Am I just a sliver and why is time the 4th?

[LoneHaven]

I started reading a book on meditation and before getting into the practice the author is going over some stuff like time and dimensions and other concepts. I have thought about this stuff in the past, but usually only take it so far in my mind. The author may discuss some of my questions in later paragraphs, but I put the book down a while ago to think through things in my mind.

 

Pre-condition:

A drinking glass intersects a plane and makes a two dimensional circle on that plane. If that circle is aware of itself, it will only know itself to be in two dimensions (x and y axis). It will know nothing of the 3rd dimension (z-axis or height). It may theorize about other dimensions and theorize that it may be a part of something bigger, but it does not know. It has no idea its circular being is just a two dimensional sliver of the overall glass.

 

Now us:

We know three dimensions. We theorize about others, but we do not know. So, are we just three dimensional slivers of something larger than ourselves? I only know my x,y,z and cannot fathom what my whole may look like if I am just a sliver. But as the circle did not know it was part of a glass, maybe I do not know that I am a part of whatchamacallit. Am I just a sliver and what am I a sliver of?

 

Time:

If the circle is aware and moves around (or not), it can measure the passage of time. It may call time its 3rd dimension (as it knows no height dimension). So we measure the passage of time (or intervals between present awareness or whatever else we want to describe it as) in our three dimensional world and call it the fourth dimension. But why is it the fourth - why is it just not a measurement between third dimensional intervals? Maybe there is a fourth dimension that we are just a sliver of - what it is I cannot imagine. And anything aware of itself on the fourth dimension may call the addition of time its fifth dimension and so on.

 

I am more interested in the thought of 'what am I a sliver of in the fourth dimension' but the time question also interests me. If any thoughts or theories or direct inner-experience, please share. Thanks!

 

p.s. - I don't do grammar so please do not kill me about my prepositions.

 

-LoneHaven

[h.uriahr]

I started reading a book on meditation and before getting into the practice the author is going over some stuff like time and dimensions and other concepts. I have thought about this stuff in the past, but usually only take it so far in my mind. The author may discuss some of my questions in later paragraphs, but I put the book down a while ago to think through things in my mind.

 

Pre-condition:

A drinking glass intersects a plane and makes a two dimensional circle on that plane. If that circle is aware of itself, it will only know itself to be in two dimensions (x and y axis). It will know nothing of the 3rd dimension (z-axis or height). It may theorize about other dimensions and theorize that it may be a part of something bigger, but it does not know. It has no idea its circular being is just a two dimensional sliver of the overall glass.

 

Now us:

We know three dimensions. We theorize about others, but we do not know. So, are we just three dimensional slivers of something larger than ourselves? I only know my x,y,z and cannot fathom what my whole may look like if I am just a sliver. But as the circle did not know it was part of a glass, maybe I do not know that I am a part of whatchamacallit. Am I just a sliver and what am I a sliver of?

 

Time:

If the circle is aware and moves around (or not), it can measure the passage of time. It may call time its 3rd dimension (as it knows no height dimension). So we measure the passage of time (or intervals between present awareness or whatever else we want to describe it as) in our three dimensional world and call it the fourth dimension. But why is it the fourth - why is it just not a measurement between third dimensional intervals? Maybe there is a fourth dimension that we are just a sliver of - what it is I cannot imagine. And anything aware of itself on the fourth dimension may call the addition of time its fifth dimension and so on.

 

I am more interested in the thought of 'what am I a sliver of in the fourth dimension' but the time question also interests me. If any thoughts or theories or direct inner-experience, please share. Thanks!

 

p.s. - I don't do grammar so please do not kill me about my prepositions.

 

-LoneHaven

 

The Tao of Meditation is a good book

[LoneHaven]

The Tao of Meditation is a good book

I hope so...it is the one that stood out to me when I was searching. It is encouraging to know that someone else approves it though....thanks!

[Philip]

I am more interested in the thought of 'what am I a sliver of in the fourth dimension' but the time question also interests me. If any thoughts or theories or direct inner-experience, please share. Thanks!

 

 

Yeah, these are tough questions language is not really good at answering. In my experience, "what you are a sliver of" is all about your current vantage point. As modern physics has pointed out, it's impossible to understand a given observation without also understanding the instrument used to observe. As with the glass analogy, depending on what our vantage point is, the circle is a sliver of a glass, or it could be a sliver of a cross-section of my kitchen, or further, a sliver taken from a single plane cut out of my neighborhood. It just depends on how far out you want to go with it.

