To answer this question at all satisfactorily is possible only by studying the forms and levels of psychic life.

"I" is a complicated quantity, and within it goes on a continuous motion. About the nature of this motion we shall speak later, but this very motion inside of us creates the illusion of motion around us, motion in the material world.

The noted mathematician Riemann understood that when higher dimensions of space are in question, time, by some means, translates itself into space, and he regarded the Material Atom as the entrance of the fourth dimension into three-dimensional space.

In one of his books Hinton writes very interestingly about "surface tensions."

The relationship of a surface to a solid or of a solid to a higher solid is one which we often find in nature.

A surface is nothing more nor less than the relation between two things. Two bodies touch each other. The surface is the relationship of one to the other.

If our space is in the same co-relation with higher space as is the surface to our space, then it may be that our space is really the surface, that is, the place of contact, of two higher-dimensional spaces.

It is a fact worthy of notice that in the surface of a fluid different laws obtain from those which hold throughout the mass. There is a whole. series of facts which are grouped together under the name of surface tensions, which are of great importance in physics, and by which the behavior of the surfaces of liquids is governed.

And it may well be that the laws of our universe are the surface tensions of a higher universe.

If the surface be regarded as a medium lying between bodies, then indeed it will have no weight, but be a powerful means of transmitting vibrations. Moreover, it would be unlike any other substance, and it would be impossible to get rid of it. However perfect a vacuum be made, there would be in this vacuum just as much of this unknown medium (i. e., of that surface) as there was before.

Matter would pass freely through this medium. . . vibrations of this medium would tear asunder portions of matter. And involuntarily the conclusion would be drawn that this medium was unlike any ordinary matter.. These would be very different properties to reconcile in one and the same substance.

THE ETHER "HIGHER" SURFACE 51

Now is there anything in our experience which corresponds to this medium? ..

Do we suppose the existence of any medium through which matter freely moves, which yet by its vibrations destroys the combinations of matter —some medium which is present in every vacuum however perfect, which penetrates all bodies, is weightless, and yet can never be laid hold of.

The "substance" which possesses all these qualities is called the "ether." The properties of the ether are a perpetual object of investigation in science, . . . But taking into consideration the ideas expressed before it would be interesting to look at the world supposing that we are not in it but on the ether; where the "ether" is the surface of contact of two bodies of higher dimensions.*

Hinton here expresses an unusually interesting thought, and brings the idea of the "ether" nearer to the idea of time. The materialistic, or even the energetic understanding of contemporary physics of the ether is perfectly fruitless—a dead-end siding. For Hinton the ether is not a substance but only a "surface," the "boundary" of something. But of what? Again not that of a substance, but the boundary, the surface, the limit of one form of receptivity and the beginning of another.

In one sentence the walls and fences of the materialistic dead-end siding are broken down and before our thought open wide horizons of regions unexplored.

* Hinton, "A New Era of Thought," pp. 52, 56, 57.

CHAPTER V

Four-dimensional space. "Temporal body"—Linga Sharîra. The form of a human body from birth to death. Incommensurability of three-dimensional and four-dimensional bodies. Newton's fluents. The unreality of constant quantities in our world. The right and the left hands in three-dimensional and in four-dimensional space. Difference between three-dimensional and four-dimensional space. Not two different spaces but different methods of receptitivity of one and the same world.

F

OUR-DIMENSIONAL space, if we try to imagine it to ourselves, will be the infinite repetition of our space, of our infinite three-dimensional sphere, as a line is the infinite repetition of a point.

Many things that have been said before will become much clearer to us when we dwell on the fact that the fourth dimension must be sought for in time.

