An essay by S D Anugyan.
It’s asked of me sometimes exactly what the connection between x-dimensional research and spiritual enlightenment is, such as embodied by the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Osho etc. I have written about this before, that whereas Zen might be a straight arrow to the Truth, loitering in the various dimensions is more like a spiral or meandering course in the same direction. I certainly don’t have the whole answer, as I’m not enlightened and am more navigating what I’ve called the hinterlands of consciousness. My suspicion is that something like a ten-dimensional awareness would be an entirely enlightened one. Certainly, with eight we are already facing the vanishing of identity, any identity, of ego.
What I do know is that enlightenment is entirely possible without tapping into the higher dimensions. In fact, the danger is that they are too seductive, one can get easily lost. When we are embodied in an earthly body, we have signed up for the experiences it has to offer, including that of linear time, the journey from birth to death. It is therefore clearly wise to utilise those parameters.
There are numerous Zen stories illustrating just this. For example, from Osho, memorably told in the Rajneesh Neo-Tarot Deck, there is the one about a disciple boasting to another, ‘My Master is so extraordinary, he can levitate, teleport, all sorts of amazing things. What does your Master do?’ To which the other replies, ‘My Master is so extraordinary, he doesn’t do any of those things.’
Similarly, there are another two disciples walking in a forest on a stormy night. One of them is so mesmerised by the dramatic lightning bolts, he trips over a root and falls. The other, who has been using the brightly lit sky to see his way on the path before him, does not.
Some teachers outside of Zen may use x-dimensional skills ostentatiously but, if genuine, always with a sense of mischief, an intent to impart greater truths. Ram Dass in The Miracle of Love gives many anecdotes from his time with Neem Karoli Baba, or Maharajji. Whereas other masters may express their humour with words, Maharajji seems more like a physical comedian. He would delight in walking out of one door in a room, only to enter impossibly through another a split second later.
One of my favourite stories, which I tell here from memory so may have a few details wrong, was when he was having a shave at a barber’s. The latter kept talking endlessly about his son who had just run away one day without a word. At some point, Maharajji left to go and pee outside, returning a minute later. The next day, to the barber’s astonishment, his son walked in through the door, and explained that he had been living in a town over a hundred miles away. ‘But what made you return?’ asked his father. His son then told the strangest story. The day before, a man dressed only in a blanket, with half a beard and shaving foam on his face, walked up to him in the hotel where he worked, put some money in his hand, said ‘Go and see your father,’ then walked away.
The above would be a five-dimensional trick, by-passing the usual four-dimensional constraints of time and space. Other accounts of Maharajji clearly being in more than one place at a time, or of the malleability of his body being tantamount to shape-shifting, are six-dimensional. You could argue that he is doing these things purely for fun, but there is also a didactic aspect to them, that the universe is not as limited as our minds and conditioning. His antics force us to question our presumptions, and look deeper.
Transcendence of the body and linear time is always possible, and there are always those available to help in that transcendence if one bothers to look. Yet enlightenment is ultimately up to us, which a genuine master inevitably insists upon. As the Zen adage goes, ‘When I point at the moon, look at the moon, not my finger.’
With my recent research on the Bronze Age leading to the publication of Sesonsfin, I was struck how egalitarian spiritual practices were at that time and place. Enlightenment to some degree was part of the air that they breathed, and everyone’s natural state, even whilst caught in the trappings of the physical world. Shamans would act more as guides and counsellors than priests. Their consciousness, rooted in the eternal wheel of the seasons, of cycles, was very five-dimensional, and reincarnation accepted because everything always returned in nature. Death therefore would be another birth or, to use a modern analogy, like walking into a different room.
Many spiritual teachings insist that we choose to be born in order that we may learn and grow, because it is much harder to do so whilst discarnate. Therefore, we are back to the premise that our little four-dimensional world may be all we need to develop our spirituality. In fact, the danger once we walk into the next room, is we may like it there so much we do not wish to move on, to develop.
Buddhists warn of the illusory bliss available in the Bardo (known by some as the Plum Blossom Paradise), illusory because impermanent and not the ultimate truth. Robert Monroe in Far Journeys mentions the guides who approach those caught in this subtly stagnant illusion, encouraging them lovingly to move on.
The choice henceforth in the last situation, is to return from five-dimensional heaven to the four-dimensional parameters of the physical body; or to move on to higher dimensions. The challenge of transcendence in this case is that of individual identity.