 

Really everything we perceive is contextualized in some way. That's how I understand karma - as a vast web of contextual relationships, some of which are more closely related than others, depending on your place in space-time. As far as what we are actually slivers of, well there's probably not a conceptual object we can point to that would do it much justice, but many have been put forth. I like to think of it as the God-Process, Divine Light, or perhaps the Way?

 

Philip

[Fire Dragon]

Hello

 

Eintein found out that the time isn't only third dimensional measurements betwean intervals.

 

In hes special realativity theory he found out that.

If subjects moves relative eachother. Then the time intervals for the same event is different if you are still or if you are looking into something that moves. The times goes in different speeds if you move or not relative someting else.

 

 

In the general relativity he found out:

 

That times goes at different speed if you are close to a heavy object than if you are far from it. He found out that if you describe the universe as having 3 dimension and one extra time dimension, then many thing in physics was possible to understund. The gravity for instance is a curce or bend in the 4D roomtime.

 

 

Einsteins theores have shown extremly good connections with observable phenomenon in the world. The only drawback I know about is that the theory is difficult to combain with kvantum mechanics. So that the relativity theory doesn fit wery well in the universe but doesn't fit in the small subatomic space. Stephen Hawkins have been able to combine the two main theories in the special case of black holes. There are also attempths related to string theory that migth solve the problems, but then we are talking about 11 or 13 dimensions.

 

 

 

One example on how to see that gravity and a curve in the 4D roomtime is the same is:

Astronomers did find exactly the same galaxy at two places on the same distance at the side of a much closer galaxy. That closer galaxy have alot of gravity, that curves the universe or more righty that is the curve of the universe. What have happened is that the left picture of the far away galaxy has taken a path a bit to the left of the nearby galaxy but bended around the nearby galaxy. The other picture to the right have taken a path a bit to the right of the nearby galaxy and bended inwards also. So we see the same galaxy as two pictures at different places in the universe.

 

 

 

To desribe the time as the forth dimension makes the phenomenon in the universe much more comprehensible than to just see it at different intervals in the 3D dimension. So Einstein figured out one part of how the universe looks like that non ever before had realised. Or standard wiew is still a Newtonian modell most of the time and some has realised that the Einsteininan modell of the universe is much more correct and are able to describe the things we actually observe in the universe.

 

 

 

FD

[Zhongyongdaoist]

LoneHaven,

 

Your general understanding of the matter is good so far, so keep up the good work!

 

Regarding why there are four dimensions and time is the fourth of them. This is because classical physics used equations based on three directions, up and down, right and left, forward and backward, this was satisfactory to describe all of the Newtonian world. Four dimensional Space/Time was made necessary by theoretical and experimental problems with the theory of Electromagnetism as formulated by Maxwell around 1870. Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity solved these problems. The introduction of four dimensions was the work of Minkowski, who reformulated Einsteins Special Relativity in four dimensions, because the mathematics worked so much better in four dimensions. So in physics time was added to the long established three as the fourth dimension. Interestingly Einstein at first rejected Minkowski's four dimensional space/time, but later embraced it and it became fundamental to his formulation of General Relativity.

 

It is important to realize the distinction between a fourth dimension and a four dimensional space, any single 'dimension' is a line, a four dimensional space being defined by the intersection of four dimension lines serving as its axes. A 'sliver of the fourth dimension' would be a point, in this case a point in time, or a moment, but a sliver (to use your terminology, not quite standard, but a good image) of a four dimensional space would be three dimensional space. Interestingly Einstein at first rejected Minkowski's four dimensional space/time, but later embraced it and it became fundamental to his formulation of General Relativity.

 

Regarding your speculations about a five dimensional space, you are basically correct. Interestingly a mathematician named Kaluza showed around 1920 that if you created a five dimensional space you could unify both Gravity and Electromagnetic Theory. One of these five dimensions was time. This lead to the Kaluza Klein model in which a physicist named Klein, kind of, swept the extra spacial dimension under the rug, by saying that it was too small to be noticed. While Kaluza's work was pushed out of the limelight by the development of Quantum Mechanics, a lot of modern physics, including such theories as Supersymmetry, extend the fundamental principle, including the one of sweeping extra dimensions under the rug.

