Third Dimension:
Thoughts and Feelings§
OUR PERCEPTIONS IN THE THIRD DIMENSION§
It is in the third dimension that most people live most of the time. This is the world of thoughts and feelings, of emotions and intellectual theory. It thrives on novelty, new ideas, new feelings, new fashions, new discoveries, new anything. The third-dimensional world is changing rapidly.§
When we open our eyes and look into the exterior world, where we perceive things through sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, the five senses are going to naturally react. They react according to the personality and habit structure of man. If he smells something he is accustomed to smelling, he likes it. If he encounters an unfamiliar smell, the animal nature will recoil and he will say, “I don’t like it.” He forms likes and dislikes, loves and hates which later build through repetition into joys and sorrows. The flurry caused by this attraction and repelling in the nerve system of man as he relates to people and objects is the birth of the third dimension in man.§
Man creates his own personal ego through these subtle reactions of his nerve system to the world of things and the world of other people. Once sufficient experience has been developed into habit patterns of action and reaction, he begins to dissect those things. He collects in his mind all of the good, positive, familiar impressions that he has grown accustomed to. Then he discards those impressions that have stirred his nerve system and those that are unfamiliar. Thus he enters fully into the third dimension of the mind, where most of the world as we generally know it takes place—much more so than in the first or second dimensions.§
It is when we bring our subconscious and our intellectual facilities into the second dimension that we cause the third dimension to happen. We look at the world about us, up and down, right and left, and we begin to form comparisons in our analyzing things of the second dimension. Our likes and dislikes are the third dimension. The first and most simple structure of the third dimension is created in this way. Next we evaluate the likes and dislikes themselves, simultaneously creating the next more complex strata of third-dimensional existence. That is, we analyze our impressions, weighing them against the impressions of others. We think about our own thoughts. We have feelings about our feelings, and out of these ongoing comparisons the interwoven structure of this dimension evolves. Through our ratio of comparisons, first of objects, then of our interaction with objects, through nerve system response, and finally of our self-created thoughts and feelings, the third dimension gains prominence and severely entangles awareness in a fascinating and seemingly endless cinema.§
When we sit with others in a room, the third dimension claims such priority that most of the activity takes place there. Of course, the second dimension is all about us and was prepared earlier. Someone had to arrange the furniture, clean the room, or even prepare a meal. But when we gather in the room, sit down together, we immediately lose consciousness of the second dimension. Instead, we relate almost exclusively to our feelings, emotions, desires, concepts, likes and dislikes. In talking, laughing and arguing back and forth we thrust our pranic life force into the third dimension, stimulate and are stimulated by the energy that others dedicate to the discussion. As the forces mix and mingle among everyone in the room, they produce either positive, creative overtones or negative, contentious ones, according to the chemicalization of the entire group mind.§
The businessman or artist has cycles as well, but they are more consciously directed. In fact, they are partially creating the forces that influence others in the world. Their control of the forces of the third dimension comes through dealing positively and dynamically with themselves and through maintaining an active, creative state which dominates rather than is dominated by the swirling energies of other people. Through discipline, knowledge and restraints, they direct the mental and feeling forces positively and smooth out the cycles of inner-dimensional life.§
THIRD DIMENSION MANAGED POSITIVELY§
The mature meditator remains independent of fluctuating cycles by not identifying falsely with the inevitable changes inherent in third-dimensional existence. He works to hold awareness constantly in the fourth dimension, from which the first, second and third are viewed in affectionate detachment. The fourth dimension is home base, the area of mind he returns to after meditation, not allowing awareness to flow to the extremities of gross instincts and intellect found in the third dimension.§
One of the first things he does to maintain a perspective that deals positively with forces of the third dimension is to study the cycles, the time cycles. These are called karmic cycles, containing actions caused within the third-dimensional aspect of his mind. These actions eventually produce a reaction, for every causation of mind substance eventually forms a reaction. By carefully observing the length of his instinctive cycles, his emotional cycles and his mental or intellectual cycles, he is able to anticipate reaction, which then gives him the ability to observe it without being further entangled or upset, which would then be the cause of yet another reaction. It is one thing to react to what we have said or done, or what others have said and done. But this simple form of reaction passes quickly. Far worse is a reaction to our reaction, for it sets in motion deep subconscious reverberations that may last for years. Knowing this law, the meditator cautiously watches his actions and reactions through their regular cycles, and by not reacting to his reactions they are eventually demagnetized. In this way he avoids the unnecessary repetition of his allotted cycles and stabilizes awareness in the more refined dimensions.§
As unfoldment deepens and awareness evolves out of the third and into the fourth dimension, karmic cycles come more quickly. First the meditator will notice that his thoughts and actions produce their results more quickly. Whereas previously the cause and effect were separated by months or years, now they are only days or even hours apart, which allows him to observe their relationship more accurately. The motivating factor of the perceptive area of the mind has replaced un-thought-out involvement in the outer dimensions which covers action and reaction in heavy layers or strata and therefore slows the cycles.§
“In this one I see him as the ‘Grounded Visionary.’ Here you could feel his charisma, determination and his youthful beauty. It seems that he is calling forth all his divine order together for what needs to be accomplished. He’s just magnetizing that together. It’s all going to be happening. There he is, the grounded visionary.”§
Earlier, due to the amount of energy dedicated to things of the second dimension, he was unable to cognize the third. Very little can be discovered about the third dimension from the second. It is from the perceptive and intuitive areas of the fourth that the third can be seen and understood in its entirety.§
