This part of the text hopes to define the concept of dimensions and possible manifestations perceived in certain situations.
Many readers will find this subject easy to understand, while others may need to read this paragraph several times.
It is advised not to continue reading until the details of this chapter are clear and have been fully digested, as they will be repeated many times in this text.
We invite the reader to return to this part of the text if the concepts therein become obscured over time.
We are all used to manoeuvering the world as we see it in four dimensions: three spatial dimensions we perceive (length, height and depth) and an one-way temporal dimension (time we perceive it that spends in an incremental one-way, unable to retreat).
Il. 1
Unless the reader has pursued a career in scientific studies, imagining a fourth spatial dimension is already difficult.
Let's take a somewhat rough example, which will be recalled several times in the course of this book to facilitate the reader's ease of comprehension.
Projecting ourselves into a hypothetical (visible) universe in three dimensions: two spatial dimensions and time.
In this universe there is a country where some characters live: Mr. Segment, Mrs. Comma, and Mr. Angle.
The three friends, living in a world of two spatial dimensions, totally ignore the existence of a third spatial dimension; indeed, they cannot even conceive of a dimension beyond the two spatial dimensions in which they live... just as we struggle to perceive a fourth spatial dimension.
All three characters are used to witnessing a strange manifestation every day, whose cause they cannot begin to guess at: a circle that at times becomes larger and sometimes becomes smaller.
Il. 2a: world in 2 spatial dimensions
Il. 2b: world in 2 spatial dimensions
Mr. Angle is a scientist and has dedicated his entire life to studying strange event. By formulating various physical laws based on complex mathematical models, he is able to adequately describe the geometric dynamic of the manifestation that appears, but Mr. Angle's knowledge and perceptions don't allow him to understanding the full nature of the phenomenon. Similarly, we have created astounding quantum physics, but have not fully understood the true nature of the phenomena we call electrons and photons.
The mysterious phenomenon is actually Mr. Cone, who lives in a world of four visible dimensions (three spatial dimensions plus time), and continuously moves up and down the third spatial dimension.
The phenomenon perceived by the three friends is the planar intersection of Mr. Cone on the plane of the three friends, Comma, Angle, and Segment, who cannot conceive of the third spatial dimension; they can only perceive the part of Mr. Cone that intersects with their two-dimensional spatial reality.
Il. 3: world in 2 spatial dimensions seen by observer in 3 spatial dimensional world
And so the three friends, Comma, Angle and Segment, living in a world of two spatial dimensions, deprived of the third spatial dimension (perpendicular to the plane), do not notice the presence of Mr. Cone; the three friends only notice the manifestations of Mr. Cone in their world with its two spatial dimensions.
That strange circle that changes dimension is in reality nothing but the geometric incidence of Mr. Cone on the two-dimensional plane (shown in grey colour on illustration 3)... Mr. Angle has been able to describe Mr. Cone's manifestation in the world of two spatial dimensions well, but because Mr. Angle lacks the third spatial dimension, he cannot understand Mr. Cone's true nature.
We can define two distinct types of manifestation:
To define whether a manifestation is direct or indirect, one must fully know the nature of the phenomenon.
In general, a phenomenon can be well-defined if its nature lies completely within our perceptible dimensions and manifests itself in sub-dimensions.
In the event that the manifestation of the phenomenon occurs in the dimensions perceptible to us, but the nature of the phenomenon lies in dimensions imperceptible to us, comprehension of the phenomenon is certainly unlikely.
In this text, no distinction will be made between direct and indirect manifestation; they will be referred to as simply manifestation.
Now, let's translate the example we just made into our reality, which we experience in four dimensions (three spatial and one temporal).
Although we often do not realise it, over the course of our lives we live with manifestations of phenomena whose nature science cannot fully explain. Science succeeds in fully describing the manifestation of some of these phenomena, and even to predict and control them, but fails to give an explanation of the nature of the manifestation.
Manifestations such as electrons, photons, brain activations, and gravity are manifestations of phenomena that also “exist " in other dimensions besides our four, but we perceive only their manifestations in our four dimensions.
Even if we manage to adequately describe the manifestations of these phenomena in our four dimensions, as in the case of the scientist Mr. Angle in the example above, we are completely or partially ignorant to their true nature, because our understanding is limited to the three spatial dimensions and the temporal one.
Our physical-mathematical models are correct for describing the manifestations of the phenomena in our four-dimensional world, but the phenomenon's true nature often escapes us. This holds true in the case of gravity, the manifestation of which had already been described by Newton by the 17th century with its description subsequently being refined, but the true nature of which is unknown even today, despite A. Einstein attempting to provide a more complete explanation of gravity based on space-time distortion in his theory of relativity.
Light is a fundamental element of our lives, just as electrical current is a fundamental element of our technological age. However, the true nature of the microscopic constituents of light and electricity, namely the photon and the electron respectively, still eludes us: these elements, which have infinitesimal dimensions, have been macroscopically described by physics and optical physics, respectively, and microscopically by quantum physics, but we still do not understand the true nature of electrons and photons. A demonstration of this is the name of the fundamental mathematical model for quantum physics for both electrons and photons, known as the wave-particle model: this is precisely because we still do not understand whether these manifestations are a wave, a particle or, more likely, something else (see paragraph The Wave-Particle Duality in Brief ⇒).
We do not necessarily need to enter into “intangible” scientific topics to find unsolved mysteries; the most important part of our body is still partially a mystery: the brain.
This is the wonderful gelatinous tool that allowed us to overwhelm the rest of the animal world, despite humans being physically inferior to other species.
Science flounders in an attempt to understand certain features of the brain whose manifestations are obvious to everyone, but whose nature completely evades us.
As one of the most renowned researchers in cognitive science, Walter J. Freeman, states[2], despite our ability to make macroscopic models which define the general operation of the brain, and microscopic ones which define the functioning of its microscopic parts (neural networks), we do not understand the connection between these macroscopic and microscopic models.
Not to mention our comprehension of some of the main functions of the brain, such as vision for example: it is not yet known where and how the brain recreates an image from the electrochemical signals provided by the optic nerve.
These and other phenomena possess natures which are not limited to our known dimensions, but which also extend to other dimensions, though we cannot perceive them and probably cannot even understand them, as in the case of the three friends in the two-dimensional world in the cited example.
Surely other spatial dimensions exist. In fact, the recent Superstring theory has gone so far as to hypothesise up to the eleventh dimension. There are probably other temporal dimensions, related to each other, where time is not only unidirectional. It is doubtless that there are other energy and potential dimensions beyond what we know. Perhaps there are also dimensions that are neither temporal, nor spatial, nor energy, nor potential, the concepts of which are unimaginable to us due to our limitations.
It is precisely because there are so many dimensions that we cannot even conceptualise that it is wrong to think that human beings are limited to the dimensions known to us. The individual awareness of human beings is certainly limited to the dimensions that we perceive, but the constituent parts of the human being do not have this limitation, even if we are not aware of it. These constituent parts of the human being which possess further dimensions beyond our perceived ones, constitute the so-called spiritual parts.