Gurudeva’s Introduction§
THE DIMENSIONS ARE A POSITIVE AND HELPFUL WAY OF LOOKING AT LIFE AND understanding the experiences we have on the inward path. By identifying experience as being within one dimension or another, we are able to know at all times just where we are in consciousness, and that knowledge is the control over awareness that we need to continue the upward climb.§
At all times we are flowing through all of the dimensions. They all exist in total completion right now within us. However, we are only conscious periodically in one or another of them as awareness magnifies itself and registers the dimension by focusing upon it, shall we say.§
Awareness itself functions differently from one dimension to another. When we look at life from the fourth dimension, we see more in depth than we can from the third or the second. Remember when we studied the second dimension, we found no depth at all? Then we created the third. We put depth and life, vigor and vitality to the second dimension of things that was just sitting there. Next we became tangled in this vigor and vitality, in the relationships between people and people and people and things, and subconscious was created. The sense of ego, of personality, evolved out of the third dimension, for it is composed strictly of odic, magnetic force. The intellect and emotions dominated us.§
When we released awareness to travel freely in the mind by managing positively the second and third dimensions, we entered another perspective. We gained the overview, a mountaintop consciousness from which we could see a nine-day scope of time and look into and through all of the intricacies of the third dimension and how it is created. In a sense we put more light into the third dimension, the dark area of the mind.§
When we are in inner darkness and confusion, that is the third dimension totally. But as we brought more light into the third dimension and saw how it was constructed, we were in the fourth dimension and could also look into the deeper dimensions. From the fifth dimension, we became aware of the intricacies and the inner workings of the fourth dimension, seeing what psychic nerves look like, seeing how psychic nerve currents draw their energy from the central source of energy. In the fifth dimension, we became aware of a bright light that filled the cranium. In a flash we intuited vast knowledge and saw the creation, preservation and destruction of objects over seeming great spans of time simultaneously in the now. A deep love, a universal and all-embracing love, unfolded. Compassion burst forth as we came to understand the predicament of our fellow man.§
Awareness, too, changed. Instead of traveling or flowing through the mind, now it could focus and look into any area without seeming to move. Experiences came before our inner vision, and we could even bring past and future into the now. Later we evolved into the sixth dimension, where all form is reduced to sound and color. The devonic or heavenly realm of forces as represented by Gods, Deities and devas became manifest. From the sixth dimension, which corresponds to the ajna chakra or third eye, inner worlds opened and light flooded through the entire body.§
The seventh dimension, or sahasrara chakra, brought us into pure consciousness or pure space void of form—awareness aware only of itself. Here awareness finally withdraws even from the magnificent visions of superconsciousness, and with no objects is able to contemplate itself as kaif». Finally, the snake swallows its own tail, awareness dissolves and only That remains, the Self God beyond all dimensions of the mind.§
Of course, it is one thing to hear about the dimensions, to be intellectually fascinated by the vastness of this perspective and quite another to make them an experiential part of our lives. That is what must be done next. Identify the dimensions within the context of your own personal experience. Ask yourself, “Which dimension does this kind of happening belong to? How does one dimension relate to and exist within another inside of me?” Mark off the various areas of the mind. Map them out carefully and you will identify and enjoy aspects of yourself you never knew existed before.§
You will observe that man is a whole, the totality of all existence residing within him in various layers of subtle and gross vibration, evolving ever more subtle as the continuum penetrates deeper into his being, reaching ultimately the timeless, spaceless Reality of himself which he then identifies as the one Reality in all of existence.§
Love and blessings to you from this and inner worlds,§
Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami§
162nd Jagadāchārya of the Nandinātha Sampradāya’s Kailāsa Parampara§
Guru Mahāsannidhanam, Kauai Aadheenam, Hawaii, USA§