TGU – reuniting concepts

Thursday, June 14, 2018

2:40 a.m. Gentlemen, is the thought that came to me yesterday our theme for today?

[“It occurred to me to look at the 3D world from outside rather than under the impression that it is its own raison d’etre.”]

It can be. It would be better if we could find a helpful image, and looking at the 3D world as if from outside may assist us to do so.

We had come up with the image of a light show, remember, with all the lights continually flashing, changing color, forming new patterns, as individual minds fluctuated. We would like to find an image of that sort, and tie it in with the concept of the vast impersonal forces affecting the light show. In other words, the light show changing not so much in terms of interactions among its own components, but of interactions of the entire show with forces from outside it.

Always integrating larger and larger aspects of reality, in other words. What you’re seeking to do, I mean.

It is always a two-part process, now building up from individual building-blocks, then looking from a higher synthesis to see how the blocks interrelate to form a system. The world can never be understood merely by adding to an inventory of parts; neither can it be understood by sweeping generalizations that may be true but cannot be illustrated in their operation. So, first one way, then the other. We don’t know any other way to proceed.

That’s what an image does, then. It summarized previous understandings.

Bearing in mind the fact that the world cannot be captured in words, in sequential processing. An image is closer to a gestalt.

Does this imply that what cannot be summarized in an image or metaphor has not yet been properly understood?

That’s a pretty flat statement. We’d want to think before signing off on it.

In any case –

Well, while we wait for the proper clarifying image to suggest itself, let us return to the question of your 3D life, the weather you exist in, and the non-3D elements of the same situation, which are easily lost sight of, or never glimpsed at all, or thought of only in separate mental compartments. For, after all, considering the 3D as if it were a world unto itself is only somewhat true.

You’re right, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact. We tend to think that this is the world, and we’re so proud of ourselves for realizing that we extend into the non-3D.

Nothing wrong with thinking that way; one’s surroundings are always what loom largest, whether we are talking in terms of space or of time. “Here, now,” is what 3D is all about! But it is truer to life to say that the non-3D extends into the 3D – that is, that the non-3D is primary and vastly more extensive, and the 3D secondary and only a local phenomenon, so to speak. However, it is even closer to the true situation to say that the All-D is the all-encompassing reality, and both non-3D and 3D are specialized expressions of it. After all, if one speaks of only “the non-3D” as if it were an entity, that is as unreal as thinking that the 3D world could exist without extending into all dimensions.

Not sure I’m all the way with you on that. I sort of get it, but when I look at it more closely, I think, “Not so much.”

The non-3D is not an entity that can exist. Neither is the 3D. Each is only an abstraction.

Ah, got it! We constructed “non-3D” as scaffolding to help us see that the “3D” we commonly experience is incomplete. The non-3D means, really, all the aspects of reality that are not obvious in 3D.

All that do not obviously manifest, yes. So this is a reminder that the reality of things is not material, as 3D appears to be, but also not only non-material as non-3D was defined by us to be, but, always, All-D. That is, reality is never in pieces. Do not confuse the scaffolding with the stonework.

So, now go back over what we have been telling you, these many years, and realize that what was said in order to clarify relationships also, inadvertently and necessarily, distorted larger relationships by ignoring them. This couldn’t be helped. If we could say everything at once, we would, gladly, but saying “All is one” is useful only to move people out of a sense of things as separate. Once you see that everything is connected, “All is well” does not necessarily bring you any farther in practical understanding. So, rather than soaring over the landscape, we plod. Then we soar again to give you a sense of the terrain from the air. Then we plod so that your feet will feel the changes in elevation, the roughness of the path, the view from ground level. This repetitive alternation may seem frustratingly slow, but it is the only way we know.

Well, it seems to serve the purpose.

People have the idea that they could (if they could find the proper guide) reach enlightenment (whatever that means to them) and then begin to live. But that is a confusion of ideas. It assumes that enlightenment is a “there” that one may arrive at, rather than a way of being while one travels.

So, in a sense, we are always going back and saying, “Now, look again, and see how your new viewpoint reinterprets what you used to perceive.” Not so much “used to think,” as “used to perceive.” Your world as you experience it changes as you see it differently, and you see it differently as it changes. As so often, a reciprocating process.

When you begin from the thought that reality is necessarily All-D – that is, by definition, involves all dimensions and not only some of them – then what you have learned, have experienced, have seen with new eyes opens yet new vistas to you. What you learned is not invalidated; spending time in an older framework was not time wasted. It is what allows you to move on from a higher base camp.

So, you see that the 3D world is a subset of the entire world, the other aspects of which we called the non-3D to at once distinguish and connect the two. Then you see that the separation is not a real separation but only a separation for the process of analysis, and the separation must be reunited in your mind to take account of the larger reality. Now you begin to see that neither 3D nor non-3D exists as such, but only as abstractions.

And I think you’re about to say, “And the very concept of dimensions is only an abstraction, something unreal but useful for the purposes of analysis.” I have had this thought more than once.

This will be a stumbling-block for some, because their senses tell them that height, depth, width obviously exist and compose the substance of the 3D world.

But they don’t, of course. They are merely ways of describing orientation in space.

Yes, but go slowly now. The spatial dimensions are similar to the temporal dimension in this respect: They are measured, hence are assumed to be real, as if they were objects rather than relationships.

Not an entirely new thought to me, though you just gave it a spin I hadn’t thought of. Time is measured in seconds, minutes, hours, in the same way we measure inches, feet, yards. In both cases, the measuring medium could be looked at as merely a measurement of relationship. You can’t box up a dozen dimensions, whether height or width or depth or minutes or hours. They don’t exist; they measure.

It might be better to say, “They don’t exist as such; they are inferred from relationships in time and space.”

We’ve come to this before, haven’t we? I seem to remember a similar discussion at some point.

But you are not the same person now that you were then. Standing on a higher foothill gives you a different view of the terrain to be covered and the terrain already covered.

So if dimensions are merely abstractions, they cannot be barriers or destinations. We don’t move to the 4th, 5th, 6th, etc. dimension any more than we move to any one of them. There isn’t any place to move to. It would be like moving to seconds or minutes.

However, that doesn’t render the metaphor invalid or even, necessarily, misleading. It only reminds you that a metaphor is a metaphor and not a road map.

And that will do for now.

Our theme for next time?

Let’s stay with the question of the 3D world as inextricable from the All-D, and look at what life in 3D looks like from an All-D perspective.

Okay. See you next time. Thanks as always.