A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL WORLD VIEW
3. WHAT ARE THE DIMENSIONS OF THE UNIVERSE?
Your Home
Did you know that you are used to thinking of your home in multi-dimensional terms? Your home is a multi-dimensional place. Firstly, you can think of your home in physical terms. When you worry about painting and maintaining your home, and buying furniture or food, you think of it as a place (objects in a particular spacetime) where you live.But your home also costs you something, and you can also think of your home in
financial terms. Budgets, valuations, bills, and financial statements, are all part of your home finances. The financial dimension of your home gives you a completely different way of looking at it. When you do this you are operating in a knowledge dimension. You can superimpose this dimension over the physical dimension to find all kinds of relationships between them, such as the cost of maintenance, compared to the cost of buying a new item.
But even more importantly, home is relationships between the people who live there. Parents, children, friends and visitors, people you belong to and love, and what you do with each other are what home is all about. When you think about home in this way you are thinking in the spiritual dimension. More about that dimension later.
You normally think in terms of all the dimensions to see the many relationships between them all. So your choice of whether to maintain the house or buy something for it will be affected by the limitations of finance, but also by Christmas being close and your desire to give a Christmas present to your loved ones. Perhaps you could give a Christmas present that is useful for the house also.
These are three completely different dimensions of how you see your home. Yet it is just the one home. Your home is a greater reality than just being a physical place.
So also we can think of the dimensions of our universe that is our home for now. Just as you think of your home in multi-dimensional ways, think also of our universe in multi-dimensional ways.
Seven Dimensions
I propose that there are seven dimensions of the universe, including the 3 spatial ones. This way of describing dimensions is my formulation – I don't know of others who have described these seven – and further study may change the way we think of dimensions. It doesn't really matter if there are more or less dimensions than these seven. The idea of everything being able to be explained in terms of the multi-dimensionality of the universe is what I am really wanting to put forward as a worldview that better fits reality.The seven dimensions are length, breadth, height, time, mass-energy, knowledge, and spirit.
At this point I just need to explain these dimensions, and will later set out a more thorough explanation of their validity as dimensions.
Each dimension can be thought of as a distinct reality, but they are not independent realities in that they all need each other for there to be any existence. There are a variety of ways that these dimensions are linked to each other. Any full explanation of each of them therefore needs to take into account all the others.
We have got used to the idea of ecology, that life is intertwined together and that bacteria in the soil, trees, birds, and plankton in the ocean, though living their own life-cycle, all need each other. So also the dimensions of existence intertwine, and we cannot move within one dimension without changing our relationship with the others. Dimensions are the ecology of reality.
2. The Seven Dimensions
Length. We can easily think in terms of one-dimensional reality. Adding and subtracting, multiplying and dividing are one-dimensional activities. Finances are necessary for life, but they are just one-dimensional. Picture one dimension as a string I am holding out straight, or a line drawn on paper. That is length. It doesn't give much room for movement.
Width. We think in two dimensions when we use any flat surface to draw or write on. Photographs are two-dimensional. There is much more we can do in two dimensions, including drawing lines in a variety of directions. Shapes become possible. Rotation seems to be an important principle of producing a two dimensional reality. If my string is rotated 90o it forms the axis for another dimension.
Height is the third dimension, and with the other two if forms space. Space or volume is three dimensional, across, out and up/down. Mostly we can visualize things in no more that three dimensions. Space gives us our freedom to move in all directions and is the only feature of our created universe that is three-dimensional. We think of our planet earth in 3D terms when we look at a globe of earth. A good way to draw three dimensionally is on the surface of a balloon.
Time is the fourth dimension. Because we have only one dimension of time, we are limited in how we can move in time.
Time is linked to space by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. The first four dimensions give us our spacetime world that we move in. Of course without time, we wouldn't be able to move in space at all. So time gives us freedom to travel or accelerate at speed. Often we talk about our 4D spacetime world as if there were only four dimensions that we live in.
Mass-energy is the fifth dimension. This is the stuff or body of the universe that gives the universe its visibility and substance. Mass and energy are counted here as just one dimension because mass and energy are interchangeable under certain circumstances.
We don't normally think of this as a dimension because our definition of dimensions has been too restrictive. But this is obviously necessary for anything to exist in the universe the same way as space and time are necessary. Also stuff is not of the same nature as space or time, nor is it an integral part of them. They have completely different properties and abilities from each other. See section 6 for more on the question of whether mass-energy is a dimension on its own.
The first 5 dimensions give us what we call our natural or physical world. Mass-energy requires the other four dimensions in order to exist. For example any object has spatial dimensions. That is the world we can measure, taste, see and sense in all kinds of ways. Mass-energy gives us the freedom to experience things, and energy to do things.
But mass-energy has some huge limitations for us. The direction of everything is towards decay and disorder (what we call entropy). The second is gravity, which limits our freedom to travel.
Knowledge is the sixth dimension. Knowledge is true specific information. This dimension operates by reason, logic and consciousness. Mind is not in itself knowledge but is the part of human life that deals with knowledge. This dimension is not claiming that everything has a mind of its own or knows things, but that there is specific information required in order for everything to exist as it does.
Objects have to be a specific size or mass, or have a specific energy to be what they are. It is that kind of knowledge that is essential for the existence of the universe.
Our experience of knowledge is also that we can have thoughts in our head that bear no relationship to reality. My dream when I was a child that I could be superman too, was a fun fantasy, but showed that my knowledge and thoughts were independent from other dimensions.
The interesting thing about our knowledge is that it grows with time because knowledge builds on experience. Knowledge gives us freedom to discover, change and grow. It is an expanding dimension, in contrast to mass-energy which is in decay.
Spirit is the seventh dimension. Spirit is observable in our universe when we look at ourselves because we are spiritual beings.
My spirit is me – an independent self-conscious entity. That is the way we all experience ourselves. We are not just a collection of chemicals or even a computer filled with knowledge. The great philosopher Descartes said "I think therefore I am". Likewise I feel I am real, therefore I am. Although I have a body, the real me is not my body - parts of it can be cut off and I am still myself.
My spirit leads me to the knowledge of love, truth, beauty, goodness, and also to worship God.
The dimension of knowledge requires the existence of the dimension of spirit, as knowledge requires an ultimate source of information, just like thoughts require a mind to produce them. Our spirit is a capacity of our created mind. Our spirit tells us that our world makes sense, it does not contain random knowledge like a huge LOTTO. The more we become aware of the complex and careful design of our universe, the more we become aware of its spiritual origin.
Our spirit also senses that there is purpose to reality. We know within us that we have to have a purpose to our life. So also we know there has to be a purpose to the universe.
Our spirit also recognises that there are limits to all the dimensions we experience, and that we seek to go beyond them. The true home of our spirit is to discover and soar beyond all limitations including what is evil. Our dimension of spirit makes us aware that there is a transcendent spiritual dimension beyond the reality we have experienced so far.
"But it was to us that God made known his secret by means of his Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, even the hidden depths of God's purposes. It is only a person's own spirit within him that knows all about him; in the same way, only God's Spirit knows all about God." [1 Corinthians 2:10-11]
To go to the Next Page Rev Brian Brandon, May 2004
