Bodhinatha reads from a thirty-seven year old talk about the nature of the fourth dimension. He explains that it is the "witness" and that it is very easy to get into. He also touches upon how it is able to view the first three dimensions as well as the higher fifth. It is an inner perspective that is able to function within a broader scope than the lower dimensions while remaining detached from their magnetic functions. This talk was part of a larger series of talks on the seven dimensions of the mind.

Unedited Transcript:

The transition from the third dimension into the fourth comes when our subconscious has released itself from opposing forces sufficiently to recognize that awareness travels in the mind and to identify with awareness instead of states of emotion and intellect through which it passes. We then gain a certain control over previous congested areas of the third dimension. More perception comes. We are able to see the third dimension clearly, to hold for longer periods of time our proper relations to the second, third and fourth dimensions. The dual identities of the subconscious and conscious mind are harmonized and we experience a clearing that allows the superconscious mind to flow through. We call this spiritual awakening for consciousness at that point, no longer bound, but free to flow with new-found facility into any and all areas.

The fourth dimension then is the subsuperconscious faculty of man. It is a beautiful place to be, and you can be there all of the time by feeling the power of your spine. The minute you feel that radiant energy in the spine you are disconnected from the third dimension and soar into the fourth.

Artists are in the fourth dimension. Each time you designed or created anything, you were bringing the beauty of the within through your nerve system into manifestation. Didn't your whole nerve system feel good? That was the subsuperconscious fourth dimension of you. It finds expression in the creative intellect that wants to know for the good of the other fellow, that seeking to know. We say a person is open-minded, more willing to listen than to banter back his own ideas at you, he is conscious in the fourth dimension. He's a new age person. When he says something, it's because he has something to say and generally his perspective of looking at the world is quite different from the material attitudes of people around him. He is able to see all four sides of a subject at the same time and to understand what people mean even if their viewpoint differs from his own. He is inspirational. He has and enjoys happiness. He is creative, unique, and works out of the box. He is independent, relying on himself and the power of his spine. He is quick to help others but slow to get entangled with their third dimensional forces. He is highly motivated with well-defined purposes and goals. He expends his energy well, not wasting or draining the power that propels him onward and inward. He is enthused, charmed with life, charged with great desire to pursue the spiritual path.

That's the fourth dimension of the mind--a wonderful place to live and to bring through inner unfoldment for you then have the continuity of creative thought. From the fourth dimension you can see the panorama of life unfolding flawlessly day to day. You can look deeply into the subconscious, cognize and understand the chemistry of feeling, thought and reaction. You can look into the magnetic force fields of the third dimension and comprehend the processes by which different people relate to one another. It' very easy to get into the fourth dimension, very easy. It's a little more challenging to hold that detached perspective when things are not going as well as we would like, but then its easy to return when the forces smooth out.

The fourth dimension does not preclude intellectual activity. But it does mean that you have an intelligent intellect, a creative intellect that is not caged in by conceptual walls. A humble intellect that is willing to say, "I don't know," now and then instead of pretending to know beyond its own territory. A selfless intellect that prefers to use its abilities for the benefit of mankind and not in the service of personal ego building.

As this transition occurs, the first glimmer of inner light within the head is seen. It is usually a pale, moon-lie glow seen at the top of the head from the fourth dimension looking into the fifth. This light illumines the darkness of the third dimension. The third dimension is the dark area of the mind, and we only see our way clearly in it through the two lights of the fourth dimension, sunlight, or electric light which man himself has invented to light up the third dimension and remove the fear of unknowing which is equal to the fear of darkness.

The fourth dimension doesn't interact much with the first. It looks into the third and second and inwardly into the fifth. When these dimensions are experienced simultaneously from the fourth, it is similar to standing in an open doorway looking out into a small room and in into a vast fifth dimensional room. This is where life should be lived every day, having that "mountaintop consciousness" that looks over, in, and through everything and gives the facility to enjoy and participate fully in the world while knowing at all times exactly where we are in the mind.

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Understandings gained from the fourth dimension tend to make one a good teacher and philosopher. Yet it is not powerful like the fifth dimension, but serene and quiet. It gives the experience of a pure state of awareness flowing through the mind and is the threshold to vaster inner space and spiritual realization.

From the fourth dimension one has here and now consciousness and is able to perceive a scope of nine days at once, whereas from the third dimension, one sees basically the pattern of the current day and from the second a span of only a few minutes or hours. This nine-day time period looks from now into the past and ahead to the future, approximately four and a half days or 108 hours in both directions. That is the reason that we can make accurate and valid judgments from the discriminating consciousness of the fourth dimension, for it sees the totality of intermingled past actions and future effects from a mountaintop perspective. It is easier to maintain the overview of the fourth dimension as it looks into and through the second and third if we practice containing awareness within the boundaries of the nine-day period, not speaking or thinking unnecessarily about events or experiences that are more than four and a half days in the past or four and a half days in the future. Awareness can then concentrate on current happenings, bringing the aspirant into the intuitively inspired consciousness of being here and now, not there and then, or even where and when.

From this vantage point we can view the building of emotional involvements within the third dimension, observing the workings of the emotional and intellectual units of ourselves and others. From this detachment we gain the ability to dissolve confusions, conflicts, and the various and varied entanglements that are encountered daily. And, if they are merely seen, that in itself is the necessary elucidation for congestion cannot exist when perceived with clarity. Also, from the fourth dimension we have the choice as to the kinds of third dimensional creations we involve awareness in. We see precisely the path ahead and are able to avoid undesirable areas and karmic sidetracks. Thus, by clearing congestion at the time it is generated without letting it settle and in a sense "harden" in subconscious memory cells and by holding the overview as to the optimum course of action based on a cognition of past and future, awareness is kept free-flowing in the spiritual intensity of now.

