(© RKP, 1958)Normal and Abnormal
Inevitably mind functions in a fourth dimension - for it is neither in front nor behind, at one side or the other, above or below, but 'within' or in depth.
Mind itself functions in a fourth dimension of measurement ('dimension') - that is beyond contestation - but our psycho-somatic apparatus confines its manifestation to the three in which are revealed by our senses what we know as phenomena.
Therefore tridimensionality appears to reside in our psycho-somatic apparatus, and what we experience as consciousness has been adapted by that. But mind itself knows no such limitation. That is why our 'normal' state is that of mind, and our 'abnormal' state that in which our senses confine us.
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Detachment
What, after all, is it - regarded in our practical occidental manner of thinking? Is it not just this, that it is necessary to detach oneself from the limitations of habits, imposed by our three-dimensional conditioning, in order freely to make use of the fourth?
We must leave D.3 in order to enter D.4.
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Detachment is a state, it is not a totalisation of achieved indifferences.
A Dialogue...1
TWO: 'You cannot use mind to seek something from mind.' What is sought from mind?
ONE: Reality.
TWO: And what is the mind we might to seek to use in the search?
ONE: Reality.
TWO: But our limited consciousness in three dimensions?
ONE: 'An inaccurate apprehension of Reality.'
TWO: Can we not use that?
ONE: How could it be effective?
TWO: So what does Hsi Yun mean?
ONE: That there is nothing to seek, and no means of seeking it. For it is already there, and it is all that there is anywhere at all. I know of nothing else that he could mean.
TWO: So what do we do?
ONE: Nothing need be done or can be done, for there is nothing to do and nothing with which to do anything.
TWO: But I seek realisation.
ONE: It is there. You have it. Look - instead of thinking about looking. Reality is in the act of looking, not in what your tridimensional consciousness thinks it has seen.
TWO: Go on.
ONE: It is the Goose in the Bottle again. The answer, as you know, is, 'Look, it is out!'.
A Dialogue...2
TWO: 'Mind and the object of its search are one.' What is the object of its search?
ONE: Reality.
TWO: Therefore the mind itself is Reality?
ONE: The Mind itself is Reality, but our vision of it is a concept, and therefore tridimensional, and that is 'an inaccurate apprehension of Reality.'
TWO: So the object of our search is just Mind, and we have it already.
ONE: That would seem to be so.
TWO: But what have we to do in order to see it as it really is?
ONE: Just open our eyes, and look.
TWO: But all we see is a concept?
ONE: Alas!
TWO: What then?
ONE: The act of every action is real, the percept of every perception is real, reality is basic in everything we can do or experience. Essentially everything is real. We live in reality. We are real. All we need is to real-ise it.
TWO: And yet in everyday experience all this reality is 'inaccurately apprehended'. How can we come to apprehend it accurately?
ONE: As long as we remain identified with a tridimensional self, based on memories of our past experiences on the plane of seeming, a temporary and artificial structure, as anyone can see, it does not appear to be possible for us to apprehend it accurately.
TWO: How may we free ourselves from this identification?
ONE: The method is called non-attachment (or Dhyana or Zen).
TWO: How is that to be applied?
ONE: By not reacting with hatred or love to that which we perceive, by not judging affectively, by not making affective estimations and evaluations of everything that enters our consciousness.
TWO: In short, by not reacting affectively?
ONE: And by dispassionately watching that antics of our pseudo-self. That is my understanding of the teaching of those who were living in a state of enlightenment when they taught.
TWO: But what effect can that have?
ONE: We have just succeeded in creating a concept which represents an intellectual apprehension of Reality, but it is only a concept in tridimensional consciousness. That may seem to be something achieved, but actually it is nothing. We are exactly where we were before we made it. Before it can function it must be transmuted into real knowledge, prajna, or quadridimensional realisation.
TWO: I know that, but how?
ONE: No one has ever described the mechanism, probably because there is none. I think we only have to look - in the right direction.
TWO: Which is?
ONE: All dimensions are, by definition, at right-angles to all others.
TWO: In this case - Within?
ONE: Inevitably.
TWO: And we shall see?
ONE: Inevitably.
TWO: Once and for all?
ONE: Inevitably.
TWO: And what is hindering us from so-doing now?
ONE: Nothing. That is, nothing real: just attachment, attachment which prevents us from looking in the right direction. But that attachment is an illusory thing - like the chalk line which prevents the chicken from taking its beak off the ground.
TWO: And that is all?
ONE: That is my understanding of the teaching of the Masters. If you have another it should be as worthy of consideration as mine.
Percepts, Concepts, and Direct Cognition
If we analyse a percept what do we observe? A sense-impression in not more than two dimensions at a time. If we analyse a concept what do we observe? Percepts in not more than two dimensions associated by a further process of the mind so that they are comprehended as three-dimensional objects.
The concept of a cube, a table, a house, is an interpretation of perceptions of surfaces and colours.
The concept is due to the power of synthesis and interpretation, which that animal lacks; this seems to demonstrate the accuracy of our supposition whereby the two-dimensional consciousness is confined to percepts, which the three-dimensional consciousness translates into concepts.
The four-dimensional power of direct cognition is difficult for us to analyse who do not have it as a regular faculty, but it would seem to transcend form (percepts and concepts) and not to be subject to space and time as conceived tridimensionally. That was to be expected; one might say that so it must be by definition. Since it short-circuits the tridimensional reasoning faculty it cannot be expected to conform to our rules of logic. Since it is knowledge of a wider nature, arrived at by a fuller mode, it cannot readily be expressed in language designed to describe knowledge that is limited to a dimension less. Crystallised in words or image, necessarily of a dimension less than its own, it is more likely to appear to be nonsense than sense.
The Goose and its Apparent Bottle. It's Out!
The famous koan of the goose in the bottle, to be got out without harming the goose or breaking the bottle, has a very simple and obvious solution to our eyes - whatever may have been the intention of the Zen Masters who imagined it.
It should be as easy to extract a goose from a bottle, or a man from a prison, as for a tridimensional being to move out of a confined area on a two-dimensional plane-surface. He just steps 'over' the apparent obstacle (which is only such to the two-dimensional being). It merely requires the utilisation of a further dimension. If historical cases are factual it has often been done. The mind can do it at any moment.
Famous conundrums - perpetual motion, the philosopher's stone, squaring the circle, are insoluble problems only to tridimensional logic. To a quadridimensional mind they should be as simple as taking the goose out of the bottle.
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