of cases these cross-sections, when
+thus isolated, revealed little of the symmetry and beauty of their
+higher-dimensional archetypes. It is clear that a beautiful form of
+our world, traversing a plane, would show nothing of its beauty to
+the planeman, who lacked the power of perceiving it entire; for the
+sense of beauty is largely a matter of co-ordination. We give the
+names of evil, chance, fate, ugliness, to those aspects of life and
+of the world that we fail to perceive in their true relations, in
+regard to which our power of correlation breaks down. Yet we often
+find that in the light of fuller knowledge or subsequent experience,
+the fortune which seemed evil was really good fortune in the making,
+that the chance act or encounter was too momentous in its
+consequences to be regarded as other than ordained.
+
+The self-element plays a large part in our idea of good and evil,
+ugliness and beauty. "All things are as they seem to all." Desire of
+her will make any woman beautiful, and fear will exercise an absolute
+inhibition upon the aesthetic sense. As we recede in time from events,
+they more and more emancipate themselves from the tyranny of our
+personal prejudices and predilections, and we are able to perceive
+them with greater clarity, more as they appear from the standpoint
+of higher time and higher space. "Old, unhappy, far-off things, and
+battles long ago" lose their poignancy of pain and take on the
+poignancy of beauty. The memory of suffering endured is often the
+last thing from which we would be parted, while humdrum happiness we
+are quite willing to forget. Because we realize completely only in
+retrospect, it may well be that the present exists chiefly for the
+sake of the future. Then let the days come with veiled faces, accept
+their gifts whose value we are so little able to appraise! There is
+a profound and practical truth in Christ's saying, "Resist not evil."
+Honor this truth by use, and welcome destiny in however sinister a
+guise.
+
+
+THE IMMANENT DIVINE
+
+In the fact of the limited nature of our space perceptions is found
+a connecting link between materialism and idealism. For, passing
+deeper and deeper in our observation of the material world, that
+which we at first felt as real passes away to become but the outward
+sign of a reality infinitely greater, of which our realities are
+appearances only, and we become convinced of the existence of
+_an immanent divine._ "In Him we live and move and have our being."
+Our space is but a limitation of infinite "room to move about":
+"_In my Father's house are many mansions_." Our time is but a
+limitation of infinite duration: "_Before Abraham was, I am_." Our
+sense of space is the consciousness that we abide in Him; our sense
+of time is the consciousness that He abides in us. Both are modes of
+apprehension of divinity--growing, expanding modes. In conceiving of
+a space of more than three dimensions we prove that our relation to
+God is not static, but dynamic. Christ said to the man who was sick
+of the palsy, "Rise, take up thy bed and walk." The narrow concept
+of three-dimensional space is a bed in which the human mind has lain
+so long as to become at last inanimate. The divine voice calls to us
+again to demonstrate that we are alive. Thinking in terms of the
+higher we issue from the tomb of materialism into the sunlight of
+that sane and life-giving idealism which is Christ's.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Four-Dimensional Vistas, by Claude Fayette Bragdon
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR-DIMENSIONAL VISTAS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 11906.txt or 11906.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/9/0/11906/
+
+Produced by PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year. For example:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/etext06
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL
+
+
diff --git a/old/11906.zip b/old/11906.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bcb98f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/11906.zip