When we can hold ourselves in consciousness steady enough to see yesterday and tomorrow right in the same moment, we are in the fourth dimension. When we can hold ourselves steady enough to see the flow of force and vibration in the inner atmosphere between other people and ourselves, we are in the fourth dimension. It is not as difficult as we sometimes make it seem to be in the fourth dimension. Most people spend quite a bit of their time in the fourth dimensional realm without even realizing it. But the discovery of the fourth dimension or any dimension is the discovery that we're already there and knowing when we are there and when we are not there. If we know that, we automatically know how to be there when we find we are not. When we are emotionally tangled or upset and we see that we are emotionally upset, we're in the fourth dimension. The fourth dimension is the watcher. If totally enmeshed in the third dimension we would be upset but would be too identified with the emotion to be able to simultaneously observe, "I am upset. I feel confused and terrible!" When we watch the mind think we are using a faculty of the fourth dimension. Only the fourth dimension can observe the thinking process at work. That is a good, clear way to look at the fourth dimension, as simply the watcher, the witness. There are millions of different ways consciousness can and does function in the fourth dimension, but this is the best way to define and learn of it.

It is the home-base for the jnani. He never moves further out in consciousness than the fourth dimension, never becomes attached or identified with thought, emotion, or even the multitudinous forms of superconsciousness. He is the watcher and his awareness is centered, hovering like a hummingbird, governing the flow of the externalities of life while resting in the peace and enlightenment of its own being. From his established silent center he looks at and into every aspect of the interrelated states of mind, the interrelated states of the nerve system as seen by the fourth dimension. Awareness remains basically within the fourth dimension and does not have to flow out into the third of second, because the visionary powers and faculty of inner sight already sees out through the third and second dimensions, acts, and governs those dimensions as well as the personality effectively from the fourth without ever leaving it.

The actinodic body we refer to is a body of light. It is also called the astral body. It is not a highly spiritual body. It is just a duplicate of the physical body and exists inside of the physical in the third dimension plane. The astral plane is an exact duplicate of this plane, but when you are looking into it from the fourth dimension you see what is going to happen three or four days ahead of time. You are actually seeing events happening on the astral plane that will take place three or four days from now on this plane. Physical plane creations happen first on the astral plane which is always seventy-two hours ahead of this plane. When in the fourth dimension you are out of the time-space continuum as we generally know it. It's all there. You don't travel in the fourth dimension. You're there. Things just appear. Around two o'clock each morning when the inner plane schools take place and students gather in the fourth dimension, if I'm awake I can close my eyes and they inwardly appear in my mind. I can identify many of them one after another. Even devotees whom I haven't thought of in eight or nine years still attend inwardly. There they are in a body that looks like a mannequin made out of clear plastic. It's not a fleshy body, it's a light body that glows of itself. I can see all of their features as one appears and then disappears so the next one comes forward. So they come right into the mind, come to learn of the within, the inner worlds.

The fourth dimension is the natural state of mankind, the state he resides in unless external events consume awareness. In some thinking it is the state of the soul. Whereas man himself creates the third dimension in daily life, the fourth dimension is the being of man and how he relates to himself within himself. Living here he is peaceful, alive and balanced. Consciousness never sleeps. Mystics leave their physical body at night in a state of sleep and go into the fourth dimension in consciousness and continue a very lively mental life, teaching and being taught within the recesses of this and deeper dimensions. This is especially true if they practice the conscious withdrawal of awareness from the body and from the vibratory patterns of the day just before they go to sleep.

The fourth dimension does not always remain the same. Consciousness within it changes the flow of currents that run through that dimension, just as they do in the third. However, the patterns within the fourth are fairly well set, more regimented so to speak, whereas third dimensional patterns fluctuate and change. Consciousness, then, takes a different perspective or a different way of looking at it.

The fourth dimension is already well known by everyone on the path otherwise they would not even know that there is a path to be on. It does not take years of difficult practice to break into and experience it. It's very simple. There's no practice involved. That was done while we were evolving. That was the practice. The many lives of evolution--that was the rehearsal. Now we can enjoy it.

The fourth dimension merges into the fifth and at that point it is really impossible to distinguish the two. But the fourth flows and functions through the subconscious faculties and can therefore observe the third. The fifth dimension cannot. That is the reason the fourth dimension encompasses the subsuperconscious, the intuitive realm of consciousness. The fifth dimension doesn't contact the third. It cuts right through it.

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Bodhinatha continues:

So, very interesting ideas. As you can see, it's not edited, one of the reasons I stumbled a few times. That's very interesting material. It's some thirty-six, thirty-seven years old on the fourth dimension. So, Gurudeva's idea is, he defines seven dimensions of the mind and when we understand them, it's a very helpful concept in our meditation. We have some idea of where we are and some idea of where we're going. That is part of the whole idea of the Shum-Tyaif is to try and give us a map for our meditation; try and give us a sense of what's where and how to get from one place to another. So recognizing where we are is part of it and then understanding how to go somewhere else and then actually getting there is how it all works. So the concept of the seven dimensions in that regard is a useful tool. But beyond that of course, we have to understand certain concepts within each dimension; like the simple concept here of feeling the spiritual energy of the spine, this is called simshumbese: feeling the actinic energy of the spine, is one of the basic practices. Other basic practices are similar to that and by doing them we can go within ourselves as well as move from a dimension that is not that deep into one that's much deeper by certain practices.

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