 

So much for the physics of the matter. Now as to the metaphysics. I have thought, and I am not the only one, that 'mystical' experiences are an intuition of higher orders of space, such as four dimensional space, or higher. On a thread here I proposed to look at wuji as a four dimensional space, also the 'akasha' as used by modern occultists could be viewed as a four dimensional 'substance'. I have occupied myself with such curious notions as modeling Plotinus' Nous (Mind, in this case, one might say absolute cosmic mind, cosmic mind in itself, etc.) as a six dimensional hypersphere. So there is a lot of fun stuff that can be done with this, not the least of which is that it may possibly provide a language for talking about mystical experience and a guide for those perplexed by what they may mean. Such talk is of course no substitute for experience, but is not useless either, since theory and practice are intimately linked and experience is the fruit of practice.

[forestofsouls]

Rudy Rucker pointed out in his book The Fourth Dimension that a 2D being would not have any solidity-- they would be a ghost or colored area of space and would pass through one another. Rucker theorized that Flatlanders must therefore have a minute 3D Depth.

 

By analogy, if there is a fourth spatial or fifth dimension, then, we too would have a small fourth dimensional "thickness." For Rucker, this could explain various spiritual/psychic phenomenon.

[goldisheavy]

I am more interested in the thought of 'what am I a sliver of in the fourth dimension' but the time question also interests me. If any thoughts or theories or direct inner-experience, please share. Thanks!

 

My take -- the dimension's example is not to be taken literally (like the Bible). It's kind of loosely telling you that there is more than meets the eye. That's it. If you try to read any more meaning into it, you're bound to get frustrated.

 

To determine what are you ultimately you have to ask yourself if you are an object of any kind in the first place. If you realize you're not an object at all, fundamentally not an object, then the question of what kind of 4th or 10th dimensional object are you will automatically fall away. As long as you believe yourself to be an object (a thing among things), you can continue to come up with increasingly complicated descriptions, but those are not helpful in my opinion if your job is to see through your original assumptions. So you're piling assumptions on top of assumptions. For example you assume that 3 dimensions exist. Then instead of challenging that, you assume that maybe a 4th or even 10th dimension exists, and then you wonder what do you look like in more dimension? Do you see what I am trying to say? You're moving toward more and more complexity and to do that you introduce more and more assumptions.

 

Spirituality is all about challenging assumptions rather than adding new assumptions on top of the old ones.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[steve]

 

 

I am more interested in the thought of 'what am I a sliver of in the fourth dimension' but the time question also interests me. If any thoughts or theories or direct inner-experience, please share. Thanks!

 

You are but a sliver of everything, the entire universe, God, whatever you want to call it all...

What else could you possibly be?

[LoneHaven]

[Sloppy Zhang]

Don't know if these videos have been posted before, but these two videos talk about understanding the 10th dimension. On the way it talks about the 4th dimension, and the slivers that we're talking about:

 

http://gprime.net/video.php/imaginingthe10thdimenson

 

http://gprime.net/video.php/imaginingthe10thdimensionpt2

 

I really liked this set of videos, and the visual descriptions are cool too

[LoneHaven]

Don't know if these videos have been posted before, but these two videos talk about understanding the 10th dimension. On the way it talks about the 4th dimension, and the slivers that we're talking about:

 

http://gprime.net/video.php/imaginingthe10thdimenson

 

http://gprime.net/video.php/imaginingthe10thdimensionpt2

 

I really liked this set of videos, and the visual descriptions are cool too

nice videos...I was able to visualize it up to and including the 4th...past that I cliff dive, even with the videos....thanks!

[Sloppy Zhang]

nice videos...I was able to visualize it up to and including the 4th...past that I cliff dive, even with the videos....thanks!

 

Well that's all within the scope of the conversation anyway, so it's all good

 

After that video I started thinking about that, and in fact I was thinking of slivers just the other day. Looking at other people, we only see cross sections of them in their lives. A higher being would be able to see the entire string of a person's lifetime.

 

It kind of reminds me of Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen, I remember from the movie how he mentioned that he viewed time quite differently from everyone else.

[LoneHaven]

After that video I started thinking about that, and in fact I was thinking of slivers just the other day. Looking at other people, we only see cross sections of them in their lives. A higher being would be able to see the entire string of a person's lifetime.

Yes! I was doing this too the other day when I was trying to think of a three dimensional flow (whether that is the fourth or it is just a flow of the third I don't really know). I was envisioning myself as one solid flow - and here I am in this chair, just a sliver of this flow - and another sliver and another. And someone in the fourth (or whatever) would seem to see this solid blob of me from where I was born to my final breath. It is interesting despite the brain hurt it brings on.