The third dimension, that most people live in most of the time is the rapidly changing world of thoughts and feelings, emotions and intellectual theory. The meditator watches his actions and reactions through their regular karmic cycles and stabilizes awareness in more refined dimensions avoiding highly emotional states. Patanjali-kleshas: wrong cognition, false concepts. The name of the third dimension in Shum is 'rehunishum'. Other Shum definitions include: rehsika (entanglements), shumsimika (everything is good).

Unedited Transcript:

Good morning everyone.

We are continuing with the series on Gurudeva's book "Seven Dimensions of the Mind" and we're starting the third dimension. Today is Third Dimension, Part 1.

"It is the third dimension that most people live in 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 faculties 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. Though 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.

"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 unthought-out involvement in the outer dimensions which covers action and reaction in heavy layers or strata and therefore slows the cycles."

Then we have some related material from "Patanjali's Yoga Sutras."

We have the term klesha. So klesha refers to five specific forms of wrong cognition. False concepts. The concepts referred to as wrong cognition have in common that they provide the cognitive and motivational framework to living a life enmeshed in the world and ignorant of one's spiritual nature.

So in terminology of what we were saying that would, we could replace 'world' with 'third dimension'. They provide the cognitive and motivational framework to living a life immersed in the 'third dimension' and ignorant of deeper dimensions. A good way of giving continuity to the dimensional concept.

So what are the wrong cognitions? The first is self-evident and is attraction or raga. So that's the like. In other words Gurudeva's bringing up the idea of likes and dislikes. So this is the like.

Attraction:

"Attraction is that which rests on pleasant experiences."

That's what Gurudeva was talking about. And my comment is: Of course, an individual is attracted to a multitude of objects and individuals not previously experienced. What this verse is saying is that one's strongest attractions are based on memories of having experienced pleasure.

The second klesha is not as self-evident. It is aversion or dvesha. So that's the dislikes that Gurudeva was talking about.

"Aversion is that which rests on sorrowful experiences."

My comment is: When the concept of being detached is initially thought about, it would be common to focus solely on lessening our attachment to what we consider pleasurable. However, strong attachments also exist to our memories of what caused us suffering, such as mistreatment from our parents. It is necessary to also detach from these memories of suffering.

Then we have a quote from Gurudeva on this idea of attraction and aversion.

"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 (I like that word.) 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."

So said simply in terms of Patanjali's concept, we need to see through the wrong cognition that's involved in both attraction and aversion and be detached from the third dimension.

So it's pretty hard to find stories about the third dimension. So I did my best here.

This is from a lesson on dreams, Merging with Siva.

"I myself, being of a kapha dosha, dream of water. When the water is calm, I know that there will be no mental disturbances in the foreseeable future. But when there are dashing ocean waves, I know that within seventy-two hours, three days, there will be a mental disturbance with an aggression of mental force. This has been proved to my external, conscious mind time and time again. The ancient texts speak of giant floods that consume the world, as in typical dreams.

"Highly emotional states should be avoided by one who meditates. The reaction to the emotional experience is too strenuous for him to live with. It takes quite a while for that reaction to re-enact back through his nerve system. When one goes through an emotional state, it takes seventy-two hours for the basic emotional system to quiet and about one month for him to unwind out of the reaction to the action. So, he must really watch the emotions and keep that power very much under control. Therefore, one who meditates should not argue. One who meditates should not allow himself to become emotional."

I like to joke about this in my talks and say: There are individuals who within every 72 hour period get emotionally upset at least once. So what does that mean? It takes 72 hours for an emotion to calm down, but you're getting upset within a 72 hour period, you're always upset. So some people live in that state of mind. So we don't want to go there.

We have some Shum words to finish off.

Rehunishum. (The name of the dimension.)

1) Third dimension; subconscious mind.

2) The interrelated magnetic forces in the astral plane that exist between people and people and their things.

So it's always both. The person and people and the person and things. The forces that exist between them, the interrelated magnetic forces are the third dimension. [3] The world of thoughts and feelings, of emotions and intellectual theory.

4) This dimension relates to the first three kamshumalinga or chakras.

So that was rehunishum. And then the two words in the series.

Unishum: Excess talking.

Nishum: The physical tongue.

Then we have two more Shum words that, talking about the flow of force. In other words, a force between people can be flowing harmoniously or can be disturbed. So there's a different word for each one.

First one here is the disturbance.

Rehsika:

1) A disturbance between people.

2) A tug and pull of pranic or odic energy between one person and another or one group and another.

3) An idea or memory pattern that would cause disturbance to the mind if unleashed.

4) A congested area of the mind which acts as a barrier to unfoldment of superconsciousness.

5) Such disturbances must be cleared before unfoldment can proceed.

Then we get the forces when they're flowing harmoniously.

Shumsimika:

1) Happy, secure feeling; joyous, light-hearted.

2) Rehsika is the name of entangled pranic energy; shumsimika is its opposite, smoothly flowing pranic energy.

3) A state of joy or happiness felt when the emotions are high and the mind is fresh.

4) A refined state of bliss or joy that penetrates from the fourth dimension into the third and is felt through the physical nerve system.

5) This is felt when the pranas are all flowing in harmonious directions within individuals and between them and others.

6) A quiet feeling of contentment abides.

Thank you very much.

Have a wonderful day.