It is from a conscious awareness of deeper dimensions that true understanding of the third dimension unfolds. By holding awareness stabilized in the fourth dimension, looking into the vastness of the fifth, sixth and seventh and simultaneously out to and through the third into the second, we know fully that the third dimension is a relatively small part of total mind substance, being only one fourth of the fourth dimension in relative size and significance, with the second dimension being half again as large as that one fourth. This then establishes a real identity on the inside of us, keeping the channels of subsuperconsciousness always open and preventing the process of third-dimensional subconscious congestion.§
An outer-dimensional perspective, looking from the outside into the mind and trying to understand it, only results in partial concepts. We are unable to grasp the whole from such a vantage point. Similarly, we can learn about a city by traveling around the streets of that city and talking with selected residents. Generally, we learn one section of the city better and neglect others. Only by climbing to the peak of a nearby mountain can we study and comprehend the entire pattern of the city below. That overall vision or mountaintop consciousness is what the fourth dimension provides. Once that all-encompassing view is gained, we can enter any section of the city with confidence.§
If we were to enter the fourth-dimensional state of consciousness, all of the time consciously withdrawing the pranic energies from externalized forces so that they did not exude out of the body, then the third dimension would cease to exist for us, for we would not connect up with the energies of other people or things. We could still observe the interchange of forces in others, but from another state of consciousness, totally uninvolved. We would still have the third-dimensional relation within our own mind, its fears, its thoughts, its habits—but eventually that too would be dissolved as energies were continually drawn out of it.§
THIRD DIMENSION IN DEPTH§
The third dimension is the essence of duality, the shifting of forces constantly. Within the changing world of the third dimension are two basic and intricate energy flows. The first is a flow of force between people and things. This is a one-way flow through which people relate to objects. The second is a flow between two people or more and also between people and animals. Visualize a stream of energy generated in the body by the processes of life. This energy or prana constantly flows out from the central source of energy and constitutes the aura, constitutes the physical energy that moves the body, constitutes thoughts and feelings. This prana creates a force field around the body. As soon as two people associate, these force fields interact, or the two energy streams interchange. Should these energies be of a like nature, the result is friendship. When we understand these energies as they combine, attract and repel in human relationships, we then begin to discover the constituent parts of what we call the world.§
From the point of view of the second dimension looking into the third, awareness is awed by the seemingly powerful feelings, emotions and motivating forces of the third dimension. We feel victims of forces beyond our power to control. Generally, if we go into a study of the mind from this perspective of looking, in a sense, from the second dimension into the third and fourth, we analyze the surface by asking ourselves, “Why did this happen to me? Why did that happen? What did I do to deserve this?” Many, many people live their entire lifetime in a conscious-mind state, trying to analyze the subconscious, and discover very little for their efforts.§
Although the third dimension exists predominantly in the mind of man, it existed before human beings came to this planet. It does because the animal kingdom has its own third dimension. Compared to man’s elaborately conceived system, the instinctive likes and dislikes of animals appear simple and basic. Animals cleave together in family and social units with the necessary rules governing acceptable behavior, division of labor, and so forth. The lions and the sheep do not get along too well. They have their own third dimension going on. Fear, hunger and the instinctive drives live in action and reaction cycles within their nerve systems.§
In man the instinctive cycles comprise a relatively minimal portion of the third dimension. Emotional and intellectual cycles are more prominent. All people have emotional cycles. They are not always cheerfully liking and they are not always sorrowfully disliking. They are not always full and they are not always hungry. A constant ebb and flow of the odic forces characterizes this dimension. It is always in flux, always changing.§
It has always been changing. They probably thought the world was coming to an end. And it was—their third-dimensional world. Cities and buildings were replacing tribes and tepees. Automobiles were taking the place of the horse. Tribes were scattered, even slaughtered. The whole world as they knew and understood it—the values, the customs, the systems, the daily patterns of Indian life—all this had reached a certain pinnacle of vibration and was coming to an end. Another third dimension evolved out of that, then another, then another. Today some people think the world is coming to an end, and generally they inwardly mean their own world of values, ideas or accustomed ways of doing things.§
For the average person, these changes come in undetermined intervals depending on physical body functions, immediate environment, and the status of the subconscious mind. These cycles govern and control life day to day. The general moods of friends and family, health, dreams and daydreams, good and bad fortune, local and national news—all of these, as they rise and fall in waves, dominate awareness.§
By allowing his emotions to explode, he naturally shatters the various rivers and currents of the third dimension, which have to be put back together in the same way that a shattered object in the second dimension is reassembled from the broken pieces. Sometimes it is not possible to reconstruct things exactly as they were. If he shatters the forces of the mental and emotional realm, he faces a period of healing while the injured nerves and feelings are harmonized. This is made easier if he understands what has happened, for he can then create a positive inner flow from the fourth-dimensional area of mind. Otherwise, should he continue to reflect unhappily on his actions and subsequent reactions, the event will be deeply impressed in the subconscious and become a more or less permanent part of his third-dimensional ego identity instead of just another lesson in life.§
“This reminds me of the world-weary Kannon, Bodhisattva goddess of total compassion and love. He’s kind of reflecting in a repose; reminds me of feeling all of humanity, all of the suffering that humanity goes through, which can be a weight. But there is a sweetness here. He has a little smile. He reflects on the compassion for all beings, reflecting on the world, it seems.”§
The second and third dimensions both have memory patterns, which are different in nature. The second dimension has an instinctive memory pattern, and we therefore don’t remember how the pattern came to be formed. For instance, we don’t remember how a tree is made. However, through much research and scientific investigation we can reconstruct our memory of the development of trees. We could say that the memory of objects in the second dimension is locked up in the objects themselves, available to us if awareness penetrates deeply enough. In the third dimension, memory is partially instinctive but mingled with forces of the intellect as well. Depending on the ratio of instinctive to intellectual forces, this dimension will be gross or subtle.§