It will become clear what is meant by the fact that it is possible to regard a four-dimensional body as the tracing of the movement in space of a three-dimensional body in a direction not confined within that space. Now the direction not confined in three-dimensional space in which any three-dimensional body moves-—this is the direction of time. Any three-dimensional body, existing, is at the same time moving in time and leaves as a tracing of its movement the temporal, or four-dimensional body. We never see or feel this body, because of the limitations of our receptive apparatus, but we see the section of it only, which section we call the three-dimensional body. Therefore we are in error in thinking that the three-dimensional body is in itself something real. It is the projection of the four-dimensional body—its picture the image of it on our plane.

The four-dimensional body is the infinite number of three-dimensional bodies. That is, the four-dimensional body is the infinite number of moments of existence of the three-dimensional one—its states and positions. The three-dimensional body which we see

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LINGA-SHARÎRA

53

appears as a single figure one of a series of pictures on a cinematographic film as it were.

Four-dimensional space (time) is really the distance between the forms, states, and positions of one and the same body (and different bodies, i. e., those seeming different to us). It separates those states, forms, and positions each from the other, and it binds them also into some to us incomprehensible whole. This incomprehensible whole can be formed in time out of one physical body—and out of different bodies.

It is easier for us to imagine the temporal whole as related to one physical body.

If we consider the physical body of a man, we shall find in it besides its "matter" something, it is true, changing, but undoubtedly one and the same from birth until death.

This something is the Linga-Sharîri of Hindu philosophy, i. e., the form on which our physical body is moulded. (H. P. Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine.) Eastern philosophy regards the physical body as something impermanent which is in a condition of perpetual interchange with its surroundings. The particles come and go. After one second the body is already not absolutely the same as it was one second before. Today it is in a considerable degree not that which it was yesterday. After seven years it is a quite different body. But despite all this, something always persists from birth to death, changing its aspect a little, but remaining the same. This is the Linga-Sharîra.

The Linga-Sharîra is the form, the image: it changes, but remains the same. That image of a man which we are able to represent to ourselves is not the Linga-Sharîra. But if we try to represent to ourselves mentally the image of a man from birth to death, with all the particularities and traits of childhood, manhood and senility, as if exended in time, when it will be the Linga-Sharîra.

Form pertains to all things. We say that everything consists of matter and form. Under the category of "matter," as already stated, the cause of a lengthy series of mixed sensations is predicated, but matter without form is not comprehensible to us; we cannot even think of matter without form. But we can think and imagine form without matter.

The thing, i. e., the union of form and matter, is never constant;

it always changes in the course of time. This idea afforded Newton the possibility of building his theory of fluents and fluxions.

Newton came to the conclusion that constant quantities do not exist in nature. Variables do exist—flowing, fluents only. The velocities with which different fluents change were called by Newton fluxions.

From the standpoint of this theory all things known to us—men, plants, animals, planets—are fluents, and they differ by the magnitude of their fluxions. But the thing, changing continuously in time, sometimes very much, and quickly, as in the case of a living body for example, still remains one and the same. The body of a man in youth, and the body of a man in senility—these are one and the same, though we know that in the old body there is not one atom left that was in the young one. The matter changes, but something remains one under all changes, this something is the Linga-Sharîra. Newton's theory is valid for the three-dimensional world existing in time. In this world there is nothing constant. All is variable because every consecutive moment the thing is already not that which it was before. We never see the Linga-Sharîra, we see always its parts, and they appear to us variable. But if we observe more attentively we shall see that it is an illusion. Things of three dimensions are unreal and variable. They cannot be real because they do not exist in reality, just as the imaginary sections of a solid do not exist. Four-dimensional bodies alone are real.

In one of the lectures contained in the book, A Pluralistic Universe, Prof. James calls attention to Prof. Bergson's remark that science studies always only the t of the universe, i. e., not the universe in its entirety, but the moment, the "temporal section" of the universe.

The properties of four-dimensional space will become clearer to us if we compare in detail three-dimensional space with the surface, and discover the differences existing between them.

Hinton, in his book, A New Era of Thought, examines these differences very attentively. He represents to himself, on a plane, two equal rectangular triangles, cut out of paper, the right angles of which are placed in opposite directions. These triangles will be