Note that any discourses with the departed through mediums or visitations, reinforce the identity of the individuals whilst still in the body. The transcendence of the latter is demonstrated by those individuals appearing at varying ages to the living, or without illness or wounds experienced whilst physical. All very five-dimensional. But the point is, the person themself does not alter, it is still very much them, albeit healed, youthful, eternal.
If choosing to tap into six-dimensional awareness, one must challenge the sense of being of one single identity. Knowledge of past and future lives can aid in that exploration, that we are not necessarily just wise nor stupid, weak or strong, male or female etc., we are all of these things. The sense of playing roles in the universe becomes predominant. One of Maharajji’s techniques was to suddenly become sick and demand attention, until a disciple wised up to the game and called him on it, at which he was instantly better. The lesson, that we are playing roles, was imparted.
Yet still, still, whilst the superficial masks of identity have been challenged and transcended, a deeper identity remains. It is important it does so. A favourite key line of mine from The Book of Mirdad is ‘A magic wand is I’. At this stage, if a strong deep identity is not retained, madness can ensue as you become vulnerable to the whim of infinite voices and identities. Here there be dragons.
Six dimensions are not recommended for most, and definitely not for the faint-hearted. Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys was one of the best examples I saw in film regarding the tenuousness of identity, and the dangers inherent in challenging it. You have to be very sure of what you are about.
Even if the mad merry-go-round of six dimensions are amenable to you, with all that abundance and richness, there is a nagging feeling at the back of your mind(s): Is this all there is? Is the universe just an endless colourful, brilliant array of performances? Frederic Myers in Beyond Human Personality refers to it as the Plane of Colour, which is certainly apt. Because of this richness of experience, of life, the endless entertainment, it is once again tempting to remain. Except for that nagging feeling.
Seven dimensions are rarely written about. Myers calls it the Plane of Flame. Emanuel Swedenborg, though I may be doing him a disservice by suggesting this, appears to tap into this level quite often but invariably returns to the simpler Plum Blossom Paradise of his heaven. Mixing metaphors possibly, yet hopefully elegantly, with so few shoulders to stand on I am stuck out on a limb whilst writing of seven dimensions. Which I really enjoy.
Here one is no longer at the whim of such extraordinary forces abundant in the multiverse, managing finally to step back from, and witness, them so that a high degree of mastery is attained. Also, while for all the glory and magnificence, love may take second place in six dimensions (hence the amoral coldness of some of the denizens, such as the faerie folk purportedly); with seven love becomes predominant once again and a profound silence is established at the heart of the storm. The preceding glamour has become just that, all the worlds baubles on an infinite necklace.
It would seem that one has arrived, there is nowhere else to go. But an identity remains, albeit a more comprehensive and authentic identity than that believed in earlier. Even as I write that last sentence, the paradoxical essence of seven dimensions asserts itself, pointing out that identity is spurious and challenged continually by exposure to its diametric opposite, possibly the heavenly marriage described by Swedenborg. Or as The Kybalion puts it, ‘Gender works ever in the direction of generation, regeneration and creation’.
Earlier playfulness and restlessness are very much still present, also an uncertainty, the sense that one is not quite home. Experiencing seven dimensions can be ultimately frustrating, like attempting to hold onto gossamer. Early exposure to this plane already suggests this, that one cannot choose to experience it, but must be invited. That seems a fairly permanent status, with the invite periodically rescinded, then reinstated suddenly without warning. There is nothing the individual can do but be prepared. We are all like Calibans in The Tempest, aware of great richness that can be showered upon us then vanish. We remain haunted by the strange sounds and lights on our little islands.
The challenge here is complete egolessness, much greater than that achieved by the transcendence of five dimensions of timelessness. The urge now is to disappear entirely. Bizarrely, the best example I can give is that of some of the craft seen in our skies that disappear in the blink of an eye. I realised eventually that they’re not merely cloaking, as generally thought, but are actually vanishing from existence, with the ability to return.
We may experience this level through numerous means – as musicians letting go of our egos to produce amazing music, for instance, other arts and collaborative efforts likewise. It can also be experienced through opening oneself up to nature. The gift is that it is easily available to anyone who is willing to let go, in any situation.
Yet one always returns from such a transcendental experience, and that bloomin’ spaceship keeps coming back. The ego, though tenuous and open to an infinite, wondrous Existence, is still there.
And now I really am out of my depth and can only speculate that nine and subsequent dimensions are a complete disappearance of the ego, of the separation between the self and Existence. I am certainly not qualified to impart wisdom at this level, because I am still loitering in the lower eight dimensions, and having such fun whilst doing so.
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